ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴀʟᴍ (ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ʜᴇʀᴇ)

they called it depressed
when my body couldn’t keep up
with the life i loved.
when rest looked like failure.
when grief didn’t have a neat cause
they could point to.

but this virus shut our world down.
it took lives — more than we like to name out loud.
it rearranged time, families, futures.
and then it stayed.

it attached itself to my spine,
my mind,
my endurance.

to the quiet work of holding myself upright.
to the way i measure a day
by what i can carry.

i haven’t been able to hold my own child
the way i know how.
that grief has its own weight.
its own language.

but friends have stepped in —
watching him,
lifting him,
driving him to school,
loving him when my arms can’t.

this is not weakness.
this is community doing its sacred work.

and my husband —
steady, relentless in love —
holding what i cannot,
believing when i am too tired
to borrow hope from myself.

today a needle rested
between c6 and c7.
the doctor was gentle.
he listened.
he didn’t rush my fear
or explain me away.

i am aware depression lives here.
i know trauma does too.
they have been waiting —
patient, unfinished —
for years.

and now,
in this forced slowing,
i am finally given
the time and breath
they have always deserved.

not to be fixed,
but to be faced.

i hope this brings relief.
i really do.
but i know this is only the beginning.

healing, for me, is not a straight line —
it’s a reckoning.
a re-learning of trust
inside a body that’s been through too much.

i am not always calm.
the hat tells the truth.

but even here —
in pain,
in pause,
in the long middle —

i see the good.
i see love showing up anyway.
i see care where there was once dismissal.
i see a life still worth tending.

and for now,
that is enough
to keep going.

♡ ᴄᴀʀᴍᴇʟ ʀᴏsᴇ
The Still Point