antidote | h.s.

37 - maybe a love song

tw: mental illness; depression, self harm

ashton mackenzie

My bathroom ceiling looks different every time.

There's a turning point in the brain sometimes, when a great day turns into an awful one— a happy mood into a sad one or a proud moment into one of pity.

It's a turn no one can expect, not even the owner of the brain, but the impact is almost always irreversible.

Maybe it's reversible for some. Not for me.

It's consuming for me. Absorbing in the most overwhelming way possible. I'm never able to come back from it, and I envy those who can.

I'm not sure when this one started. Not sure of the reasoning behind it. I only know of my feelings now, and they're heavy.

That's the funny thing with mental illness— depression specifically.

It gives no reason. Absolutely zero explanation for why you suddenly don't feel like yourself. Why you suddenly long to feel like the you that you've always hated.

A double-edged sword of sorrow. Self-deprecating-duality. A shit feeling. However you want to put it.

I seem to find myself here more times than not. There's something about a bathroom floor that makes me disgusted and comforted at the same time.

I reached the point today where I thought a bath would wash away the awful feeling.

That's a lie. I knew it wouldn't. It never does. It always makes it worse, but I think somewhere, deep down, I want to make it worse. Like that's what my mind has convinced me I deserve.

I feel so stupid for this. Why am I paralyzed by emotions? Why is it the least feasible thing that has me doubling over and unable to live life as normal? It's weak.

My bath ended when I realized the water was too hot and I was struggling for every breath. That was when the cold bathroom floor sounded like a great place to relocate.

Music plays from my phone in the counter, but I can't focus enough to know what songs are running into each other as the minutes pass. I know there are things I should do. I should plan my lessons for the week. I should clean my apartment. I should clean myself— more than the bath attempted to do. I should get up off the fucking floor.

It's not that easy. I know that too well.

Just get off the floor, Ashton.

The pain of the bathtub isn't a new thing, nor is it a simple thing. The complexity of pain in my mental illness is where I struggle the most. The pain from the heat and the longing for breath is what distracts me from the onslaught of pain inside of my brain. It's the same reason my thighs are marked with my adolescence in plain view.

I know Harry's seen them. He's spent enough time in the center of it to know those marks are there, yet he's said nothing. I don't know if it's out of pity or ignorance, but the silence of it all almost makes me more insecure of it.

Maybe he really doesn't mind.

The possibility has seemed so stupid to me that I've dismissed it, but it really has become the only explanation. He's not an oblivious guy. Observing is his forte more often than not. Maybe he truly doesn't think worse of me because of the scars on my body.

Maybe he just likes me.

❁❁❁

harry styles