She felt herself curl up until her knees were to her chest, closing herself off, trying not to surrender to the everlasting heaviness of her eyelids. A tear seeped over her eyelashes and dropped down her cheek, leaving a sodden, glassy path down her face. Her head fell back and she desperately attempted to emerge herself in the characters moving on the television screen. The distraction failed as she turned and looked at herself in the mirror, a reflection of a disheartening, disappointing girl staring back at her. This sight made the tears persevere, pouring down her face in a nonstop cascade. The timeless, tragic picture of a broken girl.

She felt the darkness creeping and slithering further and further into her, coiling around her aching, painfully throbbing heart and constricting until she felt unable to breathe. It’s length seemed to be infinite as it reached it’s long, gnarled mass through her chest and traced her throat, oozing across her tongue and emerging through her lips in the form of a tangled sob.

Throughout her body these shadows of a figure persisted but around her head was a syrupy, misty haze that created a dull, blurry feeling. Like she was enfolded in a thin, indestructible layer of cotton that created a murky, foggy view of the world that she could not see through. The creature inside of her combined with the fog left her with an undeniable, painful sensation of self-loathing that she could not seem to escape. Self-loathing for not being strong enough to obliterate the darkness that had settled inside of her, self-loathing for the missing, absent reason that she felt this dark haze, self-loathing for the sight of her wet, tear-stricken face staring back at her.
The helpless feeling of not being capable of emerging from this sadness was a heavy weight sinking down to the bottom of her stomach, making her feel sluggish and weighted.

She slept for hours on end. Sitting on this old, yielding rocking chair staring blankly at the moving television screen and yet she never felt rested, never fully aware. The fog kept the drowsiness locked in, not letting even a drop of the gluey stupor escape, leaving her everlastingly drained and weak.

She tried to bring her knees closer to her chest but as she did she felt the added weight in-between her legs and her stomach. Her mindless, empty eating had started to show. And although she realized this she still ate excessively. It was an addiction, an empty promise to make her content, to fill her.

She let her mind go blank, staring at her dark hazel eyes in the mirror. Wishing that she was prettier…thinner...happier. There was no reason for this bleak darkness to surround her, no tragic elements in her life. For this she felt selfish, she tried to permit herself to be happy but she was incapable. Sure, there were brief moments of minor pleasure, while participating in something fun with her friends or after buying a new song or finishing a satisfying book. But the happiness was short and seemed to only scratch the surface, like a sun attempting to cut through the clouds on a dark day. She tried to help the sun break through but at the moment she was not strong enough to overcome the clouds.

Her happiness could be traced back to the winter months of his face and his touch. Yes, she had been happy since then. During summer when she didn’t have to see him, during the summer when she made a new best friend, during the summer when she wasn’t haunted by her choice of ending him, ending them. But then she went back to school, back to the place of their first meeting, their first kiss, her first love. The kind of complete and total ecstasy that she had been overwhelmed with, when lost is not easily healed or replaced. He had been a drug, when using she had been on the highest of highs, and with those highs brings the lowest of lows when the withdraws come. And they always come.

Before him she had been strong, happy, the innocence of childhood, of an unscarred heart had surrounded her. She had been fearless because she had never truly felt fear. But he broke her, or she broke herself, he had taken away the openness, the fearlessness, the innocence and she was now and forever scarred with the wound that he had inflicted upon her, that she had inflicted upon herself. She was now closed off, wary of becoming attached, wary of letting boys in. Because of him, he changed her and she couldn’t seem to find the person that she was before him, the happiness that she had had when with him.

She had been happy before him; she thought that she experiencing the utmost happiness before him, because she didn’t know anything different. It was like sitting inside on a sunny day, seeing clearly and being content but then you go outside and the sun it so blinding and brilliant that when you go back inside, it’s the same light but your eyes are darkened after being used to the sunlight. And the brighter the outside the longer it takes for your eyes to adjust to the inside light again. He was the brightest of brights and her eyes were struggling and battling to be able to see once more.

She had always told herself it wasn’t going to happen to her, she wouldn’t be one of those girls who break apart because of a guy, no matter who he was she would be one of the strong ones. One of the ones that stay intact, one of the ones who even after getting hurt can get right back up and let another person in. But she wasn’t. She was scared now as much as she hated to acknowledge it, she was petrified and damaged. This wasn’t supposed to be her; she promised herself this would never be her.

She wasn’t sure that the darkness came solely from the misery that was he. That seemed too trivial of an event to create this dark, warped and cruel being inside of her. Yes, it broke her apart, not being with him and she knew that but who hadn’t had their heart broken, beaten and bruised. Why would it be that that had brought her into a darkness that was inescapable while others took an instant to heal, a few tears, a pint of ice cream and then the wound created was closed up, leaving a faint scar of memories that they didn’t desire to dispose of. Was it that she truly had lost the one that she was meant to be with? Or was it that she simply wasn’t as durable.

Depression? Was this darkness resting inside of her measured as the doctor’s definition of depression? She felt the word too severe, too intense, to apply to someone like her. Depression is sitting in a dirty stall debating weather one is worth living, weather one wants to live. It was a disease, a disorder. She believed that this desolation was due to the weaknesses within her; she knew that and that added to her self-hatred.

She slid further down into the chair, laying her head on the arm rest, finally allowing her eyelids to slid closed and drifting into unconsciousness.