I sank further into my bed as I turned, holding my phone before me. I gazed at the screen, pulling down the notification bar to look at the messages sent to me by my beloved friends. I swiped them all away, having no intention to answer any time soon. 

My stomach sank at the cry of my mother, asking for me to come downstairs. I turned on my back and stared at the ceiling, yearning for a disembodied hand that wasn’t there to pull me up.

My relationship with happiness was that of Echo and Narcissus. Couldn’t it share its lovely serenade before I wither to dust, leaving behind only my words? And still I feared it.

Unlike that tale, I once held happiness. I used to glitter in all sorts of colors, my personality bubbling around me. I used to bounce back whenever I was shoved. Now the concept of happiness is foreign and daunting, unfamiliar compared to nearly constant depression.

But that was then and this is now, and now I’m solely left with a hollow shell of who I once was; only fragments of a personality. And I’m still spinning out of control.

I’m left filled with static and gray. A daze of medication. 

I’m left still inside of the white walls of the mental hospital, the only sight of the outside world being a tiny square courtyard and a blank white sky. 

Now there’s just the dull oranges and reds of October, threatening to return every year, then threatening to leave as soon as it’s begun. And yet I’m still there. 

I think that I left a part of myself in that month, a part that I long to get back every time the horrid season reappears.

And now I’m a scrap of what’s left of someone torn apart.

And now I lay in a room of darkness, an atrocious mess of clothes and trash surrounding me, as I struggle to process the world revolving without me. 

I looked once more to my phone, frustrated. I wanted to press Do Not Disturb on my notifications and lay in bed for days, subconsciously pleading that time would go faster until I was able to think clearly again, as if it wasn’t like I was flying through my life already. 

Each moment passes in a gray fog, day fading into night, and night fading into a blur. I can recall feeling better than this, but I can’t make myself believe it. It seems so far into the distance even if it were yesterday. 

I’m Sisyphus pushing myself uphill, my fingers bleeding and my body in excruciating pain. I’m not quite sure if I want to reach the summit, and yet I try. But not before I teeter at the top, and fall down again and again. A vicious and ridiculous paradox that appears to be my life. 

And I’m dissociated.

Still dissociated.

Always dissociated. 

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to get better. One year of depression turned into five.

Sometimes a storm threatens to form. Roaring, crashing thunder becomes deafening as seconds flash by mercilessly. Acid rain stings my vulnerable flesh, clogging my airways and tightening my already aching chest. Then I’m left with the foul taste of metallic blood, and a hollow vessel of flesh and bone.

Anxiety can be such a nuisance.

As apathy swallowed me, I wanted to rid myself of my relationships and simply “be”. Life is static and I exist floating in the middle of it.

Nothing feels like it’s happening in the moment. Even this moment.

I set my phone back down and resist the urge to allow the weight of the world to collapse upon me once more. 

I wish for the disembodied hand yet again, so it could pull me up and back into my body. But that’s a lot to inquire about. 

I slowly, painfully sit up.

I swing my legs over the side of my bed, my limbs aching from inactivity.

I stand.

A victory.