The Rift

Part 2-Faith. Chapter 7

It’s so hard to live when you’re depressed. It actually hurts to make your body get out of bed in the morning. Every step hurts physically, every thought hurts mentally. You have to make yourself eat, and sometimes you can’t even manage that much. I’ve gone days without food. I know it’s bad not to eat, but it hurts when I do.  It’s so hard to move, so hard to eat.

It’s so hard to laugh when you’re depressed. I have to make each corner of my mouth raise when I need to. My laugh comes out sounding forced and fake, which of course, it is. But I have to act happy sometimes, although it hurts. It’s just as hard to talk. It’s hard to communicate, to say what you need to say. It’s hard to make the right words come out of your mouth, without making a mistake and giving someone the idea that something might be wrong. I can barely speak anymore. It always seems to hurt.

I can’t speak, I can’t eat, and I force myself through the simplest of motions.  I always feel like I’m about to cry. The slightest provocation causes the tears to drip from my eyes. My eyes that are constantly puffy, constantly red, and always sad. So I hide them, and the rest of my face, behind hoods and wide-brimmed hats. I hide my thin frame behind baggy clothes and big sweatshirts. I hide what’s really going on. And no one cares enough to notice.

Tired. It’s my new favourite word. Sometimes, someone will ask “hey Brooke, you all right?” or sometimes, “what’s wrong?” and my automatic response is always, “Just tired.” Tired.  A word that hides so much. A believable excuse and nobody has questioned it yet. Tired. It’s partially true, but it’s definitely not what’s wrong.

I am tired. I don’t know why. I fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow. I wake up late and only by my alarm, on weekends, I sleep until noon someday. My sleep is uninterrupted. I fall immediately into dreams. Wonderful dreams. All I look forward to, all that makes me happy. The only place I can smile naturally is in The Rift. The only place I laugh naturally is in The Rift. I feel joyful, at home, in The Rift.

Of course, at the time I’m writing about, I didn’t call it The Rift. I had yet to learn its secrets, and then, I thought it was just normal dreams. I thought my subconscious was just sending me some relief from the horror that was reality. And I was thankful.

I shouldn’t have been.

School had started again. I was in grade nine, new teachers, new classrooms, new curriculum. Should be exciting, right? I’m starting high school! To be honest, it blurred in my mind. I really didn’t acre at all. Faces, names, and classrooms blurred together in a beige glob in my memory. I went, I wrote, I sometimes talked, and then I came home again. If you had asked me what we did last math class, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I simply didn’t care enough to remember. I was a model student in some aspects, however, never talking out of turn, and having no friends to bother me, I turned in homework on time.

Of the accuracy of these assignments, I am not as certain. I wasn’t a noticeable student. I wasn’t funny, pretty, or smart. I was simply, forgettable. My fellow students would forget me. My teachers would forget me. Maybe if I died, they would remember me...

The only class that really, truly, matters in my head is language arts. The teacher is Ms. Taylor, a funny young woman with a little boy back home. I watch her, during class. That sounds creepy, but there’s a reason behind it. Ms. Taylor is very happy. She smiles, she laughs, and she talks to everyone. Everybody loves her. What does she have that I don’t? What thing has made her happy, that I don’t have? What has she done to deserve this happiness, which I have not? Maybe if I was happy, I could be as smiley, and as full of laughter as she is. But I haven’t been fully happy for a long, long time.

I try in language arts, just like last year. It’s really the only class where I can sit down, and rant. Write everything that’s bothered me today, write everything that hurt today. None of the big stuff, of course. But the little things. And Mrs. Taylor marks them the same as the other, happy little stories the other kids write for daily journal. And she doesn’t talk with me about then, she doesn’t judge me because of what I write. She just lets me write what I have not been able to say. What hurts to say. I’m reasonably good at writing. I actually, kind of, like it. Sometimes, it can make me happy. But never happy enough.