What’s wrong with me?
Why can’t I sleep at night?
Why am I always hungry but can never eat?
I smile falsely at my friends. I lie to them. I don’t tell them that I feel sad. I don’t tell them anything.
I hate myself. I’m repulsive. Disgusting. Why do I go on?
I wish I could be more like them. ‘The normal people’
The people who can smile and laugh without the need to lie.
I don’t feel anything on most days, just a dull numbness. Everything around me just seems wrong.
There are light days though. Days when I genuinely smile, have fun and enjoy myself.
Then something happens, the light is smashed and the darkness has hold of me once again.
I’m beginning to think that the only reason I’m here is so that life can mock me.
Well life, you shall mock me no more. I’m going to spoil your fun.
I re-check the rope on the barn banister. I should feel horrible for using my friend’s barn as my death-place. But I don’t, I want to die in a happy place. Or at least a place that gives me a warm feeling. I don’t remember why this place makes me happy, it’s just a feeling. The ladder wobbles under me and for a moment I struggle to maintain my balance. But I don’t fall I regain my centre of gravity. I grab the rope, the rough fibres brush against my soft skin. I’m no good at knot tying but checking once again I feel that I have done a good enough job. My neck is slight and slender and I am sure that when I kick the ladder from under me, my neck will snap.
Then I will laugh at life and its spoiled joke.
I take a deep breath, probably the last breath I’ll ever take. The scent of the barn washes through me, and I feel a calm come over me. I’ve chosen a good death-place. I kick the ladder from beneath my feet and I drop, light floods into the barn and for a short second I think I may have died. But I hear a voice.
“Delilah!!”
Oh no! Isabelle! She was meant to be out for the weekend. What is she doing here? I realise now that death has not come to me. She’s picked the ladder up and already climbing it, reaching for me calling my name. I look at her eyes, blue and frantic with worry and shock. I look pleadingly down at her. She’s reached me now; I want her to see that this is what I want this is what needs to happen.
Oh God! Why does she not understand? I want to die! I just want it all to end. I feel my lungs bursting for air. The pressure of the rope is off as Isabelle shifts my slight weight onto the ladder. I lean against her and a huge rush of air rushes into my almost empty lungs. My body is worn from exertion and my sight is fringed with red, my face is hot and I recognise the familiar, yet unfamiliar feel of hot tears prickling my eyes and pouring down my face. It had been a while since I had last cried. I had thought I had cried all the tears that there were to be shed. But it seems as though I’m wrong once more. A throaty cough escapes my tight throat and suddenly I’m on the ground gasping and sobbing in the barn air.
Isabelle just holds me in silence, her head resting gently atop of mine. She coos and murmurs every now and then.
Eventually the tears subside to occasional hiccups and I finally trust myself to ask the question which I had wanted to ask from the moment she climbed the ladder, the moment she took the rope from around my pathetic neck.
“Why?” My voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to me. It’s deep, like a mans.
“Would you have preferred me to have left you there? Hnn? Turn my back, while you killed yourself?” I’m silent. “Well Delilah?”
“You di- ~hic~ didn’t have to s-save me. I didn’t want ~hic~ it.” My voice is completely dead panned- apart from the occasional hiccup.
“Yes I did.”
I treat this answer with silence.
She sighs and supporting my weight she stands us both up. “How do you feel?”
“Horrible.”
“Hnnn, ‘spose I should’ve guessed that eh?”
There’s a small silence. Then Isabelle stands in front of me and tells me to lift my head up. No longer caring to deny my friends will, I comply to the instruction and raise my head, baring my naked neck.
Isabelle lets out a low whistle. “Look at that, already going purple.” She states. “Do you want to go to the hospital? You may have injured your spine.”
I shake my head and go to take a step away from my friend but stumble. Seeing me about to fall my friend is quick to react and grabs hold of my upper arm and pulling me up straight. “Whoa there! I was just asking.”
I stay silent and stare blankly at my friend. “Okay, so no hospital, fine. Next question; do you need me to help you arrange counselling?”
This time my stare turns into a glower. “What are you? A docter?”
“No but I recently took some interest into researching depression and I think that you need some sort of help.”
Depression.
She said it. The thing I knew I had, the darkness which constantly sort to snuff out any light in my life.
“Yeah,” I smile uncertainly at my friend. “Maybe I do need help.”
“Wanna go inside? We’ll talk about what we’re gonna do.”
“Yeah, I-I’d like that.” I wiped away the last of the tears and took a steadying breath. But I knew it wasn’t the last tear that I’d wipe away; I knew it as I followed my friend out of the dark barn. When I thought of all I had to tell her and how her friendship could help me.
I knew that I had a hard path ahead, but as I left that barn a smile crept to my lips and I thought to myself,
Everything’s going to be okay.
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