Depression

I don't think I wanted to die. Not really.

I had been sitting in my car, engine still running, radio still humming and warm air still blasting up my neck from the vents.

I didn't notice the occasional car zoom past me, or the cloudy sky seeming to drop lower and lower as hours ticked by.

The clock would say 22:16. I blinked and it would read 23:54.

Was it wrong to want to feel something? To stop being so numb and empty? To stop the bottomless pit that was my soul from holding only black nothingness?

There was nothing there. The guilt had passed now - the guilt that nagged sharply about my parents and my sister and the rest of my family. About my great job I had worked so hard for, and not letting me forget about all the amazing things I had to look forward to.

What about coming 3rd in my first dance competition? Working up to a national? Getting that book trilogy I desperately wanted for my birthday? Remembering getting back home from the meal and hugging my parents in their bed, crying because I was so lucky and so grateful and because these two beautiful humans actually existed? Not just in my life, but that their presence graced this earth and radiated love and compassion to all?

The only way to describe it was like a sieve. All my thoughts and feelings sat in a giant bowl that was my life, then began to trickle out one by one, turning into water. I tried to grasp onto them, but they slipped through and I had no hold. Vanished beneath the surface.

The guilt was overwhelming. It was my own fault I couldn't keep holding on. What right did I have to feel so sad and lonely when I had such a wonderful life full of happiness and caring loved ones? Who did I think I was to feel so down and worthless when I had so much and others were worse off?

THAT was when the overwhelming guilt would subside and the bottomless pit would resume what it believed to be it's rightful place in my body - sending my soul straight through that sieve along with everything else.

I had no right to be an empty shell.

I had blinked again and the clock said 01:03. I dimly registered my mobile flashing up multiple times. I blinked once more and I was stood outside next to my car looking down below at the hundreds of ruby and diamond lights on the motorway, the darkness not allowing me to conjure up any curiosity about where those cars might even be going.

Did I care? I should care. The real me would care.

But I am not me.

I blinked again and was standing on the other side of the railings, my skin shivering with the icy cold wind and my ears hearing the beeps and tyres screeching from down below - I COULD feel forces of nature battering my shell but that wasn't enough, my hollow insides were just that: hollow.

I blinked one last time, and, as I felt my shell of a body fall forward through the air, under the blackness I was sure I recognised a sliver of surprise as I realized tears streamed down my cheeks.