For You- Lee Know x oc

24

Day 6 of personal lockdown.

It started off normal. I woke up at 9am, after a short nights sleep and a few nightmares, texted a little with Minho and had breakfast with my parents, folkowed by some Minecraft with Minho.

It was around noon when I felt a gut feeling darkening my spirit.

The downstairs was quiet as always, but not quiet like how it usually is. Something felt imbalanced, not right. The house was too heavy.

Internally debating wether I should call back Minho or the men outside, I looked out my window, where the sky looked gray and rainy. The officers were discussing and guarding like the past days.

Eventually I decided to go downstairs and talk to mom for a while and maybe help her with some chores.

I was standing behind the counter eating grapes, when I heard the scream.

It was my mom's voice, high, loud, eery.

Fear took over me as I ran towards the sound, which came from the basement.
She was standing at the top of the stairs as if paralysed, staring at the bottom.

What I remember was seeing flashes of black clothing and heavy breathing as I threw myself in front of my mom hoping to protect her from whoever was there, with the screams of police men who burst into our house and the sound of Soyoung and dad coming downstairs. With that jump, I could be a goalkeeper.

I remember how I looked at him in panic and how his face looked just as terrified as mine.

My biological father. He seemed to say it with his eyes, "I didn't mean it, not towards you. I didn't mean to stab you. Not you."

But by even trying to stab my mother, he hurt me just as much. If he truly didn't want to cause me pain he wouldn't have abused me and he wouldn't be here. If he actually cared about me I would have been fine, but I never really mattered to him. If he ever cared about me, it was because he hated me.

I don't know what jail did to him and if it changed his thoughts about what he did to me, then he must truly be stupid.

What I remember the most was the sudden pain in my side and the kitchen knife sticking out of it, and the blood, all over my hands and my clothes. Actually, no. The pain wasn't what I was focused on. Just the sudden realisation that, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't have a long time to live anymore, and the sadness and fear that came with the thought.

I never genuinely wanted to die, even when I was depressed. Depression doesn't equal being suicidal, and being suicidal doesn't even have to mean that you want to die. My life simply had no value to me and I cared about dying as much as I did about living. When we moved here, I wasn't sure what I wanted. Make friends, find something to care about, just to start over? My psychologist told me to find something to live for, as if I had any idea what that meant.

But right here, for the first time ever the thought crossed my mind. "I want to live."

I remember falling to the ground in my mom's arms while an ambulance was called and I saw that man willingly being arrested. After all, he only meant to hurt my mom, right?

I want to live. Not FOR something, but because I like to be alive. I like to feel all the emotions and I like to see the people who are my friends and I like to be around this place. I don't want to live for my parents or my friends or my boyfriend. I just want to live because I like the way it is right now, I want to live for my life.

That's what my psychologist had meant. To find things to make me care about myself, so I wanted to live, rather than not wanting to die.

Not wanting to die is the first and easier way of getting out of the worst part of depression, but it won't heal you. It is essential to go through that stage, but it was time for me to move past it. To live to be alive, to be addicted to it.