Hopeless

I

"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." – Desmond Tutu

My name is Zoe. And throughout the life I've already lived, I learned one thing; you choose your destiny. Whatever happens to you, whatever falls to your knees only matters a little. The true point of life is how you deal with things, how you manipulate your way into growing old and happy, how you manage to break every wall gets thrown in front of you. It doesn't matter how many times you fall down, but what you did after. Did you try and get up? Did you fight the pain that drummed on your knees and weakened your whole body, or did you accept fate and cut your own legs off?

Life is what you make of it.

You start punching yourself after one hit? Life will keep them coming. That's how it works, fair or not.

Please, cry me a river if you'd like. But do me a favor and look around you before doing it. Is it truly so dark, or do you ignore the switch under your palm? Are there really voices coming from the corner of the room, or does it just echo?

Life gives you plenty of lessons. You only need to learn how to listen.

For what is worth, though, I wasn't such a great student either. Too young, too inexperienced. Fighting weaponless against monsters.

Depression is an evil sickness. It can appear at a young age, but only make you deeply realize its existence when it is already too late. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines depression as a serious medical condition in which a person feels very sad, hopeless, unimportant and often is unable to live in a normal way. Another dictionary describes it as a state of unhappiness.

I would describe it as a deadly condition of nothingness; a chronic illness so sneaky and calculating, it can actually bring the most atheist person in our planet to drop on their knees and pray to every God.

I never prayed though; I never had the need to. Because I wasn't aware that what I had was a legit illness and not just something that will go away with time. I cannot quite pinpoint the date depression creeped up outside my door ready though uninvited, but one thing is sure; I haven't felt nothingness so vividly in my life since the moment it knocked its small, vicious hands on my little heart's door.

One guess of when I became ill would be March 5th, the year of my ninth birthday. All I remember is sitting in the middle of my couch in my old home a few hours before the clock hit midnight putting an end to my miserable birthday, that I so desperately needed. My small hands were holding my mother's scarf and a red rose my father gave me in the beginning of the day, my tiny eyes filled with tears as my grandma was upstairs with my brother, trying to calm him down.

I don't remember the reason they died. I hardly believe they actually told me. They just never came home from driving to the mall to get my gift. Maybe they did tell me how they passed away, but I doubt my juvenile brain could withhold that information. I asked many times after that dreadful day, but no-one gave me an answer. My grandma, who had become my brother's and my legal guardian, just cried whenever either of us began to bring up the subject of our parents. My aunt Maria, my mother's sister, smiled through tears and told us to just have them in our hearts and that it didn't matter how they died.

But of course it mattered to me. How could I keep them in my mind and heart when I thought they didn't want to be in them? Little-old-me had no direct picture of what was going on; to me all of what happened was my fault. At the end of the day, it was my stupid gift they went to buy. It was my stupid birthday the stupid gift was for. No-one told me otherwise. They didn't know I took the blame of course, but they never cared to find out either.

I believe that is when I started my journey on feeling nothing. It started off slow. At first the depression cut my need to feed myself. Whatever my grandma cooked, I didn't like. Whatever she put in front of me, whether it was ice cream or cereal, vegetables or pizza, something I liked or something I hated, I pushed the plate away and said I was not hungry. Even when we got to the part where my sweet, old grandma had to force-feed me herself, I vomited the food after I got up from the table.

Then I stopped drinking water, which didn't last long but it happened. I stopped bathing and showering, I stopped brushing my hair and putting my dirty clothes to the laundry. I never smiled and my whole body got so heavy with emotion, I couldn't hold it up for too long. Even my eyes got heavy; so I slept. For hours. Even days sometimes.

That's how depression works. It fills you with emotion, the bad kind, and then it empties you. It finds a small hole, a little passageway, a chance to punch you in the face and it empties you.

Though, it happens only if you give it a chance. If you're not strong enough to fight for yourself, you'll lose. If the voices get too loud, if the darkness seems so much bigger than you, that's not your fault. But get up, fight through the pain and find the need to help yourself. Because if you don't want you to find help, then no-one else will. Awful, yet real.

Life isn't a great film or a book with an ending that's expected. Life's scary and sudden and there isn't any rulebook for it. You just have to do it before it's given a chance to start getting messed up. And it will; but how it turns out is on you. 

I gave it more than a good chance to destroy me.