Never Not Broken: The Erasure Poem

A few weeks ago, I shared my first essay about my Depression, in which my 2016 Relatively-Well Self bore witness to my 2015 Depressed Self.

A week ago, a little over five years after performing that essay at This Is My Brave D.C., I decided I wanted to look back and remember both of those versions of me.

I sat on my patio and watched a handful of the videos, watching a terrified and trembling me touching her face, confirming that she was real and present.

I read and reread the essay, especially that middle section where I’m watching myself & doing my best to do justice to the person and the pain she was seeing.

Then I decided to collaborate with both of those versions of myself by taking the center chunk of that essay & writing an erasure poem (in the style of Kate Baer & her collection I Hope This Finds You Well, but collaborating with two different versions of myself).

What you see here is evidence that I can find and make beauty out of damn near anything.

This is the work of someone who survived the storm & spends the rest of her life making sure that no one else has to suffer alone, white knuckling their way through the dark.

This is the way I heal: by continuing to show all the way up in all of the ways I know how & writing the words that are hard to speak, then slipping them into the palm of your hand.

This is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever written and it took five years, and—

Here I am.