Train Ride
My depression is a train ride.
A train I hopped onto when I was eleven and wasn’t able to exit from yet.
Its first stop was a place called OCD and Anxiety, a place my mind liked so much that it keeps revisiting it, even years and years after learning its no good.
My mind likes to spend its vacations there, sometimes for weeks on end, and sometimes just for a few days.
It stays there until the body has gotten used to the new climate and the changes, and that’s when it decides to leave again and plan its next visit, which undoubtedly is going to be harder and more commanding than the last one.
The trains next stop was years after learning that my mind enjoys the first one, and it’s the famous place called Depression, a place many before me have suffered and lost its battle with.
It wasn’t a sudden halt, a moment where the train’s decided to just stop and drop me off.
No, it was a long and slow journey to that destination, down and further down a valley, with sights so beautiful the mind didn’t realize where its next destination was going to be until it was too late.
The mind forgets who it is on that journey, forgets what it likes or what it hates, and the surroundings slowly start to blur together until you realize the sights weren’t beautiful at all, but they were dark and dull and only dressed to impress.
It’s in that moment when you realize all that, that the train pulls the emergency breaks and throws you off with a kick in the butt, alone and scared, unprepared to care for your own in this new and foreign world.
You’re desperate to get out, lost in the darkness and in the void, and so alone, no one understands what you’re going through when you tell them you need help.
Your body shuts down, stops feeling and loses hope, and all that’s left is nothing.
A shell of who you were. A puppet that looks exactly like you, and if you try hard enough, it even smiles and acts just like you.
But it’s empty.
I took the wrong train all these years ago, a train so phony and old, no one dares to talk about it.
My mind picks up pieces of the world outside of this darkness, and it thinks that drawing blood on my wrists is sacrifice enough to get the train back, and have it take me to the end of this journey, but all it does is numb the pain until the wounds have healed.
My desperate cry for help is unheard and ignored, because everyone out there is on its own train ride to a destination as dark and void as my own.
I don’t dare talk about it.
I don’t even dare think about it when in a room full of people, because who would listen to the girl with cuts on her arms and a darkness in her eyes that matches their own?
Its not until your mind is able to accept that this is only a pit stop, and not the end destination, that it starts working again and looking for a way through the void.
It dares to think about the possibility of getting help, of breaking out of its shell and speaking up, and it’s in that moment the train stops next to you again and allows you to hop back on, because with the proper partner the rest of the journey is not as long and dull as what you’ve already been through.
It’s a journey full of sunshine and star lit skies, a journey that undoubtedly will lead you to the final destination of your heart, the place you’re destined to end up at.
And it’s okay to pick up a partner or two along the way, because who wants to go on a journey this long on their own?
