Categories > Original > Drama
The Darkness Comes Creeping
0 ReviewsAnd I used to think there was this voice in my head. Then I realised that the stupid voice in my head was my own.
“You wouldn’t understand, not really.” He says. He looks down at the stubs he calls his finger nails and continues to nervously pick what little nail he has left. “When I wake up in the morning, it’s like my whole existence is weighing the world down. I’m a waste of space and everyone I know would be better off without me. That’s how it feels.”
“You know that’s not true.” I say, forcing the tears to stay in my eyes because the last thing I’d want is to look weak in front of him while he’s at the lowest point of his life.
“And when I breathe, my lungs feel heavy and old. More weight to carry around on my fucking shoulders. And then with every single breath I take my heart aches for happiness. It’s as if the happiness is taunting me, you know? Like, I can almost taste it but it’s only just out of reach.” He says and looks me directly in the eyes. I can almost see the darkness swarming around his head as his eyes lock onto mine for that painful second. “God…it’s just there. Too far away from me to grasp. You don’t quite understand how much I miss smiling.”
“I miss you smiling too.” I say.
“And I used to think there was this voice in my head. It would tell me how much a freak I am, or how much everyone hates me. The voice would never leave; it would be in my head every second of the day. And then one night I was lying in bed in the dark and the thoughts were taking over again and that’s when I realised that the stupid voice in my head was my own.” He takes a deep breath but the pain is already etched into his face. “I’d look in the mirror with such hate that it fucking killed me inside. My eyes wouldn’t stop scanning for the pathetic imperfections in the reflection staring back at me. And let me tell you…there were a lot of them.”
“And then all of a sudden I was thrown into this…life. So busy. Too much for me to handle. Every day I’d me reminded of the pressure and the deadlines and suddenly it became too much to handle. I’d spend nights on my own sitting in bed just crying. Crying at how much of a pathetic mess I am how many people I piss off, just my existing. Do you know how that feels? Do you know how it feels to have everyone you come into contact with despise you? It hurts a lot.”
I look down at my feet and I feel the sadness welling up inside my throat. A couple of painful seconds pass and I wish that he won’t open his mouth again. I don’t want to know how much he’s hurting because it’s making me feel like I couldn’t do anything to help, because I didn’t.
“Sometimes when people look at me, I can see the pure hatred in their eyes. People who I’ve only spoken to once or never at all…pure fucking hatred. And then I guess I don’t blame them! Because I feel the exact same way about myself!” he’s beginning to get angry now. “What’s the point of being happy when you know you don’t deserve to be? I’ve never deserved to be happy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me how you were feeling?” I say, maybe a bit too aggressively. He lets out a sort of choked laugh, as if what I said was completely pathetic.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Wasn’t it obvious? You know…the fact I never smile? The fact my face is grey and my eyes are dreary? Didn’t you maybe start to notice something was seriously wrong when I starting taking those goddamn pills?”
“I…I…” I stutter, but I don’t quite know what to say because he’s right. I should have known from the start that something was wrong. I was the one that let all this shit escalate this far in the first place.
“I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept, and I haven’t laughed in months. Do you know what it’s like to feel like that? Sometimes I have this permanent lump at the back of my throat where I can feel the sadness welling up in my stomach and I have to keep it down. That takes a lot of strength. A lot of fucking strength that I don’t have. I’ve noticed that my body has begun to shake a lot lately and my ribs stick out way too far. My bones feel weak too. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but you really gotta help me. Sometimes I can feel the darkness clawing at my throat and sometimes it escapes long enough for me to put the goddam razor to my goddam wrist.
“I’m not even going to expect you to understand the feeling of being scared of your own mind. The feeling of not knowing what you’re capable of doing to yourself- that’s the worst. The pain is kind of comforting, you know? When your soul feels so numb and emotionless, the pain the stupid razor gives me reminds me that I’m still breathing on this goddam planet with the same fucking assholes hating every inch of my pathetic lungs but it makes me feel alive. It gives me a sense of feeling for just a minute. I crave the sense of feeling. The destruction the razor gives me is kind of addictive, sometimes. Sometimes my body craves it, you know? It craves the sensation of wanting to feel alive again. Damn, I miss feeling alive. I miss laughing ‘till my ribs hurt or smiling ‘till my cheeks feel as if I can never fucking frown again.” He takes a calm sip from his coffee cup and places it back down on the table. “The only time I feel I’m able to reach the happiness, the only time I feel I have the strength to carry on is when you’re with me.”
I take his hand in mine but he pulls it away almost instantly.
“When you smile at me with those perfect teeth and eyes…it makes me feel like I’m fucking infinite. But then I’ll remember how you don’t understand any of the darkness that I’m feeling. I don’t want to hurt you, you know. But sometimes I just don’t know how to explain this depression to you, because no words can describe how trapped I feel. I just want to rip out my heart because maybe, just maybe, I will be able to feel something other than pain. It feels like it’s rotting me from the inside out, a demon that won’t leave my body until it’s wrecked.
Sometimes I really believe that the only way I can escape this darkness is by ending my life. You really have no idea how many times I’ve contemplated suicide. I’ve thought about pulling the trigger, or taking one too many pills, or cutting just that little bit too deep. And you know…the thoughts satisfied me somehow. It was like my mind was striving to get out of this hell and that was the only way I thought I could do it. I thought about my family, my friends and you of course. I thought that you’d all be angry if I killed myself. You’d think I was such a selfish bastard. So then I even thought about getting involved in an accident. Maybe I’d step into the road at the moment or my apartment would blow up with me still inside.
But as much as I thought about it, and as close as I came to doing it, I just couldn’t. My body wouldn’t let me. The voice in my head, my own goddamn voice, told me to suffer in the pain that I deserved. It said this was my punishment for everything I’ve ever done wrong. But you know what? I’d rather be dead.”
“D-don’t say that!” I cry. “Don’t say that no one would care because that’s not true! Don’t ever even wonder if I’d ever miss you because you know that you’re the only goddamn thing on my fucking mind! And I’m sorry for not noticing how fucked up you are. I really am! It’s killing me, you know, sitting here listen to you rant about how you want to throw your life away. Listen to me, okay? You’re the most talented person I know, you really fucking are. I can’t believe you’d even consider killing yourself! Because as much as you may not realise, people care. People always fucking care. It may not feel like it, but it’s just your mind telling you the opposite. Dude, some people will hate you. Everyone hates someone, right? People hate you, people hate me, and people will hate whoever they chose but, why would you listen to some pathetic sonuvabitch?”
“I don’t care what I am to you. I don’t care how you feel about me. I really fucking don’t okay. The only thing I care about is getting out of this hell that I’m living in.”
“Then why did you come to me?” I spit. “Why sit here telling me all of that if you don’t care about how much hearing that killed me? You know, you’re not the only motherfucker in this whole goddamn world that gets depressed. I know I don’t understand how it feels, and I never want to, but I’m going to help you. Now don’t you dare tell me that you, the one person I love the most in the whole world, my best-fucking-friend, want to end your life then throw back what little help I can give you in my face, okay?”
“I’m sorry.” He sniffs.
“You better be, because I’ve never felt so guilty about anything in my life and now I’m here feeling the guilt tearing away at my insides because of you. I am going to help you. I’m not going to let you die. Not ever. You need to get help. You need to talk to a doctor, okay? I know that might sound scary but-”
“I’m not going to some bastard of a doctor to talk about my ‘issues’” he hisses “because I’ve been and done that before and it just made it worse. The sonuvabitch made me talk about everything. All the stupid thoughts resurfaced in my head. Thoughts I never wanted in my head ever again all flooded back to me.”
“Then, I don’t know what to do.” I say. “I really don’t know how to help you this time.”
“You know that’s not true.” I say, forcing the tears to stay in my eyes because the last thing I’d want is to look weak in front of him while he’s at the lowest point of his life.
“And when I breathe, my lungs feel heavy and old. More weight to carry around on my fucking shoulders. And then with every single breath I take my heart aches for happiness. It’s as if the happiness is taunting me, you know? Like, I can almost taste it but it’s only just out of reach.” He says and looks me directly in the eyes. I can almost see the darkness swarming around his head as his eyes lock onto mine for that painful second. “God…it’s just there. Too far away from me to grasp. You don’t quite understand how much I miss smiling.”
“I miss you smiling too.” I say.
“And I used to think there was this voice in my head. It would tell me how much a freak I am, or how much everyone hates me. The voice would never leave; it would be in my head every second of the day. And then one night I was lying in bed in the dark and the thoughts were taking over again and that’s when I realised that the stupid voice in my head was my own.” He takes a deep breath but the pain is already etched into his face. “I’d look in the mirror with such hate that it fucking killed me inside. My eyes wouldn’t stop scanning for the pathetic imperfections in the reflection staring back at me. And let me tell you…there were a lot of them.”
“And then all of a sudden I was thrown into this…life. So busy. Too much for me to handle. Every day I’d me reminded of the pressure and the deadlines and suddenly it became too much to handle. I’d spend nights on my own sitting in bed just crying. Crying at how much of a pathetic mess I am how many people I piss off, just my existing. Do you know how that feels? Do you know how it feels to have everyone you come into contact with despise you? It hurts a lot.”
I look down at my feet and I feel the sadness welling up inside my throat. A couple of painful seconds pass and I wish that he won’t open his mouth again. I don’t want to know how much he’s hurting because it’s making me feel like I couldn’t do anything to help, because I didn’t.
“Sometimes when people look at me, I can see the pure hatred in their eyes. People who I’ve only spoken to once or never at all…pure fucking hatred. And then I guess I don’t blame them! Because I feel the exact same way about myself!” he’s beginning to get angry now. “What’s the point of being happy when you know you don’t deserve to be? I’ve never deserved to be happy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me how you were feeling?” I say, maybe a bit too aggressively. He lets out a sort of choked laugh, as if what I said was completely pathetic.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Wasn’t it obvious? You know…the fact I never smile? The fact my face is grey and my eyes are dreary? Didn’t you maybe start to notice something was seriously wrong when I starting taking those goddamn pills?”
“I…I…” I stutter, but I don’t quite know what to say because he’s right. I should have known from the start that something was wrong. I was the one that let all this shit escalate this far in the first place.
“I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept, and I haven’t laughed in months. Do you know what it’s like to feel like that? Sometimes I have this permanent lump at the back of my throat where I can feel the sadness welling up in my stomach and I have to keep it down. That takes a lot of strength. A lot of fucking strength that I don’t have. I’ve noticed that my body has begun to shake a lot lately and my ribs stick out way too far. My bones feel weak too. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but you really gotta help me. Sometimes I can feel the darkness clawing at my throat and sometimes it escapes long enough for me to put the goddam razor to my goddam wrist.
“I’m not even going to expect you to understand the feeling of being scared of your own mind. The feeling of not knowing what you’re capable of doing to yourself- that’s the worst. The pain is kind of comforting, you know? When your soul feels so numb and emotionless, the pain the stupid razor gives me reminds me that I’m still breathing on this goddam planet with the same fucking assholes hating every inch of my pathetic lungs but it makes me feel alive. It gives me a sense of feeling for just a minute. I crave the sense of feeling. The destruction the razor gives me is kind of addictive, sometimes. Sometimes my body craves it, you know? It craves the sensation of wanting to feel alive again. Damn, I miss feeling alive. I miss laughing ‘till my ribs hurt or smiling ‘till my cheeks feel as if I can never fucking frown again.” He takes a calm sip from his coffee cup and places it back down on the table. “The only time I feel I’m able to reach the happiness, the only time I feel I have the strength to carry on is when you’re with me.”
I take his hand in mine but he pulls it away almost instantly.
“When you smile at me with those perfect teeth and eyes…it makes me feel like I’m fucking infinite. But then I’ll remember how you don’t understand any of the darkness that I’m feeling. I don’t want to hurt you, you know. But sometimes I just don’t know how to explain this depression to you, because no words can describe how trapped I feel. I just want to rip out my heart because maybe, just maybe, I will be able to feel something other than pain. It feels like it’s rotting me from the inside out, a demon that won’t leave my body until it’s wrecked.
Sometimes I really believe that the only way I can escape this darkness is by ending my life. You really have no idea how many times I’ve contemplated suicide. I’ve thought about pulling the trigger, or taking one too many pills, or cutting just that little bit too deep. And you know…the thoughts satisfied me somehow. It was like my mind was striving to get out of this hell and that was the only way I thought I could do it. I thought about my family, my friends and you of course. I thought that you’d all be angry if I killed myself. You’d think I was such a selfish bastard. So then I even thought about getting involved in an accident. Maybe I’d step into the road at the moment or my apartment would blow up with me still inside.
But as much as I thought about it, and as close as I came to doing it, I just couldn’t. My body wouldn’t let me. The voice in my head, my own goddamn voice, told me to suffer in the pain that I deserved. It said this was my punishment for everything I’ve ever done wrong. But you know what? I’d rather be dead.”
“D-don’t say that!” I cry. “Don’t say that no one would care because that’s not true! Don’t ever even wonder if I’d ever miss you because you know that you’re the only goddamn thing on my fucking mind! And I’m sorry for not noticing how fucked up you are. I really am! It’s killing me, you know, sitting here listen to you rant about how you want to throw your life away. Listen to me, okay? You’re the most talented person I know, you really fucking are. I can’t believe you’d even consider killing yourself! Because as much as you may not realise, people care. People always fucking care. It may not feel like it, but it’s just your mind telling you the opposite. Dude, some people will hate you. Everyone hates someone, right? People hate you, people hate me, and people will hate whoever they chose but, why would you listen to some pathetic sonuvabitch?”
“I don’t care what I am to you. I don’t care how you feel about me. I really fucking don’t okay. The only thing I care about is getting out of this hell that I’m living in.”
“Then why did you come to me?” I spit. “Why sit here telling me all of that if you don’t care about how much hearing that killed me? You know, you’re not the only motherfucker in this whole goddamn world that gets depressed. I know I don’t understand how it feels, and I never want to, but I’m going to help you. Now don’t you dare tell me that you, the one person I love the most in the whole world, my best-fucking-friend, want to end your life then throw back what little help I can give you in my face, okay?”
“I’m sorry.” He sniffs.
“You better be, because I’ve never felt so guilty about anything in my life and now I’m here feeling the guilt tearing away at my insides because of you. I am going to help you. I’m not going to let you die. Not ever. You need to get help. You need to talk to a doctor, okay? I know that might sound scary but-”
“I’m not going to some bastard of a doctor to talk about my ‘issues’” he hisses “because I’ve been and done that before and it just made it worse. The sonuvabitch made me talk about everything. All the stupid thoughts resurfaced in my head. Thoughts I never wanted in my head ever again all flooded back to me.”
“Then, I don’t know what to do.” I say. “I really don’t know how to help you this time.”
Log in to rate and review this story