Three other friends were in the backseat and Panic! At the disco was playing loudly. Their new album, Pray for the wicked, had been released in June, so naturally, it had become our soundtrack for the summer. I didn’t think anything of it.
We had been at a theme park all day and decided to take a picnic to Sand Point later that evening. Before I knew it, it had hit midnight, but the stars and the city lights that shone over from Wales held the darkness back. I felt good. I felt safe.
Emerald faded to amber, sapphire to rust-like brown, but it was okay because it had just started to rain outside. I was by the window; immersed in stories where children disappeared through doorways to fantasy lands. Where half angels fought to defend the mundane world from demons, whilst discovering what it means to be human, and where Demigods have to fight the wars that their godly parents started.
It had stopped raining, but the wind howled and knocked me out of the fantasy land, so I picked up a pen and stumbled my way into a new one; except these ones are my own. Worlds that I had dreamed of, with people crafted from the inner workings of my mind, laced together with my most desperate desires. My want and need for there to be something more than this very mortal world.
As I glanced up from the word document on my bright screen, I found myself in a classroom, surrounded by people and it felt good. It was October and assignments had been handed out but I didn’t feel stressed. This was writing. This was what I had wanted to do for years. So maybe that’s why I had neglected to detect the shift in time as the days began to shrink and the nights began to grow.
A month went by, deadlines were coming up, and the trees had started to shed their skins; warning signs had begun to flash in my peripheral vision, but I was too busy to notice. I’m always too busy to notice. I failed to feel the shallow breath of winter as it slithered its way through the slit in the open window.
When I walked to college during the last couple of weeks, I was forced to slow down as my feet began to slip across the rain splattered pavement. So caught up in the ‘importance’ of gaining a meaningful education, that by the time the Christmas break rolls around, I was too late. As everyone around me had begun to slow down, the ache in my bones had already sunk in. Nights felt much longer than the days, as the grotesque tendrils of darkness encroached on ever vanishing light.
It’s dark now.
I’ve become stuck in a cycle of sleeping too much. I wake up and stare into oblivion, eyes locked onto a white wall. I don’t move. Everything is quiet, my senses are numb and I can't move. It seems as though my body has turned to lead, my muscles frozen, wrapped in the weight of these chains that refuse to set me free.
Apparently, it’s February now.
I don’t remember much of January.
January is usually blank for me.
Class started again, I didn’t make it to many lectures… and the ones I did make it to, I don’t remember that much of them. Fragments of information shattered like glass, scattered far and wide, in between white noise and the edges of my memory, blurred to a minute grey. When I do manage to drag myself out of bed, onto the bus full of miserable looking people, on a miserable looking day; I wander into class and what once felt familiar and safe, now feels alien. People have switched seats and now I’m on the outside again. I’m sat with my classmates and tutor, but I feel like I’m staring through a glass box, my fists bloodied and bruised from banging on the frosted, unbreakable surface. Panic rattles my rib-cage. Nobody can hear me. Nobody can see me.
Logically I know that they can; they all have eyes and ears.
Unfortunately, logic is silenced. Silenced by nearly a decade of self-doubt, of questions about self-worth, about who I am and who I am supposed to be. I don’t know who I am supposed to be. Why can’t I just pull myself out of this darkness? Why can’t I enjoy things without this blackness coming back to suck all the joy out of my life? Why do I have to have everything figured out? Why can’t I just be happy?
Nobody teaches us how to deal with emotions.
We’re taught the alphabet, we’re taught how to count. We’re taught to be obedient and to be overbearingly literate. We’re taught that maths and science are more important than drama or art. We’re taught that grades are more important than mental health and well-being. I was taught that I was nothing more than a statistic from the ages of 4 to 17. I have been nothing more than a number to every authority figure in my life. So how am I expected to have learnt any form of resilience, when it comes to self-esteem and confidence? How am I supposed to say I love myself when I’ve never been taught how to? If I missed a day off school, I couldn’t tell them it was because I was too anxious or too drained to get out of bed. It’s not good enough. I was never good enough. It wasn’t perfect but my attendance wasn’t completely terrible. I still got the grades. I still went to college, where the head of A-levels told me I would fail everything and that University was life or death. I never wanted to go to University. But then I was pestered by my tutors who told me that life would be more difficult if I didn’t; I was made to doubt myself.
Any resilience that I previously had, had been beaten down and smeared in the dirt, and so I applied.
It’s March now.
The deep-rooted pressure continues to linger in my skull, but the shards of dark start to fade. Slivers of sunlight break through the cracks and I’m able to go to class; I still feel distant but I start to feel human again.
As the inky, black shackles start to break away, I start to see people instead of blurred out shapes. The white noise dissolves into a calmer quiet.
I told my mum how I’d been feeling.
I told my tutor what had been going on.
And for the first time, I wasn’t shamed. I wasn’t made to feel guilty for my inability to function properly. I was offered support.
The ache begins to leave my ribs and breath fills my lungs for the first time since December and soon it’ll be summer again. I won’t have to fear the dark and I won’t have to dread the night.
It won’t last though.
Winter will arrive all the same, and the shadows will creep their way through the windows and back into my mind. I’ll be left, muted whilst the rest of the world carries on. I’ll make it through each day with anguish in my muscles and burden in my bones. It’s ironic that the season I most looked forward to as a child, has now become the monster that lives under my bed, forcing its way into my head.
But it’s okay. I’ll be okay.
One day I won’t lose four months to obscurity, at least for eight months of the year, the radiant caress of the sun will shine out against the dreary depths of the night. I hope that someday, I’ll notice as thin veils of sunlight glisten against the frosted branches of the naked blossom tree, and I’ll watch as my cat bathes in the warmth that emanates from the centre of the room. Flames lapping at crackling logs, drowning out the silence and casting out the cold.
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