𝐋𝐢𝐚𝐫, 𝐋𝐢𝐚𝐫 | 𝐉𝐉 𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤

46. Darwinism 'n shit.

F O R T Y - S I X
Darwinism 'n shit.

I haven't given much serious thought about how I'd die.

There have been many moments in my life where I would've begged for someone to put me out of my misery; times where I've been so desperately sad that every colour bled away, my life was a wash of grey.

Not even saturated greys, like old movies or the sky before a storm—every day was the colour of a concrete building. Lifeless. Souless.

I've spent night after night, sobbing so hard blood vessels in my eyes burst, because I needed something to change. I couldn't keep waking up and having the first emotion to hit me be disappointment that I woke up.

Depression isn't sadness, I'd argue it's more akin to hopelessness. A bone deep ache of desperation for something to mean anything, but also being too fucking tired to enact change.

Get help, people say, as if it's that easy.

All the help in the world couldn't save me, it felt like all the help people promised would make it better, was only prolonging my torture. At fifteen, I would've sworn up and down that I was simply too far gone. Some people aren't meant to survive, Darwinism and all that.

But, and I hate to admit it, all the professionals who swore up and down, I just had to wait it out, were right.

They promised I simply needed the right therapy, medication and people. I wasn't the first sad teenager, they'd said, the one's before me got through it, and so would I.

I called bullshit, life hurt too much.

But slowly, so slow it was almost imperceptible, colours started bleeding back into my life.

The right therapist, a solid cocktail of antidepressants and a boyfriend who doesn't beat me, did the trick. Now I love the sunsets because not so long ago, they didn't exist in my world.

Things aren't perfect, but I no longer have the ache in my bones and that's more than enough for me. Hope is the most powerful emotion I've ever felt, and that emotion is what I've been living off.

Now the garden of colourful hope I've painstakingly cultivated, is being trampled all over.

The idea that now, after I've finally gotten my lust for life back, it'll be stolen, feels cruel.

The look on Rafe's face as I pleaded for my life, wasn't pure rage—I think I would've preferred that—there was a hint of pleasure. He got off on being in charge, in a situation where I had absolutely no power. It was laughable, a man taller and broader than me, having a boner because I shockingly wouldn't beat him in a fight. He enjoyed the tears as I begged for my life, I felt that excitement pressing into my back as he zip tied my hands.

Now, stuffed away in a stuffy closet, I feel dirty.

The press of his erection against my spine felt violating; maybe because I was tied up it was so much worse, but it felt stripping. It threw me back in time.

His hot breath fanned against the back of my neck, the stale scent nauseating.

Even now, where I know nobody can touch me, I feel his salacious touch against me and I want to skin myself.

I sit, cycling between trying to loosen the zipties that have long since made my hands go numb, and not throw up. Considering I have tape slapped across my mouth, vomiting would probably prove fatal.

Time passes, unreadable. I could've been cramped in this musty closet for hours or weeks and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Eventually, I hear shouting. It's distant at first, distant and unrecognisable. Just some nutter that's gone mental on the open sea. Can't blame him. But as the voice gets closer, I begin putting together whose yelling. It's unmistakably John B.