It’s currently 3:23am.
By: Beth Waddell
Tags: Young Writers, Mental Illness, Mental Health, It Gets Better

It’s currently 3:23am. The rain knocks my window, leaving a stream comparable to the tears I cry, listening to the violent wind blow through the trees. I lie there silently, with only the glare of my laptop keeping the room awake. “21 OVERDUE TASKS” replaying in my mind repeatedly. I’m tired, not the normal sleepy tired; instead it’s mentally. So many thoughts going through my brain. I don’t want to live a life in constant pain, I want to feel happy again. I need a break from everything.

I need it all to stop.

I sit and stare at every notification I receive from school. Searching to find some kind of determination to even try, but unfortunately that’s way less often than I’d hope. Countless emails to respond to and a great deal of work to start but such little motivation. Why can’t they just understand I’m broken. Most days I don’t actually show up to the school building but instead just spend my day drowning in my own self pity. It’s just getting so difficult to leave my bed every morning, I no longer have that energy. If you couldn’t guess already, school and I don’t have the best relationship. I can’t deal with another day full of pointless lessons and the shitty people and the teachers. Those fucking teachers. Every day is the same unnecessary stress. It’s an endless cycle.

It feels like Depression is becoming my only friend. I can’t get rid of her, I’ve tried to ignore her but she stills finds a way to linger. She’s always with me, insulting my every move, manipulating her way through my brain, making sure she has full control. It’s HER fault I’m the way I am, blame HER instead of me. But maybe I don’t want her to leave… Maybe I actually enjoy having her around… We’ve gotten so close over these past couple years and I would feel incomplete without her. Equivalent to starting a puzzle only to find out the very last piece is missing. She’s that puzzle piece.

Sadly friendships come with pain. A lot of pain. Depression isn’t a good person, she makes me feel alone even though she’s always there. She drags me down, she makes me feel like I’m screaming but nobody can hear. But maybe nobody CAN hear my screams, my cries for help, my subtle hints that I’m so extremely unhappy. Do I not make it obvious? The not showing up to school, the slipping grades, the isolating myself from everyone around me, the new temper I’ve developed? I’m not me anymore and not a single person living on this earth seems to notice. I’m becoming a stranger to myself. But who cares though, right? Who cares if I’m sad? No one.

I try to run. Run away from all these thoughts and emotions but… I can’t run any longer. I can’t run from my only friend.

Do you know how I tell when it gets more than bad? When the thoughts and emotions stop. When my brain gets dark, becomes empty. Numb in fact. When everything I want to do looks so much easier in my head than in reality.. I spend my nights silently staring at the ceiling of my room until stupid hours of the morning. I feel nothing at all.. Or sometimes I feel everything. Sometimes I obsess over the tiniest little things, lose my temper with myself and even the people around me. I become a bitch, a horrible person. The person I never once wanted to become..

There’s never a balance between the two, it’s always been too much or nothing at all.

Before you even bother asking, yes I have felt suicidal before. Surely every person has at least once in their awful lives. Because guess what, life sucks. Life is cruel and unfair, especially to the people that deserve it the least. “It always rains the hardest on those who deserve the sun” pretty much describes life perfectly…I can’t explain what goes through my mind when I think about dying. It kind of seems peaceful, an escape maybe. Not so much a solution but instead just an option. It scares me how temporary life may be. It could be over tomorrow, next month, or in 45 years. You just never know, never will find out until it’s no longer there. But there’s been moments that I don’t want to find out how temporary life is, times I want to make life shorter for myself. Sad, lonely fucking times.

On one hand, it feels selfish when I think of suicide. Leaving all these people behind, the people who love and care about them greatly. Their hearts being crushed by the news, never going to be the same again. But on the other hand, something clearly drove this person to feel as if ending their life is the only way to happiness. Clearly life has not treated them the way that they deserve..Ending with them putting their own feelings before every other persons, thinking about themselves for once. These people feel as if life doesn’t get better, and sometimes I believe that myself but in the back of my mind I know that it does. It may get worse before it gets better but it will always get better. Once you replace your negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start seeing positive results in life.. It takes real determination and patience to continue your life when all you want is for it to end, however on all occasions there will be light at the end of the tunnel. Some tunnels may be longer or more difficult and unreasonable to get through but we all make it, one step at a time. We dedicate our lives to helping others around us however sometimes that makes us neglect our own mental health and well-being, and a lot of the time it’s difficult to find someone who will repay the help. It’s rare but that’s the fun of it, once you find those people you never let go. Friends for life.