Mondays with William
i have been struggling lately.
my depression has been close to the surface and i have been trying to understand what it means to move through a world that feels so heavy all the time.
this piece came from that place.
every monday william brings me flowers.
usually they are roses sitting inside a reused plastic bottle. sometimes one flower. sometimes two. he hands them to me carefully, like something fragile deserves ceremony even now.
we sit outside together and talk.
he tells me about the church groups helping him survive. about the hospital. about how surprised he is that he is still alive. then he looks around my yard and tells me my grass needs care.
his way of loving me is practical, like a father. checking if i am okay. teaching me how to grow things in stubborn dirt. bringing flowers because he knows i like them. telling me jokes where we both cackle on my doorstep. giving me encouraging words when i am sad. lecturing me on the musicians singing from his portable speaker.
my way of loving him is making sure he is okay too. we sit outside and share snacks together. he tells me what supplies he needs from the store, and i pick up whatever i can find. sometimes it is small things. water and socks and food. things people should not have to struggle this hard to get. sometimes it is finding medical care for a spider bite that is oozing.
william is houseless. we have known each other long enough to move through conflict and arrive somewhere softer afterward.
there was a time he was angry often, and rightfully so. the world had not been gentle with him. eventually i had to tell him that if he saw me as a friend, he could vent to me, but he could not direct anger at me for harms i did not cause. we worked through it slowly.
now mondays have become routine.
he calls me mija even though i have explained my relationship to gender more than once. at some point i realized the conversation mattered less to me than the care underneath it. he says it with affection. with familiarity. with warmth.
there are people who use language perfectly and still do not know how to love anyone.
william and i are trying our best with each other.
i believe part of what we call depression is collective grief.
i do not think human beings are meant to witness this much suffering while pretending everything is normal.
people are dying. children are being bombed. families are surviving wars and genocide and kidnapping while much of the world scrolls past their deaths between advertisements and work meetings.
we are expected to continue working, shopping, answering emails, paying bills, and performing normalcy while living alongside preventable suffering on a massive scale.
we already have enough resources to feed people. to house people. to care for people.
instead, billionaires continue accumulating wealth through systems that depend on deprivation. people are pushed into competition with each other over survival while unimaginable amounts of wealth continue moving upward.
the violence of that system gets reframed as success. exploitation becomes innovation. hoarding becomes aspiration. people struggling to survive are taught to blame each other instead of the structures profiting from all of us.
that violence does something to the body.
we are told to adapt to it. to keep moving. to stop feeling so much.
i do not think my nervous system ever learned how to do that.
i do not know how to stop noticing.
i notice the people asking for help while everyone keeps walking. i notice how much violence is required to maintain comfort. i notice that we already have enough resources to care for people and still choose systems organized around abandonment instead.
i cannot separate my sadness from living inside that reality.
i think that is part of why my friendship with william matters so much to me.
nothing between us is transactional.
he does not have to stop by my house. he does not have to bring me flowers. he does not have to care whether i am okay.
and i do not have to sit outside with him.
we keep showing up because something reciprocal formed between us.
i do not think reciprocity is valued very much. instead, performance is. extraction is. ownership is. productivity is. and mutual care without agenda feels increasingly rare.
and yet every monday william shows up with flowers in a plastic bottle.
every monday we sit outside together and remind each other we are still here.
a mother’s day gift from William