prescription pills & photographs

by aboynamedsuicide

sometimes i am not a friend; i am barely human. i am cold and craving loneliness and yearning to escape from the crowded chaos within my head. i do not want to connect with anyone but myself and people misunderstand and label me with words like “distant” and “rude” and they tell me i’m “being cold” and “putting up a wall” and “isolating myself”. and maybe i am all of those things but sometimes that is what i need to be and i just need someone to be okay with that.

i need you to be okay with me not saying anything at all. to be okay with me not looking you in the eye as i mumble out some words about being alright. to be okay with me being alone. i need you to understand that sometimes i won’t cry or scream or talk. instead i’ll be as cold as ice and i’ll try not to tremble. i need you to understand that some days i won’t be able to do or say anything. i won’t explain how i’m feeling because i don’t feel anything at all. i won’t say what i’m thinking because my thoughts don’t make sense to me. they’re partial pages of magazines ripped out with only half of paragraphs left to make sense of so whatever sounds drip out of my lips will only be scraps of poetry and probably won’t mean more than the headlines from those magazines. i need you to listen anyway.

some days it will be like watching someone smoke a pack of cigarettes on a rainy day. it’s beautiful and mesmerizing and calming but under the surface it’s toxic and it’s destructive and it’s irreversibly damaging for years to come. maybe it’s that simple but i think it’s more complicated than that because someone always has a choice to put down that pack. but this—it’s embedded in the roots of my mind and it’s growing sickly roses without thorns and thin trees without leaves. i’m not sure if it will be worth it if you aren’t prepared for the possibility that you might not be able to save me after all. even still i am willing to make this work if you will be okay with long nights to sit on the bathroom tiles and empty eyes to greet the morning light.

it takes less than prescription pills to remind me that i’m still sick and that today will not be all wonders. i need you to understand that no matter how many times i tell myself that “it gets better”—some days it’s just too hard to believe that no matter if it’s whispered in my ear or shouted at me from across the room. i need you to understand that sometimes i’ll be terrified and i won’t even understand what it is that i’m afraid of. it’s nothing simple like a dark closet or heights or monsters under the bed because when those were my greatest fears there was always something that could ease my mind until the panic subsided. i don’t even know the name of what i’m scared of but it’s hiding inside my soul and some days it ravages the places i called my sanctuary, tearing down photographs and shredding letters and smearing blood on anything beautiful. and i can’t do anything to stop it, to keep it out, to make it go away, because i’m powerless and i can’t control the shaking of my hands.

i need you to understand what this has done to me and what it still does to me. i can’t say “i was sick” because i have to follow that sentence with the phrase “i still am” so why not suffice to say i’m suffering and some days it’s better but sometimes it’s worse. that doesn’t make me a bad person just because i’m too ill to act in a way that’s socially acceptable.

i can’t cry anymore, that’s another thing i’ve lost. it’s not the emotional bs breakdown or the overreaction of taking something too personally or the bawling because feelings were hurt. i’ve never been one to cry over those anyway.
but the moment—the soul’s breaking point, something so deep it causes a physical pain in one’s chest, the throat tightens so it’s too hard to swallow, and soft screams sound better than words to describe it—all i can do now is blink slowly as darkness clouds my mind and my face bears no hint of emotion because there is nothing but that ache, beyond heartache is soul-ache. something is terribly broken but i cannot respond no matter how much i want to. and tears that ought to be there—just the ones that trickle out of the corners of the eyes and slide down the cheeks—i can’t find them, as though they’ve literally been eradicated from my body and i feel so insensitive only to stare because i don’t know what else it is that i can do to express this. i tried to bargain with the sky to lend me raindrops so i could cry again but i spilled all the ones i was sold because apparently shattered shards do not hold rain. i feel like i lack humanity because there is nothing for you to wipe off of my face and no excuse for you to touch me. i feel too terrible for you to touch me anyway, even to hold me.

i need you to be okay with me when i am too tired to do anything. some days just waking up is a misery and it takes more strength than i have to move from out of bed. i’ll have barely been conscious for two minutes and already want to go back to sleep again, and it doesn’t matter how much i slept during the night because sleep cannot cure this exhaustion i feel. it is buried in my brittle bones and sends chills up my spine, leaving me shuddering while huddling under the sheets. and there is so much work to be done in the world that it weighs on my mind so that my head is too heavy for me to even sit up, all i can do is rest it on this pillow and hope that the pressure lessens even though i know that it will only grow.

i feel like less of a person when people refer to my illness as another part of myself, as if it’s separate from me and can somehow be isolated and fit into a test tube for experimentation. it’s not as neat as that, because this virus is pervasive and it’s saturated within my body, it’s not just concentrated chemicals in my mind. no, i am not my depression but my depression isn’t separate from who i am. it is an integral piece of who i am even if i don’t like to admit that to anyone or myself. that is why it hurts to hear “that’s your depression talking” and “just don’t give in to the depression” and “choose to be optimist, positive, happy”, as if i have another option other than the deceptive lure of cooperation that it works in my brain. it’s a deal with the devil that my mind makes behind my back and i have no say; heck, i didn’t even know it was happening. but i have to live with it. that doesn’t seem fair.

yes, i can say that i want to get better but i wasn’t ever given the authority to write eviction notices. i didn’t even speak with the landlord that let depression stay in the first place, his name tag only spelled Abuse and he said that he owned the room for rent.

i never had a choice but i’m left to live with the consequences of others’. i just need you to be okay knowing that it might take my whole life to learn how to be happy again.

disclaimer: my posts reflect my personal thoughts/views and do not constitute a cause for alarm or concern. for further clarification, please read this.