From the Other Side of My Bed

3. The Apartment

My story indeed started long before this.
But we don't have to get into that story yet.
This story starts in a small 428 square feet apartment located in between the cities of phoenix and tempe, in arizona.

I always knew I would live in the city, but who wants to live in just one city, when you can live between two?

I moved out from an abusive home at the mere age of 20.
One day, I decided I was going to do it, to finally free myself from all the restrictions and abuse that my family created.
I moved out the weekend my papa decided to go to Las Vegas and packed up 20 years of my life and stored them in a small u-haul I had rented and off I went, to start a new future.

When I walked in the isolated apartment, I feared I was never going to get used to it, and in fact, I didn't. No matter how much I decorated it with backyard lights hanging from the corners of the place, childish memorabilia in the shelves, photo clip string lights on the walls with pictures of people who are no longer in my life, I felt this was all fake.
It didn't matter that I loved the vaulted ceilings and the beautifully white french doors. It never dawned on me that I had gotten an apartment.
The reason I got it was for the wrong reason, to escape.
Instead of just happily deciding it was time.

I don't regret my decision.
I don't regret anything that happened in that apartment.
Because if i hadn't experienced what i went through, i would not have ascended up from that hell i was living.
When you're young, they sell you the dream of when you get your own place, you will be successful and happy.
Maybe that's true for some but for me it was a living hell.

My hell started exactly the moment I realized that papa didn't want to see me anymore.
He was furious about the fact I had left without telling him, finding my empty room instead of me at home. What did he expect?
For years he taunted me about me having to grow up already and threatened me, saying he would leave once I turned eighteen and I would be left all alone.
Well guess what? I turned 18 and left first.
Now he's mad?
That's some fake bullshit.

Sometimes I would sit down in my bed, watching out the window as I stare at the tree dance outside and think about how he hasn't come to see me at all.
I think about how painful it is to think not even your father wants to see you.
Or how he has chosen the cold shoulder over his love for me.
Or maybe he doesn't love me.
It's okay, I don't even love myself, so why would I expect others to do so?
Ever since I moved, he has only come twice, not to see me but to fix up my sink and build my bed. And from then on, he hasn't even reached out to me.

What if I had killed myself last week?
He would have not known at all.

At the same time, I was also angry at him.
Then melancholia would kick in, together with the unfortunate love I have for him and I would just lay down on the carpet, staring at the nothingness of it all and be depressed all day.

You see, my kind of depression is different from seasonal depression, it has lasted for twenty years. I didn't feel it that much when I was younger, but I did find myself crying at night beside my mama, in silence.
Because it was untreated, it left me paralyzed some days, with the eternal angry voices in my head, going in circles as they screamed at me and no acetaminophen would help.
Sometimes I contemplated my loneliness, on how I have not a single person to tell my stuff to. I guess that's what gives joy, when you are able to share your emotions with someone.
But my emotions aren't normal.
They're a disease.
One thing they don't tell you about untreated mental illnesses is that they swallow you whole, leaving little air to breathe, and then you're afraid, so deeply afraid of how it keeps getting darker and darker and you find yourself in a sunken place where you cannot outrun.
And you try to remember the good things, you know.
The pros of life and all that bullshit.
But you can't.