Depression

A Story by Marllene

What is it like to feel something you cannot describe

I hate this thing in my head. It's like a worm which made his home in my brain, feeding on my thoughts, poisoning them with its presence. I feel it spreading through my body, creeping in my veins, invading every corner still holding any sense.

What is this feeling I get when I look around. I want to see light, but there are only shadows. Shadows of life that should be filled with energy. I look around again and I see emptiness. Vast and spreading, but it's not really there. Only what I see.

I hold my books close to my chest, my anchor through this time when I fall apart. But when I open them, the pages are not what they always were. Ink on paper, not words. Lines and curves, no stories. Nothing to hold.

Why is it when I listen to songs I love, I don't hear them. The melody is there, but my ears are deaf to it.

How can I make people understand, what this worm does to me when I'm not certain it's really there. What could cause such pain which doesn't affect muscles nor bones, yet I can feel it clenching around my heart and throat.

How can I make people see that I'm hurting so much I can barely breathe without them looking at me as if I'm weak, wrong.

I eat yet the hunger I feel doesn't go away. The worm is forever hungry. It hides for days, weeks, making me hope it's gone. Then it awakens, strikes without warning and I burn in my own fire.

The stomachache I get is not from food nor sickness. It's the poison curling around my nerves, leaking through every cell, attacking the calmness I learnt to keep.

But nobody can see it. I'm here, calling for help. Silent. I'm here, reaching out. Unmoving. My body is no longer my own. It wins every time.

I feel hollow. How long can it dig and feed before there is nothing left. I will be gone and only this shell will remain. But no one will know. They will see the same they've always seen. The shell.