Ibinu

You

Strangely enough, if anyone asks me about my boarding school experience, my first thought is of you. Everything about you.

You were the splash of colour in my otherwise dark world. You see, I was so used to living in a world of grey that it took just a little colour to show me what I was missing.

I can't say you were my saviour or anything cheesy like that but I can say that you were the push I needed to save myself.

God knows I was too obsessed with the thought of dying at 14 though I wasn't brave enough to do it even though I'd been depressed since I was like 10.

I just wanted to get out of the monotony of it all. I really did want to end it: my existence.

I wasn't familiar with depression, I was basically shielded from anything that had to do with death, so I thought everyone felt the same as me,

But then I saw and observed more people and I wondered why they were so happy all the time and when I asked, it was just seen as ramblings by my family.

I can't really blame my parents though. 

You see where we live, we take depression as a myth, a thing that you allow and claim just to make life easier if you will,

We feel you can't get depressed unless you let yourself be depressed or you learn about it and feel that it's something interesting and like a hobby you pick it up. 

ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴋɪʟʟɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜʀꜱᴇʟꜰ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ.

And that's messed up because it made them ignore all the signs that were there and made them label me as a liar. 

They would see me playing with knives while I imagined I was stabbing myself over and over again and would just ignore it. 

I was ostracized in my own home and I felt I deserved it, I hated myself, and they unconsciously fed that hate every day.

I would always think, "ᴡʜʏ ᴡᴀꜱ ɪ ꜱᴏ ɴᴇɢᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ?", I was meant to talk about rainbows and unicorns, but I just didn't allow it to be all happy times, ᴅɪᴅ ɪ? 

 After all, I was just a kid, what did I know of mental health?

When I got to know you, I noticed something familiar but it wasn't till you opened up to me that I understood the fleeting flashes of pain I saw in your eyes. 

When I realised that we had experienced the same kind of trauma, you came in and pulled back the cover of the well I had been cowering in. You made me realise that there was someone like me, 

That I wasn't a freak or weird and in doing that, you truly became more than just the boy I used to compete with for best student.

It's not like you were breathtakingly handsome, you were more endearing than enchanting really. 

I guess it was the fact that we experienced something similar but instead of letting the pain destroy you (ʟɪᴋᴇ ɪ ʜᴀᴅ) when awareness of what had been done set in, you rather conquered it.

When you let me in, I saw the extent of the damage that had been dealt to your soul by someone who was meant to protect it. 

You had quiet strength, I guess that's what really drew me to you in the first place.

I always like to revisit our earlier days when we were so pure and our biggest problems were my brother not approving of us and us wondering whether we should hold hands or not. 

You wondered whether my pity date with Hasan the previous term was more than just that, ɪᴛ ᴡᴀꜱɴ'ᴛ.

But I was young, and I was ignorant. I hadn't considered how important my reassurance was to you because to me Hasan wasn't even a blip on my radar.