Flawlessly Broken (Harry Styles)

Chapter 1

It has been 11 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days since Daniel committed suicide. I've been keeping track because I'm trying to convince myself that if I know how many days have passed I'll slowly let go of him. It's not working. Every day that passes by just makes me miss him even more, it makes me feel even more empty than I already am.

I sit down on the cold floor in my living room. It used to be our living room. But now I live alone, because he's gone. I fold my legs and arch forward above my sketchbook, my only companion. I flip through the pages, each and every one of them are filled with my drawings of Daniel. I drew them all from memory. Each of them are precise and perfect. I have no pictures of my dead husband. It hurt too much to look at them. So I burned them all.

My therapist tells me to draw my emotions, but instead I draw the man flooding my thoughts. Sometimes I feel like I've run out of emotion. Either that or I've gotten so addicted to sadness that I don't know how to feel anything else. I believe it's the latter. Maybe he has taken over my emotions. Today my brain is clogged with the images of his dead body. So I draw it. My therapist, Amanda, tells me that putting my thoughts on paper is a good coping method, I guess so.

I begin to sketch the man I thought I loved... hanging from the ceiling fan in our bedroom. I draw him exactly as I remember it. I create the frayed rope that squeezed his neck, which resulted in his lack of oxygen and a quick and painful snap. I sketch his brown hair as it falls in front of his dark, drained eyes, his mouth slightly agape, and his bowed head. I draw his limp limbs, and the suit and tie he had worn that evening out to dinner. I sketch the wooden chair lying on the floor beneath him, and the carefully folded letter he had written me a week before, delicately placed on the carpet. The memory doesn't faze me. I don't cry. I am out of tears because I am emotionless and empty, yet as fragile as glass. Sometimes I have vivid dreams of Daniel. He had looked so pale on his last night. But the dreams don't affect me, either. I've become immune to the pain. At least I'd like to think so.

I used to think that tears were always guaranteed when it came to sadness; a definite symptom. But I've discovered a kind of sadness that is far worse than the ones that bring tears. It tortures you inside, stripping you to the bone and revealing who you really are. It poisons you, slowly killing you as you drift away from the people you are supposed to love, you want to scream, but you're mute. You want to run - break free, but you're numb. That feeling is the worst of them all, it leaves you helpless and unstable, leaving you in emotional chaos. I have quite a lot of experience in that area. They call it depression. It's a word that screams grief and sorrow, and its victims are marked. It's as if they are labeled with the word written on their forehead in bold letters. Depression claws at your throat, begging to leave, but you swallow it down because you've become so attached to it that you've forgotten how to live without it. It claims your soul until you fight the fear and break away. It's toxic. I happen to be one of the afflicted.

I didn't go to his funeral, I don't visit his grave. He wouldn't have wanted me to. His family hates me for that, but they don't understand. No one does. Honestly, I couldn't care less about what they think. I don't care about what anybody thinks of me anymore. Because to everyone I'm just the depressed, antisocial girl whose husband committed suicide on the night of their anniversary. "Stay away from her," they say. "She's crazy." And it's true, I don't deny it; there's no point in lying to myself. But they're wrong about one thing, I'm not antisocial. Someone who has Antisocial Personality Disorder is violent - a sociopath, a psycho. That's not me. According to Amanda, I have Temporary Avoidant Personality Disorder - temporary social isolation, temporary self-loathing, and loneliness. Pretty accurate if I may say so myself.

It takes a great deal of bravery and courage to deny something everyone else believes in. When you are under the influence, your cowardice shows because you do not stand up for what you believe in. That's how I feel. I've been swept under the wave, believing in all the things they say about me. They formed and molded me until my thoughts became just like theirs. But I do not fight it, I let in consume me because I have no reason to battle it. I have no hope, no goal.