"Hello, darkness, my old friend. I can't push you away-because if I do, you only grow stronger. So I'm learning to let you be here. You settle in my chest like a hollow weight, speaking not in words but in pressure. At two years old, I could already feel my grandmother's sadness. She didn't believe anyone really loved her. I absorbed it for her."
"At three, I sat in front of my mother while tears welled in her eyes. A lump rose in my own throat as I told her, "Don't cry, Mommy. It's okay." She needed comfort, so I gave it. I did the best I could. At four, I can still see myself on the porch, singing a song of longing for my mother, hoping she would come get me."
Persistent depressive darkness is described as a hollow weight that cannot be pushed away and must be allowed to settle. The narrator absorbed family sorrow from infancy, feeling a grandmother's sadness and comforting a crying mother. Separation and parental abductions produced longing and singing on a porch at age four. A childhood friend's death at twelve left a permanent ache. Economic hardship and a need to fit in led to shoplifting at fifteen. A smiling exterior concealed deep internal pain. A mother's survival of domestic violence and worsening depression intensified the narrator's grief and coping strategies rooted in trauma.
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