#topshorts

TRIGGER WARNING: MENTION OF SELF HARM AND SUICIDE.

This is what I imagine this song would be like as an actual situation — what its most dire interpretation feels like to me.

It’s 3am, I’m laying on my bed, I’m alone and the lamp in the ceiling is blinding me.

I can’t turn the light off, because then there will be nothing keeping my thoughts from spiralling down an even darker path.

There’s a knife in my drawer, hidden away, but my arm itches for it like a drug, my scars asking for friends.

I don’t want to fall to that trap again, I know in the morning I’ll regret picking up that knife, when the ghosts have all gone, and I face the reality that I harmed myself again, even though I promised over and over that I’ll never. To my mum, to my friends. But they will find out eventually, and I’ll feel guilty for making them worry again, and I’ll end up laying here like always, torn. My guilt for feeling empty is just as painful as the emptiness itself. Like the question of the chicken and egg, I don’t know which came first really.

There’s a heaviness in my chest so dense and dark I can hardly breathe. It isn’t connected to anything real, but it finds my worries — my mum’s expectations, my grades, my perfectionism, my friends’ unmet needs — and uses them as a weapon against me.

When the sun is out, at least I can fight it.

That’s why I keep the lights on.

I went through so much effort so that mum wouldn’t know I’m still awake: I waited till she was asleep to turn the lights back on, I filled the gap between the door and the floor with a t-shirt.

This is nothing new. It’s not the first time I felt like dying, that I felt like I was living a lie by simply… living.

I dig and dig in my brain, wishing to find a reason for this sadness, but there is nothing. It’s just there, swallowing me up whole.

I don’t even have any more tears to cry, I’m so dehydrated my throat hurts.

I want to be better for them, I want to pretend everything is fine, that I can sleep at night, that I can go through my day without wanting to run to the toilet and cry every two hours.

Because nothing I do is good enough.

I am not good enough.

I’ve been falling apart for so long, I don’t remember what it felt like to be whole. I can’t remember what I look like without bags under my eyes from crying myself to sleep.

But I can’t let myself fall away completely. I can’t shut off, I can’t give up. I have to hold on for their sake.

My life isn’t just mine, it’s not my decision to make.

Even though I wish it was.

I look at my phone again: 3:07am, and I feel a clump forming in my throat, the tears welling up, defying all laws of conservation of energy.

How can time go any slower?

I just wish it was over.

Then the phone rings.

“Hey, I know you’ve had a rough week, and you haven’t answered my texts all evening, so I just wanted to check up on you. What’s up?”

A note to readers who feel like this:

I love you, and I promise it gets better.

Remember there are people in your life who are there for you. They might be too wrapped up in their own shit, to call at 3am, but they will do everything they can to pull you out of your pit.

Find those people who will force you to pull yourself out (sometimes by propping you up), those who don’t let you make excuses, that love you unconditionally, and tell you when they can’t pull you up cause they’re drained (but they’ll sit in the pit with you so you’re never alone).

They’re the ones who rescued me, because they made me rescue myself.

You might have to work hard at it, but in the end, it’s worth it.