Break the Walls

You don't know how long you've been able to keep it together and you find it amazing really, that you've been able to be strong for so long.

This wasn't your year and you knew it just like the sky was blue. Walking through the threshold of your little home in the kind cul-de-sac that was your neighborhood, your thoughts raced through your skull faster than a train. They sent you home early today from your part time job which was slowly killing your mentality. To add fuel to the fire, you were the outcast at your job; the one that did all the work while the others snickered and played Angry Birds on their phones. You couldn't go to your boss about it because she would chime right in with them, leaving and trusting you to work like a pack mule.

The endless job hunts were fruitless, each opportunity being in another state or filled with unmet qualifications. By now your friends had developed their careers and were more successful than you ever dreamed. You were happy for them, but at the same time, the hideous beast known as depression began to rear its ugly head. Sighing to yourself, you wondered if maybe following your dreams was a good idea at all. Maybe it would have been better to abandon those dreams and take up a typical 9 to 5 at an office and be completely miserable. It was what your parents wanted and maybe, just maybe you should have listened to them. Damn it all, you didn't know anymore.

At this point you were growing desperate and praying for a successful interview or at least a callback. But by now, you knew how to tell the fake grins on the boss' faces and know that there was no chance they would call you for whatever reason. Knowing them, they would probably hire someone in the family to do the job. You even began to doubt yourself and everything you did, which at times made you negatively question yourself. With every question asked you could feel your inner demons growing stronger and whispering words into your ears at every chance they could,'What if you fail at life? What if you never accomplish your goals? What if your dreams like you, are a waste? Why couldn't you be like your friends, you'd have a life by now' and you, having no choice would listen. Sometimes they suggested the idea of suicide, to throw your dreams away into a blissful oblivion, and it wasn't the first time.

The culmination of everything brewed in your brain like a wicked stew that your mentality drank every minute and you were succumbed to the bitter taste. This nasty aftermath would even push you to stay awake throughout the night, lying beside your boyfriend, Mark Fischbach, while he slept contently. Every morning when he awoke, you would pretend to be asleep. Face buried in the pillow to hide any tears you've quietly cried the night before. You could feel the bed shift carefully so that he wouldn't wake you from your "slumber" and the soft kiss he would leave on your crown before going about his business.

Having been with Mark for nearly a year and a half (two years come June 22nd), you knew you could trust the man with your life; why you lived with him and shared the rent, the groceries, the laughter and pillow forts, and everything in between. You both worked well like Octodad and Scarlet and wouldn't have it any other way. Yet you had a way of hiding your darker emotions as you have done all your life. You had grown accustomed to burying depression like a corpse in a graveyard and building a wall around that filled hole so that it would never rise. From this wall you gained independence, knowing how to tame your inner monsters and depression without the help of anyone. It molded stubbornness into your personality which was a curse and a blessing. Somehow, Mark tolerated or accepted that (silently you hoped he accepted it as another flaw of yours) and you were nonetheless thankful for that.

You always wore this wall like a medal on your breast, content in knowing that this was how the monsters were handled, and you could go another day without him seeing you break or cry. You could never be seen as weak, you had to be strong like a fortress because you knew how cruel the world was, and what it thought of those with depression. Whenever he would leave the house you would break for a while until he walked through the threshold, where you sprinted for the bathroom and wiped the tears from your face with a cold wash cloth.