Worthless.
That’s the word.
I have been looking for something to wrap the feeling I’ve found festering inside me, bubbling up to the surface where I wish it away with a half-hearted attempt to access my vast toolbox of self-help and therapeutic gadgets I have amassed over the last decade.
Worthless.
The word stops me from shoving my heart down to my toes for long enough to surge upward and press against my eyes.
I’m pretty flexible. I can adjust to this new development and work my dissociation like a charm.
Worthless.
That must be the word for the loneliness that washes over me every day. It has to be the word for the despair I feel as I search for something to make my days mean something.
Worthless.
I know what I am going through. I can pinpoint the exact cause. I can explain it to you and you would totally understand where I’m coming from. I can tell you that I lost my sister so then I lost my faith so then I lost some friends so then I lost my job so then I lost my sense of worth I had carefully cultivated for as many years as I knew the meaning of worth and now I am feeling worthless.
Worthless.
I get it. I really do get it. I am so sympathetic to that poor woman who sits and waits for the wave of depression to wash over her and take her out to sea. I know her so well. She curls up into herself and holds the tears at bay and I am overcome with a feeling as I watch her from that place just outside the window, floating in the trees.
Worthless.
I wish I could tell her she can’t measure worth by the things she’s lost. I wish I could tell her that it’s okay to let her loss rip her heart to shreds. I wish I could tell her that she could be anything she sets her heart to. I wish I could tell her where her heart is.
Worthless.
She turns her head towards me and I think she heard the word but I can’t be sure. She doesn’t see me floating outside. She doesn’t see her heart nestled in my arms. She doesn’t see my clear understanding of the torment she is going through as she searches for a word to wrap the feeling she found festering inside her, bubbling up to the surface where it washes over her face.
Worthless.
I wipe the word away and shove my heart back into my chest where it settles down in the depth of loss and pretends to beat.
Colloquially Speaking 