Stained by Invisible Ink: A Virgin's Suicide Note

SIX

Depression is a funny thing. It sneaks up on you at the strangest of times. You can be what feels like fine for days, weeks, even months and then suddenly, without warning its back with its claws out. It rears its ugly head every time you’re anywhere close to achieving the happiness you’ve been searching for so long, and you’re left to watch as it slips through your fingers like the smallest grain of sand. There’s nothing you can do about it either. You’re left to wallow in your own petty self-pity until you can bear to look at your own reflection anymore. It makes you hate yourself with every fibre of your being, and just when you think you already hate every single thing about yourself, it oh so happily points out another flaw. It finds its joy in causing you pain. Depression has no regrets, no qualms and no misgivings about making you feel completely wretched. It lowers you down to your worst. It magnifies your demons and it projects them to the rest of the world. And then, when you think it can’t get any worse, Depression makes you drag down the people around you as well. Your sadness becomes infectious. You look around and you find a sick pleasure in watching the people around you suffer as well, because when they’re suffering, they aren’t happier than you. They aren’t enjoying their lives and they certainly aren’t going on without you; they aren’t leaving you in your sadness to fight your own demons.

The sadness becomes comfortable. It’s familiar. The sadness doesn’t leave you; it doesn’t abandon you like every other emotion. It isn’t fleeting like joy or happiness, and it certainly isn’t as time consuming as Love. Love will fight for your attention. It will throw fireworks through your skin and send shockwaves through your stomach. It wants a show, and it will do everything in its power to be given on. Sadness on the other hand, is patient. It will wait for you to come crawling back, because like a small child, you always will. Best friends with Doubt, they circle around you. Doubt attacks your mind and your subconscious, while Sadness and Depression (for they are, in fact, the same vile creature) whisper you sweet nothings. They make you feel loved and welcome. They say they will never leave you, and this is true, for they never leave your side. They never let you rest. Their arms are always open, and their embrace, though chilling and  terrifying, is always comforting, and always welcoming. It is in the arms of Depression that you find your final sleep. It is comforting. Depression wants you to sleep. It feeds you the unfathomable need to just lie down, close your eyes and never get up again. Depression, however, is also a tease. While it feeds you needs, and changes what you want, it never once gives you the material to make them happen; to make your wants and needs a living, breathing reality. 

Depression is a cruel, cruel mistress. And she plays her game well.

So this is how I found myself at the abandoned lunch tables at school. I was alone, and I was content. Jessica’s suicide still hadn’t stopped being the talk of the school, and I could easily assume it would stay that way until something else of equally drastic nature occurred. It wasn't Jessica’s suicide that drove me back into my burrow though, comforted only by my best friends Depression and Doubt. No, what drove me back was the parade of fake sympathy. People who had barely spoken to Jessica now moped around the halls, apparently stricken with grief after her death. It got me wondering, what if I did that? Would all these people suddenly pretend that they were my friend too? I barely talked to most of the people in my grade, so if they suddenly got up and decided that they were all my best friends, and that my death had affected them so greatly, well my dead ass would have some serious haunting to do.

I will still lost deep down the tunnel of this train of thought when my solitude was rudely interrupted for the second time by none other than Shawn Kipper. This interruption caused me to do none other than what I do best; enter a staring competition. So I stared at Shawn Kipper, and Shawn Kipper stared back. Without breaking eye contact, he sat down on the bench on the other side of the picnic table and rested his chin on his hand.