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Melancholic 2

Part 2

By Emily WelchPublished 6 years ago 8 min read
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Part 2: Glass Bottle

I didn’t take the acid.

Or drive off Seawall.

But.

I stopped going to classes.

I was high or sleeping mostly.

My mom was in Africa then, helping people with Ebola and such.

She’s a nurse.

I emailed her how I was.

Not good.

But me being me, I didn’t want her to worry.

I was fine.

I would pull through or die trying.

She didn’t know the latter was what I had in mind.

She doesn’t know much.

About me

Like she does and she does not.

It’s complicated.

She knows what clothes I like.

But she doesn’t know how fucked up I am.

She told my dad.

He’s oblivious.

Of course she had told him.

He wouldn’t have put it together without her.

My dad and I talked on the phone.

I cried.

When do I not?

I talked to my sister some.

She’s seven years older than me.

She’s married.

She’s nice.

I was mean.

I told her she treated me more like her daughter or patient.

She’s a nurse, and very much like our mom.

She doesn’t realize sometimes that I’m her sister.

She’s so keen on having children.

I’m sure they’ll replace me once they come.

However.

My parents and sister are so unbelievably supportive.

My mom told me to pack up and head home.

My mental health was more important than school.

Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am to have my parents and my family.

Sometimes I wish that I was more unlucky.

That I had a worse family.

That they didn’t love me so much.

Sometimes I wish they were worse so that they wouldn’t miss me if I stopped existing.

Stopped breathing.

Stopped living.

Stopped being.

Stopped struggling for happiness.

I “withdrew” about six weeks into the fall 2016 semester.

After being home a month or so, I finally went to a “counselor.”

I was diagnosed with severe depression.

Prescribed anti-depressants.

And my doctor put my parents on babysitting duty.

Turned them into watchdogs, basically.

Humiliating.

I’ve pulled myself out of this before.

I’ve stopped cutting for years at a time.

I was eleven when I started.

I was in History class.

My sixth-grade volleyball coach and history teacher yelled at me.

From across the room.

While one of my classmates gave a presentation.

I was mortified.

I remember that day.

“Emily, stop cutting yourself!”

They called me Emo-ly after that.

By “they” I mean a few of my male classmates.

They teased me.

Taunted.

Ruined my innocence.

Robbed me of my naivety.

I kept on cutting until I was fifteen.

I was just a sad kid.

A little over two and a half years passed before I relapsed.

Yay me.

I got in a wreck while on my way from Galveston to Dallas to see my boyfriend at the time.

The beginning of October.

I also had been cheating on him.

I had realized I did not love him the way he loved me.

That I could not love him the way he loved me.

The girl I liked also did not like me back.

The girl I had cheated on him with.

My emotions were out of control.

I was out of control.

I’m still kind of out of control.

I was a sophomore in high school the last time I relapsed.

It was because of heartache.

Oh, youth.

His name was Aaron.

We had been dating on and off.

We had been fighting a lot.

I swear his mom still hates me.

We had a rocky relationship.

I relapsed.

Someone has asked me about my most recent scar.

Where I got it from.

“Oh.”

How it happened.

“Oh.”

Why.

“Oh…

You shouldn’t do that.”

I know.

I’ve been happy before.

I’ve wanted to be and feel alive before.

Why was this time so different?

I still don’t know.

But I’m still tired.

Always tired.

My therapist’s name is Shannon.

Nice woman.

Lots in common.

She’s gotten me through a lot.

I used to see my therapist every Monday.

I haven’t seen her in almost two weeks.

Last time I went this long, I was still wanting to die.

I don’t want to die now.

But it feels like it’s been so long since I’ve seen her.

My mom and I have probably had three to five fights in the span I haven’t seen Shannon.

Ellie doesn’t talk to me anymore.

I’ve picked up cigarettes too fast and too much.

So many things have happened.

I keep trying new drugs.

Drugs like Molly.

And acid.

And shrooms.

I’ve been stoned during therapy.

I’ve been lying to Shannon.

To Mom.

To everyone.

There’s more I can’t recall now.

It’ll fester though.

Everything festers inside me.

I’m like a glass bottle being filled with hot air.

And I don’t want to explode again.

I fear I won’t live if I explode again.

I fear what I will do.

I fear I will cut myself again.

That I will take too many pills.

That I will take “bad” drugs.

That I will purposefully walk into oncoming traffic.

That I will not survive myself.

Anti-depressants make me feel different.

But.

When I don’t take them on a schedule, it gets strange.

I have gotten dizzy for no reason.

I have seen things that aren’t there.

I have an active mind, but an idle corpse.

Body.

Stiff.

Whatever.

Yesterday in class, my professor was talking.

And then the room began to spin.

Spin is the wrong word.

Revolve.

Swirl.

Twirl.

Whirl.

Rotate.

Swivel.

Turned upside-down.

I thought I was going to faint.

My stomach was in my brain.

My brain was in my feet.

Nothing was right.

I was petrified.

I have only fainted twice in my life.

Once when I was incredibly sick.

I couldn’t walk without help.

I couldn’t keep fluids in.

And once when I was too high for my body to handle it.

We smoked a couple bowls.

Then took a hit of a vape that was straight from Colorado.

I collapsed and hit my head on a door frame.

Knocked unconscious.

Both scary, yes.

But nothing brought on this dizziness.

I am mentally ill, yes.

But anti-depressants should not make me sick.

I’ve also been having extra anxiety lately.

For people who don’t know what anxiety is like:

Anxiety is like having someone screaming at you at random times.

Scaring you shitless for several minutes.

Stressing you out.

Making you close your eyes and scream while you’re driving down a busy street.

It’s terrifying.

It’s mesmerizing.

Super fun.

However.

Music is calming.

And cigarettes.

I still get a buzz from them.

I have my heater on and my windows down when I smoke cigs.

I get goosebumps on my head.

Did you know goosebumps are called pilo erections?

Funny what you learn when your older sister is in nursing school.

If it’s not one crutch, it’s another.

When I was younger, I never thought I would do drugs.

I never thought I would smoke cigarettes.

I never thought I’d meet people off the internet.

Not like I do now.

All these men.

Sometimes women.

It’s dangerous.

The internet is dangerous.

Like me.

And what I’m capable of.

I guess we all turn out differently from what we think ourselves to be as children.

Life is so much harder than I thought it would be, honestly.

Everything is hard now.

If you fall asleep on the couch, you won’t wake up in your bed in the morning.

If you’re sick, you better make yourself some soup and email your professors and text your boss.

If you get in trouble, there are real consequences.

And there’s new pain.

More painful pain now.

Like loneliness.

And withdrawal.

And body image issues.

And the ever-prominent hangover that is my future.

And if I have one or not.

My other friend, Cole, and I joke about getting lung cancer together.

Once I offered him a meal or a pack of cigs because I like taking care of people.

I want people to be happy.

He chose cigs.

Crutch.

But lung cancer isn’t a joke by any means.

We both smoke cigarettes and pot and hookah and vape.

It’s like a game.

How many toxic things can you get in your lungs before you cough?

But death is a joke to my generation.

Have you noticed?

We joke about looking like potatoes.

And having the talent of a potato.

And just fucking BEING potatoes.

Why even do we refer to ourselves as potatoes?

Potatoes are so fucking good honestly.

But we joke about everything.

The more depressed a person is, the funnier they tend to be.

How fucked up is that?

I went to a comedy show for my best friend’s 21st birthday in January.

This guy called himself ugly I think.

I said, “Same!”

He squinted, looking at me.

Blinded by the stage lights.

“I mean, I learned to never argue with women.”

Some shit like that.

People laughed.

But this is what my generation does.

We take pictures of ourselves and make fun of it.

We make fun of people for wearing certain shoes or drinking brand coffee.

We make fun of everything.

And I don’t get why.

I wonder how I got here honestly.

I went to private school for nine years.

I was sheltered.

Raised Catholic.

Went to church camp.

Had a role model older sibling.

How did I turn out like this?

So sad?

So lacking in faith or hope of almost any sort?

So bent on not looking at the bigger picture because I’m too afraid of what it looks like?

I guess this is just who I am right now.

sad poetry
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About the Creator

Emily Welch

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