Many people don't know me. I mean, the REAL me. The person I am when I'm by myself, alone and frightened. Sometimes, I don't even know the REAL me. All I know is fear, loneliness, depression. For a while, that's all I was. My sleepless nights were terrifying thoughts interrupted by fits of crying. School was a prison filled with faceless bodies that fed on my loneliness. My Happy Place was no longer happy after an upsetting conversation that left me paranoid and fearful every time I heard their voice or caught a glimpse of them in the hallway. Life was exhausting. Waking up was a chore as hard as a marathon, not to mention the effort it took to concentrate in class and make good grades so nobody would notice anything was wrong. Food had no taste, music had no passion, and even my feelings had numbed like they were injected with Novocain.
I was hospitalized twice. Once in December 2016, and again in February 2017.
Up until now, I've lived in Limbo. Not really living, not really dying. Just... existing. It's like depression, but instead of crippling sadness, it's crippling emptiness. I had no sense of purpose, my legs were running on autopilot. It was as if I was in a coma, brought back from the brink of death, but living as a vegetable with little to no hope of waking up. People talk, but I didn't hear them. Not really.
It all started with a ray of light, no bigger than the size of a pin. After seeing only darkness for so long, a tiny bit of sun was enough to invigorate me. For the first time, I felt hope. With my bare hands, I chipped away at the darkness, one memory at a time. I winnowed the bad memories and extracted the lessons I learned from those mistakes. Even now, the light is only as big as my fist, but the more I chisel away, the more hope I have for the future. It's growing slowly and surely.
