Toy Room

My therapist told me living in the past is one of the leading causes of depression.

I tell her about a room in my house dedicated to old toys and trinkets from my childhood. My mom kept all my ish. Ninja turtles, He-man, Thundercats, she even kept a dusty old hourglass I still flip over from time to time when I'm by myself. I'm by myself a lot, especially when I'm surrounded by an ocean of people.

It's been 14 years since the bottom of that swimming pool took the life I knew. Left me a rolling thing. I call that life BC, before cripple. It's a joke, that nobody laughs at, more of a shadow my depression hides behind. I live in the past a lot. Living in the past is a time machine guillotine, your is mind severed from all we should be thankful for now.

The toy room holds the memories of a stubborn boy, a momma’s boy.

“Slow down,” she'd say. “You can have all the toys in the world,” she'd say. “But only one body.” I never listened to a word my momma said.

I break the hourglass and sand fills the room.

I'm five years old again, chasing my girlfriend to the monkey bars. Of course I had a girlfriend at five. And out of nowhere, Scott Thompson on the tire swing takes me out. My two bottom teeth go straight through my lip. Mom said, “Beware the things you chase might blind you.”

I'm ten, diving into my backyard swimming pool. I hit my head on the bottom. Momma gave me a spoon to my backside that day. She said, “Never dive head first into anything.”

I'm fourteen, the emergency room a familiar temple. I'm doing wheelies in a hospital wheelchair. Mom pinches me and twists, she says, “Never make a fool of things that give people life.”

I tell her, “If I'm ever in a wheelchair for reals, I'll roll myself off a cliff.”

I'm not gonna lie, the cliff is always beckoning. That's the thing about depression, the cliff seems so much easier, or the trigger, or oncoming traffic, or the medicine cabinet. A sort of beautiful sabotage. The backdrop to every moment we live dragging around the dead carcass of a past we wished we still lived in.

I told you, I never listened to a word my momma said. But I'm too much of a Momma's boy for that cliff. She raised me better. She's still raising me.

Nowadays mom she says, “Never let those wheels define you son. Never let those wheels rob you of your smile son. Gods got big plans for you yet son.

And I'm in my toy room again, thirty five year old. I can't erase the past, but I can turn that cliff into a launchpad. Leave that jenky ass hourglass and the faded shimmer of yesterday behind. And when my mom tells me, “Gods got big plan for you yet son.”

Yo Mom

I'm finally listening.