Chapter 1
Flower: Iris (hope)
***The picture is NOT mine***
***Please do NOT copyright this story, thank you!***
WARNING: This story contains suicidal thoughts and can contain other sensitive topics that may disturb some readers.
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Depression feels like you are in a car and you are driving. The radio is on with your favourite song making your heart dance, you have your favourite food in the seat next to you, and you feel good, you feel complete.
You see the cars in the lane next to you, the people in them smile and wave at you, the sun is high and you feel free, you feel like you can go anywhere and do anything.
But then.
Slowly, for an unknown reason out of your control, your car starts slowing down. Cars rush by you, continuing with their life. Unaware of your distress.
Your food tastes bland and leathery, causing your appetite to diminish; it becomes putrid, the smell making you nauseous. The music in the radio seems far away and muted, as if you’re underwater causing your thoughts to loud and unbearable.
And the meaning of life, the purpose of life slips away, like the current of the sea, like the dark water from the ocean running through your fingers.
Silence.
All you have is your memories as the sun falls asleep as its absent rays of warmth leave you cold. But you just keep on driving, you can’t go faster, you can’t stop, you just drive. You see people getting on with their lives while you are stuck in this car that now feels like a prison, one you can’t escape from.
Then somehow, you are back in your dull and lifeless room, the rough linen of your blanket prickling your back.
You become a hostage in your own bed, a murky feeling, that you are unable to name, creeps up on you so quietly, you don’t know its there until it has spread through your body and multiplied, causing you to lose control of your perspective and your thoughts.
Paralysing you.
You tell yourself it’s temporary, that you are just having a bad day, until the feeling becomes its own form, it embodies itself, and starts tormenting you, reminding you of past regrets, eating away your confidence, slowly devaluing you and eroding away your motivation.
Making you feel unworthy with it cynical and judgemental comments that cut into your soul like a knife. Leaving map of intricate scars that cause you to struggle more everyday, to keep the social mask from cracking and spilling the truth, like a river when a dam breaks.
Drowning you.
With the little strength you still have left, you try bargaining with it, try begging and bribing it, try making it disappear, try freeing yourself from its spidery sharp claws that bite into your delicate mind.
And when that fails, the thought of finally being free becomes louder, almost as if someone turned up the volume, consuming your occupied mind, making the idea of disembowelment not seem so bad anymore, knitting a delicate web over your senses.
You find yourself focusing on sharp objects throughout the day a sharpener, a broken shard of glass, a haggard pice of metal, the mesmerising glint of their sharp edges seduces you. The image of them kissing your skin, of quieting some of the madness in your mind and delivering some feeling to your numbness assaults your thoughts until its the only thing you think about every minute, every hour, every indistinguishable day.
Then, there is the monotonous psychiatrists and bottles upon bottles filled with an endless stream of unpronounceable pills that make you dizzy, leave your body achy and weak.
But you hope that one of them will make you feel.
Your mind has become glass. You’re so fragile, like a porcelain doll. You’re unable to do the basic things. You’re just frozen, in time, like a trophy sitting on a dusty wooden shelf, forgotten.
But then.
Someone appears, someone comes into your grey world and holds your hand, lays under the covers with you, their strength feeds you, warms you. You bathe in the comfort of one another, and just lay there, in your hard bed as time flies.
You breath in a deep breath.
You hesitantly, slowly step out of your bed.
Another deep breath.
You feel the cool, dewy air fill your lungs and the golden rays of sun touch your skin. You feel the wind ruffling your discarded hair.
This foreign feeling visits you, so new and forgotten that you sit there and observe it, poke at it, scrutinise it but it doesn’t go away, so you clutch its hand and hold tight.
And you know you’re going to be ok.
By Elizabeth Brunner
