5Depression is not a never-ending sadness for me. It's the numbness that creeps through my every second and swallows me whole. It's the coldness in my stomach and heart. Its the ice coating my soul and trapping me from warmth.
It's the energy I no longer have to even breathe.
Not even the fire of my rage takes over anymore. It barely escapes it's confinements of ice. It use to lick at the wall of ice the seperates us. It would leave cracks and holes. Then it's flames would caress the inside of me, where the ice was melting quickly. Once the brick wall of ice had melted enough, my anger would overtake me and control me completely. It surrounded me, dosed me in it's flames. My world was red and I was out for blood. I was dangerous.
I use to be so scared of myself. Thinking that something doesn't get anymore dangerous than a girl who can't control her actions, words, thoughts.
But, now that I can no longer feel the anger, I realize I'm more dangerous now. Not being able to feel even the heat of my rage. Not being able to feel a single thing. Just the coldness of the ice that encases me.
I am just an actor living in this world of fake people with fake lives and fake families and fake happiness. I am just an actor, smiling a fake smile like the rest of them just to get through the day. It is possible to hide the fact that you are broken. I would know. I have become somewhat of an expert. Because no one has even noticed that I'm living a lie. I'm just playing the script like I am suppose to.
When I look in the mirror, I don't see the beauty others speak about. My long, auburn hair is just a nuisance. My big brown eyes never see the difference between reality and the dream world anymore. My big lips never speak the words on my tongue nor the truth. The nose the rests in the middle of my face is also a fraud. I dont see the "tiny," "athletic" body everyone sees. Instead, I witness thick thighs, fat calves, a non-flat belly, and a strange dip between my hips and my thighs.
Truly, what is beautiful in any of that?
I only recognize the brokenness in my features. My fake smiles and fake laughter. My fake energeticness. While most people see a hyper, bold, carefree 15 year old, I look in the mirror and I see the scars on my thighs and the wrist I've butchered and the broken way I talk.
Actually, some days...okay, most days...I don't even recognize the girl standing in the mirror. She's not the same girl I have seen in the mirror every day since I was 5 years old. She's a stranger just acting like me, Amanda. She's a fraud.
Amanda. Almost always when I'm thinking of my three syllable name, it seems so foreign. Like the name of a stranger or an alien. It just doesn't fit into who I think I am.
Of course, I have memories of my childhood. A lot are happy. I don't live in a bad home. I grew up in the same house in the same small town with the same small people my entire life. There were some new people, but they normally left after a while. Either way, it was the same classmen I had my entire life. I can name practically all of them and tell you stories of each one if I really wanted to. But some childhood memories are brief. And some parts of my life are completely missing. I can't remember parts of my life at all and that sometimes scares me. But, my happy memories ended the year I turned 13. Then, curiosity consumed me. Sexually, physically, mentally. I began to explore. But only online due to my own pride.
For years, internet was my drug. My heroine, my cocaine, my meth. I was addicted. It made me happy like nothing else could.
Nothing
Beat
It.
No boy, no friends, nothing.
It was my world.
Until I found another obsession with something equally as dangerous.
It started as a fad, I'm not going to lie. A way to get attention from my peers because I was tired of being a freak no one wanted to be friends with except the girls who had broken my heart a million times already. But then, like everything else, it became my everything. It controlled my every second, every hour, every day. My every moment. Every night, every morning, every second I had alone, my demon, my master, took control of my world. Anywhere, anytime.
The day I realized I was addicted to this crisis, I was curled up on the floor of my bathtub, smothering hot shower beads pounding into me, washing away the blood that poured from my thigh as I held the razor close and cried out:
"Is it funny now?"
That was the day I realized I was addicted to the pain of what I did. I was addicted to the blood and the razors and just the sheer thought of it.
''Is it funny now?"
Soon, saying the line after every slash from the pain of just living became a sort of ritual. A kind of signature.
"Is it funny now?"
I asked myself that question for everything that was happening in my life. The beginning and the ending and the middle and everything in between the three.
Because I knew, oh yes I knew, that those awful, small-brained country hicks went home together and laughed at the pain they caused. They laughed at the embarrassment they started and the words I said. They laughed at me.
"Is it funny now?"
I know bullying happens everywhere. I know that many people are either bullies or are victims are bullies. Adults have prepared speeches about going to them and telling them what's going on and how you should talk to someone. They say that the bullies have unsatisfactory lives and they just pick on us because they're jealous or because they need control of something. They say all the statistics and facts about bullying. How to handle it and how to react and they make up ways on how to make it stop or how to stand up for yourselves.
'Just walk away. Tell a teacher. Look them in the eye. Talk to them,' Ect.
Cyber bullying, verbal abuse, physical, Ect.
They present you with all these facts and all these speeches about how to handle bullying and they try to tell you why people bully.
But, it never helps. You can't escape from the pain of the words they said or the things they did to you. You can't escape from the beatings whether they're verbal, mental, or physical. A victim of bullying can't escape from what is being done to them. Yes, you can get rid of the bully. But that is only part of the problem. Because words are like cuts, they hurt bad at first. Slowly, the pain dims. But they're there forever and you can never erase that.
Bullies leave scars even worse than cutters do. Because, at least cutters only hurt themselves.
"Is it funny now?"
My bullies were people I grew up with my entire life. I knew their names and their faces. And, even when they grew out of what they put me through, I never did. It still haunts me to this day. I see them in the hallways of High School and the words:
"Is it funny now?"
Ring in my head.
They left scars worse than I could ever hope to.