Void (The Television)

Dull, but full of emotion. Something I wrote in about 20 minutes. It just kind of talks about the feeling of depression I guess, and how it creates a void in us. Just read to understand.

Have you ever felt that void? I know you have; everyone has at some point in their lives. That void, empty feeling in your chest; the melancholy expression on your face, and the feeling as if your life came to a grinding halt. You sit there, wondering about it. You think about all of your memories, scanning your brain for all of them. They don’t come fast, but as they come into your mind’s awareness, it’s like you realize that nothing you’ve done is good in your eyes. It had never been enough for you, for your friends, your family, and for anyone else watching your life unfold as an extra in the background.

You think about the beginning, of the first memory that comes to your mind. The first thing you remember of when you were little. How happy you were, and satisfied with your life and the way you were living it, until you start to hit that wall of knowing that the thought you have remembered is stuck there forever, and it’s a hole digging deep into your chest. You think of that little kid, so happy, on the playground in elementary school, but you remember that you were alone, hands curled up into a fist full of sand from underneath you.

You remember that first comment anyone had ever said to you that wasn’t a good one. Whatever it was, it was stuck in your memory, and it always had and has been ever since that day. You remember brushing that off as nothing, and convincing yourself that it would never happen again, oblivious to the obvious that it would never let up in the future.

You never had that feeling before. You were only a little kid, and you didn’t know anything about the world yet.

You snap back into that trance of an overflowing and quiet mind. Foggy, unresting, and unsettling thoughts crowd through your conscious mind.

You start to notice that the void you were feeling in your chest is starting to spread across your entire body, slowly consuming it, but you ignore it. Another flashback hits you, of that little kid you remembered yourself as back as a child. Older, at least.

It replayed in your mind like a scratched CD plays skipping and repeating images on a television screen. Yeah, that’s what it feels like. Like watching your own life through a television screen. It’s like watching re-runs of television shows; you’ve seen them a million times yet you can’t stop them from playing. There is no remote for a restless mind, no mute button, or volume lowering button. But you hope for it, and you always hoped that one day you’d be able to mute it.

The flashback that plays back through your mind, almost as if you were right back in that situation. Like you were watching yourself from afar, and everything that had unfolded. You even remember what you wore that day. Pair of shorts, ridiculously multi-colored tie-dyed shirt, no shoes. Alone with one man in the room, your room, a place you always went to for peace. From that night on it was ruined for you, and you never wanted to go back into that room again. The yelling, the screaming, the accusations, the confusion going along with what was unfolding. Anger, rage, jealousy in the eyes of a trusted person; the person you thought would be someone good in your life. He made mom happy most of the times, and he seemed to be that father figure you never really had. And that image was being shattered in front of your own eyes. The man you learned to trust over a period of time, the man you thought would be good for the family, the man who provided, was being torn down before your own eyesight.

You could almost feel it; the fire in his eyes. You could feel the muscles clenching through the air, and the tension was so thick you could barely breathe, even though you couldn’t breathe from your own tears. A scream from the living room in the flashback snaps you right back into reality. That television is still in front of you, so you turn the channel. It’s the only thing you can do with it. No off button.

The next thing that hits you is the feeling of betrayal, abandonment, the feeling of an absence in your life. The same time everything was going on at home, the divorce, the fights, the constant and pointless arguments. You knew it was the same period of time from then. 4th grade.

The words that hit you like a tsunami, like a tidal wave, a tornado of emotion. The words “We don’t want to be friends with you.”

Now, for a lonely 4th grader, that’s something that gets to you fast. Especially with the problems that occur at home every day. And you just remember thinking that you weren’t good enough for anyone, or anything; that everything was your fault.

The force of the impact of that memory snaps you right back to where you were. The television, now becoming a snowy storm of static. Not fast. Just enough to where you realize that it’s all fading.

Your mind slips under one more time, but this time to your entire life. Your focus is on every moment that happened to you in your life. Loneliness, betrayal by friends and a family member, and the things that happened after that, more recently than you thought. You just sit and watch and wonder what you’d been doing since you were born. You wonder if maybe you were a mistake, put on Earth by accident. You watch the days past in an order of fast flickering lights: night and day. You watched the divorce take place, and your aging. How fast you seemed to grow up. You watched the few years go by, seeing yourself slowly starting to fall into the early stages of depression and PTSD, anxiety and panic disorders.

You keep watching, and one day you were older, and the look on the face you saw was sad, and emotions were fading so fast. You never knew how fast it could take place. One bottle of pills, two, three, enough to maybe kill. You watch with a blank expression as you realize you looked like you were starting to struggle. You never noticed the scars on your arms, and your legs, because everything happened so fast, and it was all a blur. You never knew.

You open your eyes weakly to see the fuzzy images of people around you; familiar faces looking down at you, worried expressions plastered on their faces. Bright lights were almost blinding you. You realize you were on a bed, with an IV in the vein of your hand. A hospital.

All of a sudden your eyes flutter closed, and you’re taken back to the place in front of your personal television. You watch it over one more time, until the screen static starts to take over. You don’t fight it, but simply watch as it turns into a jumbled mess of white noise, and then watch it turn off. The television shut down, and you knew it would never turn back on again. You realize that it finally… was over.

And that void, you realized, the one you felt in your chest, was just the feeling of a deteriorating soul. A soul that had suffered enough. A soul heavy with the weight of what it carried on its back. The void you felt in yourself, was yourself.

You looked into that screen one more time, seeming to wait until it turned back on again. It didn’t.

And it never turned on again.