A U T O P I L O T

" 'A u t o p i l o t'

That's what the psychologist called it. I can just see her now, her stiff body sitting like a porcelain doll; pretty and poised but fake. Her words explained everything I was feeling perfectly but her face lacked the understanding to sympathize with it.

"It's a coping mechanism for dealing with your grief. Your mind retreats while your body completes the tasks you do not want to participate in. Of course you are still controlling your body but not making the conscious effort to do so. After a while it feels like the world is bustling with activity around you, but you stand still amidst it all. You switched on autopilot to survive in a world you don't want to be apart of. And you need to make the decision to disengage autopilot and start living again or else you're always going to feel as if you're floating around aimlessly."

She was wrong about one thing though. It doesn't feel like floating, it feels like drowning with a thick slab of ice covering the surface; panic diluted by pain and time. Eventually you get so used to the cold you become numb and instead of fighting for air, you wait patiently for your last breath."

Warning: This is a story about depression. This is a story about two people trying to rewrite their stories out of the darkness of depression into the light of living once again. This a story about, feeling and learning to feel again. This is a story about fighting for oneself, fighting depression, and fighting for that long awaited first breath of fresh air above the surface of the cold depressing seas. This is a story about two survivors using each other to learn to LIVE.