The Antlion

The antlion larva is a predatory insect that lives,
Among other places, in the Sahara Desert.
The antlion larva burrows into the sand
And creates a hollow cone around itself.
Ants, racing across the blazing sand, tumble into the cone.
They try to climb the angled walls as the sand slips away beneath them.
The open jaws of the antlion wait at the vertex,
And the ant scurries with all six legs trying to find purchase.
Trying to escape the pit before the desert sun burns it alive,
Or it fall to the monster below.

This is about the way I'm am an ant,
Small, segmented, flighty.
And this is about the way my depression is an antlion,
Perpetually waiting at the bottom of a crumbling foundation
To swallow me,
While the crushing heat of time smothers me.
I scramble against the unstable walls my depression has made.
My six legs, six or a hundred different phantom limbs built of desperation.
My segments, pieces of myself that I compartmentalize.

There is a man here who wants to save me,
But he does not know how.
He loves me,
But he can not see the cone,
Or my desperation for solid ground,
Or the monster just beneath.

He only sees me,
Lying in the same spot,
Staring at the same wall
For what is about to be hour three.
He sees me distant and noncommittal.
He sees me crying,
then not crying,
and mistakenly thinks this is better.

He also sees me in the passenger's seat
Feet tucked beneath me,
Seat Belt buckled behind me,
And words coming faster than grains of sand sliding down a hill.
My hands opening and closing in my lap,
Grasping at nothing
At everything.
My eyes never landing in the same spot twice,
Never seeing anything,
Always looking for a miracle.
He sees me pace and fidget,
And he mistakes this precarious energy
For impatience
Or boredom.
Me sees me laugh too much,
Like this is the leg that will catch the edge of the pit.
Like all these are the frantic legs that will hoist me to safety.

But the sun is hot and constant,
And I am tired
Because what is the sun if not an endless reminder
That tomorrow will come.
As my shell starts to burn and crack,
I slip more than I climb.
I reach out for hands that are not there
Because they do not know where in this desert to find me.

If only I could grasp onto something,
Hold onto anything.
If only I weren't as hollow as this pit of sand.

As the ant nears the mouth of the cone,
The antlion begins to hurl sand at the ant in an attempt to dislodge it.
The grains shower around the ant and disrupt the already shifting floor.

When my floor falls away beneath me,
The rush to the bottom is familiar and terrifying.
This time, I look the monster in the eye,
And instead of an insect,
it is a bottle of pills.
And instead an ant,
I am a woman researching overdose at four in the afternoon on a Saturday.
And when I looked again, the monster was also me,
A woman wondering if it was possible to kill herself
Without her husband ever knowing.
Then, how I wished he'd never known me.

There is a short video I watch on repeat.
It's the only one that helps.
An ant trapped in an antlion cone,
struggling with every segment of its hard, desperate body,
Every leg pulling with more force than an ant has any right to muster,
Escapes.