Chapter Text
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“Drowning, So to speak,
Tell me, Do you even know what depression looks like?
Is it tangible? Seen through every disguise,
So much to show, but is my progression finite?
Does it matter at all?”
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I’ve been noticing my reflection a lot more over the past few months, in passing glimpses, a store window here, a car mirror there, and every time I do, I can’t recognize the face staring back at me.
Same eyes, same lips, same nose, freckles… the years and sleepless nights adding a few lines and faint streaks of purple under my eyes, but I don’t know how I got here.
Where did the years go that stripped the youth from my face? Who even is the person wearing this skin that used to be mine?
The last 8 years I’ve spent on autopilot, slowly slipping away from myself, my heart, my idea of what my life was supposed to be. I graduated from U.A. and pushed myself through college, the entire time keeping my mind on one goal, not my original plan, not my dream, but something that felt like enough to keep on going, a reason to keep existing, maybe even a way to make sense of everything that had happened to me, but answers never truly came, always passing by just out of reach, leaving an empty cavern in their wake nestled deep in my chest.
After the degree came starting work, another reason I could dive headfirst into, but somewhere along the way I realized I’d never come up for air, and after a while I couldn’t even remember why I was still fighting to swim in the first place… Is this forever? I’d spent years focusing on the next thing I could get my hands on, mindlessly grasping at soil and rocks that could fill the hole, but only weighed it down more. I worked myself to the point of disassociation, filling my time with school and work and more until the only point in the day that spared me any consciousness or freedom of thought were the lone hours of the nights I stared at my ceiling, replaying the past, and trying to piece back together a crumbling future. Remembering how I couldn’t save him, wondering if now I’m the one who needs to be saved.
Regardless, I’m here. Underwater. The sunlight only occasionally breaking through the surface to the depths I’ve made home in, voices muffled, fingers too swollen to register touch, body cold, and pressure unforgiving.
It’s been this way for years, masked by my avoidance of feelings, stubbornness, and the unforgotten trained urge to smile in the face of adversity; why now am I regaining consciousness, almost as if I’m being pushed up by the sand below, or pulled- maybe, to the surface.
Maybe my mind can’t take being broken in hiding like this for much longer, maybe something is clawing its way out, is it me who wants out? Who even am I? What am I? It all feels so wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong… something has to give.
I can’t shake the itching in my skin, the tightness in my chest, and the gnawing at my core, that whatever it is will give out, and soon. The surface is rising up to my face with brutal intensity, and I don’t even know if I remember how to breathe on land anymore.
Wake up, teach, grade papers, sleep, Repeat. It’s a routine that keeps me whole enough to avoid it all.
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I can’t even brush my teeth anymore without feeling the nausea rise in my stomach every time I stare into the mirror.
Why am I like this?
Why did I let so much time go?
Why do I feel so stuck?
Why can’t I recognize myself?
Why do I feel this way?
Why am I so ungrateful?
Why was I chosen?
Why did I have to give it up?
Why did things change?
Why did I change?
Why when I faced every challenge head on, could I not get over this?
why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why