In Over My Head

Scars From The Past

Alone time, is something I think everyone needs sometimes. Everyone needs to go out once in a while. Maybe you could go for a walk with only you and your music, maybe even take the bus to god knows where.

Not just locked in your bedroom watching netflix and eating your feelings away.

No.

Time alone to connect with yourself, with the world. I often like to walk around the city and take a few buses. Maybe grab a snack and continue my journey of wandering. It's an awfully good time to think about all the things I cannot think about with others around. It's a good time to reflect on my life. The warm and calming feelings I get on my "alone time journey's", are feelings I think everyone else deserves to experience as well.

But be careful, because these occasional alone times can become more and more often to the point where alone time is the only time you know. Why? Because sometimes you are so comsumed in your own world you forget there are others people in your life and that is when you start to push them away and let the negative self-thoughts take over. While alone time is healthy for the personal being every once and a while, getting addicted to it can completely ruin your relationship with your loved ones and maybe even yourself.

I learnt this the hard way.

About 2 years ago, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder.

I remember never wanting to leave my house, my room, my bed. I remember the dreadful feeling of waking up in the morning, like I was being weighed down onto the mattress, unable to get up or move my body.

I remember voices calling my name. My mother's faint cry asking me to please, please, bring her baby back. My father's angry one telling me to come home already. That he's tired of waiting. That I've been gone far too long. I remember losing all my friends, intentionally cutting them out of my life completely.

I remember sadness and loneliness being my best friend. It would comfort me like no other friend could. Sad music was my happiness, my remedy. Every hurtful word and melody would float through my veins and each time I would need more than before. But then again, happiness didn't even exist inside of me. I was emotionless.

I remember feeling hollow, empty, like a vase. And not the expensive, glass covered ones. No. More like the cheap, plastic, for-that-small-useless-plant kinda vase.

I remember not being able to even pick up a book. Or watch a movie. And even if I did, the words and the voices would just pass through me and my mind, leaving me completely un phased. Because none of it mattered.

I remember begging to trade what I was feeling for something, anything else. Physical pain didn't even compare to what I was feeling.

I was the walking dead.

A memory.

But then I remember the day I saw the sun for the first time. It was greeting me with such warmth and love. Something I haven't experienced in what felt like years. I remember when everything around me that used to be black and white like the newspapers we get delivered every morning, became colour. Colour, everywhere. And suddenly, I was able to pick up that book that I never got to finish, and continue on from where I left off. I remember the day I woke up not feeling like I was about to die. The day I woke up and I was actually looking forward to going out and seeing the world. The day I woke up feeling more alive than I ever have. The day that happy music made me wanna dance, not plug my ears. The day I started eating because I was hungry, not because I was hopeless. I remember the day I heard laughter and it was like music to my ears. I remember the day a familiar face came knocking at my door and I was the one to open it, rather than running away from it. I remember the day that everything started to make sense. The day my parents cried tears of joy, not sadness. The day a hug actually felt comforting.

The day I actually smiled.

The day I started living again.