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time of her life. The little girl seen in the photographs is not me; it feels
like she never was me, to begin with. The past and its events seem so
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distant; its like my brain only allows me to see the hurt and heartache
it had turned into. Hell, I even have trouble remembering what I had
for dinner the other night.
I remember the thoughts about death and not wanting to live any-
more and every feeling it brought along with it at age thirteen. Before
that time, I was afraid of death and especially dying; I was afraid to
lose my parents and even had the occasional nightmares to prove I was
myself to die or get killed, which, in all honesty, is quite the contrary
to what it used to be; before everything got dark and heavy.
some nasty disease that involves parasites eating your flesh and bones,
or something along those lines.
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never truly fit into life and always seemed to have been feeling out of
even if I could remember, it would all be a blur. Ive always felt like
something was wrong; out of place and just not right. It was a feeling
that had loomed over me like a cloud. A cloud that would soon start to
rain down on me like monsoons and rain.
person, are able to hide your true feelings by just acting differently. No
one would suspect a thing; the world would shrug. There could be all
could have known how I was feeling and what I was thinking; there
was no way they could have appreciated my little piece of self-made
hell, or why death would have been so much better than the life I was
currently living. Death seemed like a phenomenally good idea, espe-
I hadnt told anyone about how I felt; like actually felt. I lived my
life in utmost secrecy all the imperfections and little secrets perfectly
hidden and neatly tucked away by a rather bright smile. A smile that,
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in the end, would be my ultimate demise. I was suffering in silence,
was working way too many shifts and barely getting any sleep. Days
off were almost unbearable; especially weekends off. I hadnt let any-
one in on the deepest and darkest parts of my so-called life, and I was
even terrified to do so. On days off, I would find myself in bed until
Okay, well maybe, it wasnt exactly like that. I didnt really want to
be dead, I just didnt want to be alive at least, not like this. I wasnt
going to live my whole life feeling like I didnt matter; the undeniable
feeling that something felt so out of place. I was tired of being alive, yet
terrified of death. And death only happened to those who had lived;
like truly lived. I hadnt lived at all; I was merely surviving, and I was
getting sick of it. Besides, there were infinitely more people who had
never been alive. At age sixteen, I wanted to have never existed in the
that got discarded; the ones that didnt make the cut.
It was hard not to tell anyone what was going on inside my so-
called broken and mysterious mind. The mind that was so complicated it
was basically trying to kill itself; trying to kill me. I was trying to hide
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was feeling at that time in my life. I was completely and utterly alone,
at least that was what the voices in the back of my head were telling
me, anyway. I couldnt tell anyone that I was scared, and I couldnt
and someone elses happiness the kind of joy that I had yet to expe-
rience. I wanted to be left alone; to live in my own personal piece of
The thunderstorms and earthquakes that shake the earth were actually
happening in my head. My life was falling apart, and I didnt even
ways the thoughts, the earthquakes and thunderstorms; the monsoons and
rain, that made me feel like I was far from being human. As much as I
would have liked to know about alien species, I didnt want to become
one myself; yet, this was exactly what had started to happen. I had be-
tion and changes that were happening inside my rather fragile brain; let
alone this foreign experience of being outside my own body. It terrified
me, not knowing what was going on or was going to happen terrified
me. I couldnt tell anyone that I was dreading every single second of
being alive either. Yet, I was dying for someone to call me out on my
self-destructive behaviour. I was desperately waiting for someone to
tell me I was destroying myself and that I had to stop digging my own
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grave, despite the fact that I couldn't stop killing myself in the literal
perhaps even faulty brain; someone that would actually listen. I tried
to find my solace in therapist and psychiatrist who, one after the other,
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conundrum n. an intricate, confusing or difficult
problem or question.
Depression is a conundrum.
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Life wasnt all cakes and ale, especially with depression did life feel like
licking honey off a thorn. Everywhere I went, a dark cloud would fol-
low; there was no pleasure in doing anything. Depression takes away
everything you love and tells you that you will find no joy in doing it,
whatsoever. Essentially, depression robs you from everything great. In
my fight against this mental illness, I was still doing the things I used
to enjoy in a futile attempt to take back my own life to steal it back
from the depression that had clouded my mind for nearly a decade (at
that time in my life). Yet, within a fortnight or so, I would have given in
sion or to let the depression take over because I thought I was too busy
for depression. As if my mind was too occupied to even consider feel-
Depression isnt just feeling gloomy on rainy days, having the blues on
a Monday or feeling the occasional sadness when thinking about your
first heartbreak. Its much more than that. Depression isnt just a sad
mood; it is an actual clinical diagnosis a disease of the brain. It's a
mental illness that screams and yells at you, saying you are undeserv-
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ing of life. This feeling does not vanish after several tough, and some-
times even unbearable days; its not the transient emotion that passes
in a matter of minutes or a couple of hours. It lasts for days, weeks, and
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two beers, a vodka red bull and two empty strips of
paracetamol tablets / doomsday
It was on a Friday night, just two days before Spring would arrive
when I decided to go out with friends and colleagues. It would also be
happy during the months leading up to the day that left my parents
and little brother scared and worried about my well-being. I had
about death werent foreign to me, in fact, they were all that had occu-
pied my mind over the past six-or-so months leading up to that memo-
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My mind had already begun to wander, and I had started to doubt
tonin pills my mother had bought me to help me fall asleep faster and
easy, and without distress of any kind.
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all the comforts of home
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