Prologue
It was absolutely terrifying how quickly she fell into the swirling pit of darkness. The pit of self-loathing. Of hatred. Of sorrow. Sure the whirlpool always had a light grip on her sleeve, incessantly tugging at her, begging her, to just fall in. To let the darkness blanket her in its eternal warmth of self revulsion. To just revel in the one thing that would be forever constant in her life after that day. Pure and unadulterated hatred for herself. But she had been strong. She had been able to stave it off. Fighting tooth and nail, beating it back with a stick. Shaking off its annoying tug at her mind and heart. Pleading with it to just once leave her alone. To let her be happy.
But no. that was never going to happen. It would never leave her alone. And as sure as the moon would rise into the night sky, the pit would surely swallow her whole. It would beat her down until it would become too much and she wouldn’t be able to fight it off any longer. And it succeeded. The world was just too big of a place. Full of reminders of what her life could be. Of what she could be. And she was just too small of a girl, too weak of a girl, being crushed under the weight of everything that had been piled on her shoulders. She cracked and crumbled until she was nothing but splintered, broken pieces. A shell of her hopes and dreams. A shell of who she was supposed to be. A shell of the person the world thought she was.
And just like that she fell in. Like a trust exercise, she fell backwards, knowing full well that the depressing thoughts in her mind would be there to catch her. Would be there to comfort her and draw her back into their gloomy, dark depths during the times where she thought she could be free. In the times where she thought she could be normal. Because no matter how hard she tried. No matter how hard she fought. She would never be normal again. Normal just wasn’t in her DNA any longer. It had been completely knocked out of her.
And like all the other things in her life, being normal seemed like a simple step away. She could just step out of the shadow and suddenly her life would be fine for once. But that was just not how fate worked. Fate was cruel. Fate was harsh. Fate was determined to screw her over at every turn. Every bumbling step she took, frantically trying to reach the other side, desperate to finally see the color of the world outside of the grays and blacks she saw it in, just seemed to set her back another hundred steps. It was a never ending cycle of pain and suffering and like Sisyphus she would never reach the end of her punishment.
Her life was a never ending book of page after page filled with botched writing and mismanaged chapters. And the further she flipped through, the worse her screw ups became. It started off with simple things. Easily forgiven, potentially resolved with a smack to the back of her hands. But as her life grew, as she grew, the chapters became longer and completely filled with her grief. The worst part was the fact that she had it all. Everything was going her way. And in a span of a few moments her life was completely shattered. Broken in so many ways. She tried her best to plaster a smile on her face, to be brave for the world. But she just couldn’t do it. She was just so exhausted and the pain became too much for her to bear.
She was dying on the inside. Her mind was constantly screaming at her. Yelling obscenities at her complete failure to be what she had to be, what she needed to be. Constantly, reminding her of how useless she was. Of how pointless her life was. And her heart. Her poor battered heart. Determinedly beating, trying its best to keep her going, to keep her alive, was eventually beaten down by the storm raging in her mind. And eventually with time, it too began telling her how stupid she was, that her hopes were idiotic. That her life was nothing but a mistake.
She was withered and battered and pained. A dot of black and white in a world full of color. And she had a bulls-eye on her back. Targeted for every piece of shit the world could aim at her. But she had resolved herself to this burden because maybe. Just maybe if she bore it all. If she took the brunt of the pain the universe had to offer, she could save those she cared about from it. Because she wouldn’t wish, what she felt on a daily basis, on even the evilest of her tormentors. Not even the devil himself deserved to be in the darkened hole she was chained in.
Even worse she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. No one wanted to be near her. And she didn’t blame them. She could barely stand to hear her own thoughts. There was only one person who was her confidant. One individual who knew the true extent of her suffering. Her therapist. But even he, a man who had spent years of his life studying and practicing how to help people, couldn’t save her. For a brief shining moment there was hope. Given to her by the tiny blue pills filled with instant happiness. There was a chance she could be free. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel. And she managed to emerge, ever so briefly, before being abruptly pulled back in. Darkened hands grew from the whirlpool of her sorrows and grabbed her by the neck. Strangling her with the full force of her self-hatred. Because she was a lost case. There was no hope for her.
And just like that she was back in. A full nose dive straight to the bottom. Back to the normal, comfort of the world she had come to know. Back in the warm embrace of the blanketed contempt the depths of her mind had in store for her. A never ending stock of wishing she was invisible. Wishing she wasn’t here. Wishing she could just be obliterated from the world. Because who would miss her if she was? Who would miss her if she was gone from the world?
Because who would miss a girl that was so tarnished, so undeserving of love, that wished on a daily basis that she could just disappear. That she could just forget the miseries of the world and just dump her burden on someone else- so that she could have even the briefest of moments of clarity. Of freedom. A girl that was so far gone into her depression, pulled so far in, that she only knew one option that was left for her. A girl pulled so tight that the strings of her mind were a breeze away from snapping. A girl that wished she was dead.
