This is why I am still here today

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By Anonymous

‘I look outside, And see a whole world better off, Without me in it trying to transform it’ – Not Today, 21 Pilots

I am still here today. But I’m sitting emptily staring at the walls. My head is vaguely resting on my arm, which is loosely wrapped around my legs, and my other arm is just hanging down to the floor.

Here’s my first surprise for you. Despite how everyone perceives depression: the constant sadness, crying, feeling alone at midnight when everyone else is asleep, or perhaps screaming and ripping my skin to pieces, I’m currently doing none of those things.

They are probably all tired of me

It’s half ten in the morning, not midnight. My friends are all awake, and I could message or meet any one of them – but I can’t. They probably are all tired of me, my problems and my forlorn existence, and today it is too much energy for me to spring up and fake a laugh.

Some of them have tried to message me, but my phone is on the other side of my room and the effort of getting it is too much. I’ve heard it ring a few times, but it’s out of my reach. Nobody is going to notice I haven’t answered anyway. And even if it ever was mentioned, which it won’t be, I will say I was asleep or it ran out of charge.

I just feel numb

The constant sadness…? You thought that was the backbone of all this? I almost wish it was. In reality, I just feel numb most of the time. There’s no reason to anything. I’m not happy, but on the other hand, I’m not particularly sad either. The best thing ever, or equally the most horrific moment of my life, could happen and I just would not, could not react.

I bottle so much up and keep it to myself because I can’t express it. I don’t know how or what I am feeling – if anything? I’m not sure. But then the tiniest thing will happen, and all the tears I’ve kept to myself will finally spill and cascade down my face, for days, at every miniature setback I encounter. Until even my sadness leaves, and I am just left feeling empty again, drained.

At times I lose all control

Or sometimes I will get hit by a spell of additional self-loathing – maybe because I’ve started trying to eat normally again, or because the lines of self-destruction which run across my body are finally beginning to fade away, or just because I’m me.

Those are the times I lose all control. I only want to hurt myself, to stop eating, to destroy myself for not being perfect. I just stop caring. But today? I am just sitting here, and at the moment, it’s all left me. I hate myself, but only at the normal everyday level that I’m used to. Not enough for it to matter.

I want someone to hug me

I want someone to hug me and tell me it’s all going to be okay. But it won’t be, and nobody will, because nobody knows – that I’m here, that I’m like this again, that I can’t keep on.

Pointlessly, I try to be my own comforter:

‘It’s going to be okay.’ ‘Is it? Really? How would you know? It can only get worse.’

‘Life isn’t all down, it can’t be, there have to be some peaks at least.’ ‘But really?… It’s me.’

It doesn’t help. It only makes it worse. Occasionally I will remember memories when I felt okay or when my friends were all there for me, but now? They probably wish they’d never met me. And I’d be the last one to blame them if they did.

Why I am still here today

And then I jerk back into my empty room. I can’t keep on. I’m still here today, but I’m scarcely ‘alive’ if I have to keep living like this. And what scares me the most is that I can think, and plan ending my life without batting an eye, because it has just become a totally rational option.

I’m not scared of leaving this world behind me. But I’m scared of what other people would feel. Because I don’t want them to blame themselves. It is all me, and always has been. I’m scared they wouldn’t realise that.

And that is why I am still here today – at the moment, anyway.