Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses in the world. Yet it still can be so misunderstood. With people always wanting to know one thing, “how are you?”
It is one of the most asked questions in the world and yet it is most probably the phrase I hate the most because it is used in polite conversation, nothing more or less. You don’t care how the person is, it is curtsey, and it is what we are taught to do from infants. We are taught that this question is what you ask your acquaintance in the street then when asked you respond with a simple enough answer of good or fine or some other synonym along those lines.
But what do I do when my answer is no longer a synonym for great or well. What happens when I feel numb inside. Like the universe is right in front of me so that I can taste it, feel it on the pores of my skin like a fine mist. But if I go to touch it, it evaporates right in front of me. Like the world is mine and I could hold it in the palm of my hand if I tried hard enough, yet I am always too cold or too hot. Oh how it always freezes in a moment that could be perfect but more likely lonely leaving me trapped there. I can’t move or breathe properly because every breath I take the ice forms more in my chest making the air fill my lungs like the tide washing in, slowly drowning me where I stand yet no matter what I do I cannot stop it. Or when I am in pure h--- and my skin feels like it is on fire. In those moments I swear to you I could stand on the sun and not be burned. That there is something in me that belongs down below, where the sun cannot touch me and the sky won’t hear me speak anymore. Where the world burns away and leaves me standing in the ash in the nothing to scream at the tops of my lungs. Just to hear the deafening sound of silence. But I am fine.
What do I say when the demons in my head just won’t let me sleep. When they torment me and every cruel word ever spoken to me is recalled to let me know just how truly worthless I am. And with each passing second more disgust fills me, my fingers itching to rip off my skin to pick out the sadness and despair that is festering in me. In the most open of my wounds, poisoning me from the inside out, it will not stop until my blood turns black. Until it stops pumping around my veins until my aorta bursts from the pressure and the remains of my damaged shrunken heart is picked up off of the floor and discarded like the trash it is. That is if my heart remains. Because I personally feel like my heart is shrinking so fast that eventually I will be left without it. But maybe I will still have to feel this pain maybe it is too late for me. Maybe it is already in my bones. Yet I say I am good.
How can I tell her that when its two am, that I can’t sleep and it seems like the demons of my past are knocking at the door screaming for me to let them in, to let them  win. When my lungs are filling with water as I drown within; by the sadness that is crashing over me like waves of the ocean at high tide, with the wind howling in my ears, screaming in my face. With my tormenters laughing as whoever said recovery was easy lied. It is the hardest thing to do, but I have two choices: fight to my last breath before being pulled down to the ocean floor or let them in, let them win and try to enjoy my last few days riding out the pain. How do I let her know that I crave sleep like an addict craves meth, that I need to go back to sleep. That I cry out for someone to hold onto me.
How do I smile at them when I don’t even know who I am anymore. Because when I look in the mirror I don’t know who it is there but it certainly isn’t me. There is a hollow empty stranger staring back at me and her eyes undoubtedly are as empty as my soul. There is a person in the sense of matter or being but she isn’t alive. How do I smile? When some days it is a wonder how I lift her hand because I am certain that I am not her but yet we move in sync. When I feel like Peter Pan’s shadow following this person around that I have to watch, imitate, be a part of but all I want is to escape. To get away from this place so I can learn to live. Yet I do smile because I am great.
Or when I feel so alone, like the world is spinning and I'm frozen still. All my friends are moving on, in love or happy with whom they’re with. But I am alone, scared that no one can love a girl with more scars then skin. Someone that's a collection of trauma, songs, heart break and bad films sown together; worse than Frankenstein’s monster itself.  I mean I have been trying. I swear to god I've been trying but how can I live alone like this treading water just to stay afloat. While the life boats drift past. I have reached out so much yet I still cannot see the end, see a friend.
And if everyone can control their own life. If they are the star that their solar system revolves around with thoughts and feelings of their own.  How did I manage to not even be able to fathom my thoughts into constellations from stars that already exist?  Yet alone actually be one, to even have stardust on one of my fingers would be a miracle.  To be a force never to mess with, to have power, a light that shines. But in my darkness the stars collapse onto themselves to form black holes ripping to shreds anything that remains with me and sucking the little light that shines through the cracks of the shadows. When I am told this is normal to be afraid, to feel sadness. I have to laugh because nothing about this is sane. Too physically feel the sadness in my bones, so much so that it feels that they have been replaced by lead and are brittle ready to snap or break at any point. To want to scream until my guts are in my throat and being forced out of my body. To cut myself up into pieces and present them one by one to you so maybe I will be good enough. Because if everyone is a solar system maybe I am one far away, so you cannot see me. So you cannot see my light or use.  So you think that there is no life here.  And dedicate yourself to the Milky Way that you see as my sibling.
You see I am doing what I am told, I try to be happy, I wake up and smile. Otherwise what's the point? All I want to do is live, be happy. I don't remember how I got this way, how the evil got inside me, into my veins slowly poisoning my blood constricting the veins till my heart can no longer beat. I try to strangle, choke the monster inside but he's too strong. I honest to god tried. And I used to believe, I prayed, sang, preached with the best of them. But she said she wanted to die and she got a response and I cried out for 5 years and nothing, no one came to help me. I want to f------ die. I won't do it today or tomorrow probably but having die young and save yourself as a motto can only mean one thing. I need to purify myself. I don't know how yet but I have to do something. all that is left is scream can I still get into heaven if I kill myself, and if I turn on myself can I get in or will they send me to h---? Cause I see this life and this test as my own personal h---. No one else can hurt me like I have hurt myself. You see every hour of my life seems like a season and I swear to god I have been in winter way to long. I long to feel my lungs being filled with something other than the smoke that chokes me or the water trying to drown me, dragging me down. Can anyone tell me how it feels to breathe clean air, what it's like to be free because I lost my innocence at 10. I don't remember happiness, or self acceptance. I lack beauty, love, poetry in my soul all that remains are the lies, the hurt and destruction that follows me
Because when people think of depression they think of a beautiful girl with scars on her wrists or a troubled child dressed in black. But I am neither of them. I am not tragic, nor will anyone fall in love with me. No prince will come to give me a happily ever and I am as sure as h--- as there is no God. But if there is? It doesn’t bother me because my existence has put my through so much h--- that nothing could be worse than this. So here I am pouring my emotions upon this page in the hope I will not drag a blade across my body or swallow as many pills as I can find to remove the pain. Here I am picking at my stitches, crying out to the empty house. Time becoming a concept that I cannot stand. The future looking bleaker by the second.  My soul becoming empty of the songs and poetry that once resided there slowly being replaced by the sins I have committed with the lies that have left my tongue. Because it feels like if I get out of bed I can shatter into pieces and never being seen again, or that the weight of the world is so heavily set on my shoulders that my body weighs more than it can handle that it is crumbling; leaving me with nothing but the inability to breathe clearly let alone more. But I have been in this for 5 years the girl that was once here died a long time ago. With this new being became a single talent.
And of course that talent is to smile and reply with “fine thanks, how are you?”