Angel of Depression

yeah... i like it but i think i need to add more to the ending.....

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I was unaware of the bustling people surrounding me. A teenage boy, obviously in a hurry to get someplace unimportant, passed me as he sprinted down the New York street. I ignored him, barley feeling his rough hands on my shoulder. I was too immersed in my dejected thoughts to care.

The gray streets and buildings reflected my mood. That’s all I felt inside. Gray. Like my whole life was just a meaningless blur of black and white. Is this depression? I don’t know, I’ve never been depressed before. But since the accident it seems like a dark veil is covering me, cutting me off from the rest of the world. My friends won’t even talk to me.

I had always thought that depressed people were just shameless humans who thought the world owed them something. Like just because their boss would not give them a raise or their boyfriend broke up with them, the whole world needed to know. Just because you can’t seem to find a reason for life doesn’t mean you should stop living. That was my philosophy. But now, on these dejected New York streets, I could not find a grain of truth in that. I thought that just because you didn’t have a reason, you should not end your life. But that was because I wasn’t forced in to that position without a reason. I had always had a reason. My life was easy. But now that reason was dead, and through that, I am now dead.

Why should I go on now that my one reason is gone? What was the point? And yet, I could not force myself to end my life. I had tried, oh many times, I had tried. But as I looked off that bridge or at my reflection in the shiny metal, I could still not bear to part from my body. Something held me back, but what was it?

It wasn’t the world itself or the people I knew. It wasn’t my home or my dog. It certainly wasn’t my family, not anymore. But then what was it? Life, itself. I was depressed, yes. But I still could not bear to end my life. Life was so precious, so strange, so warm. And I was not ready to end mine. Perhaps I was a coward, scared of pain and death. But then aren’t we all? Isn’t everyone scared of ending that life within your body? To stop the pumping of your heart, the beating of your veins. To never gaze upon the stars or shade your eyes from the sun. To never feel the whisper of the autumn breeze or the chill of the winter rain. To never again experience the little marvels of life that we have become so arrogant towards.

It is all too much, once you have the point of the blade at your wrist. You suddenly think of these wonders and stop. You can’t go on because all you want, more than anything else, more than death itself, is to once again experience them. You want that chill on your face, the whisper in your ear. You want to shade your eyes to the blasting fire, to gaze at the galaxies millions of light years away. You want to hear the pumping and feel the beats that your body makes to keep you alive. And suddenly, you can’t take it. You don’t want to stop that beating, you don’t want the blood to stop flowing in your veins. We only realize how precious these things are once we are about to loose them.

My mood sunk lower and lower as I ambled through the crowded streets and honking taxis. I wasn’t aware of anything. I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t hear. I don’t think I could even see half of the time. I was just there, a solitary figure with no meaning. No one would care if I threw myself off Brooklyn Bridge. No one would care if I never again filled my lungs with air. Solitary, alone. That’s all I was and all I’ll ever be.

I passed through the groups of people, each with their own goals, their own dreams. The lucky ones. They had a reason. They would never feel my pain.

And it wasn’t even pain. No, I hadn’t felt pain since the funeral. The moment his face was covered, my pain had turned into a dull emptiness. I felt nothing. All the feeling I ever had was gone and would never return. I would never feel pain or hate or despair. Just as I would never again feel joy or love. Emptiness held me, eating away at my heart.

The deeper I hid inside myself, the more the emptiness engulfed me. And that’s all I wanted, to hide. No one cared, no one would ever care. My friends won’t even talk to me.

A taxi zipped by me, careering into the traffic. Water splashed onto the sidewalk and people screamed in disdain. My hair and clothes were drenched. I fingered a strand of my wet hair. It looked almost black. Just like yesterday. Just like three months ago.

All we wanted was fun. We were young and ignorant and he had just gotten a new car for graduation. He told me how fast it could go, that he could hit sixty miles in four seconds. He was trying to impress me. All he wanted was to impress me.

Jamie thought it was bull. They got into an argument over it. Kristen told them to shut up and race. So that’s what they did.

It was raining. Black clouds covered the expanding sky, a dark omen for what was to come. The hard drops pelted down. We were drenched in a matter of seconds. My hair was black.

The rain didn’t stop them. They lined their cars up on the road. He gave me a peck on the cheek and told me to wait at the finish line. I smiled and told him I would. I waited but he never came.

Kristen saw it. She said as they went around the turn he lost control. The road was slick with rain. There was nothing anyone could do. His car was wrapped around the pole; the shiny red paint was scratched. I remember staring at it for a long time. I fingered a strand of my wet hair. It looked almost black.

He was dead before the ambulance got there. He was dead before he hit the pole, dead before he started the engine. My hair was black.

It’s funny how someone close to you can die, and all you think about is a random fact. He died. I knew he was dead. I knew it before the medics called it out. There was so much blood. My hair was black.

I felt the pain after. We were sitting in the hospital and my parents found me. My dad was yelling. My mom was crying. It crept up on my, like a tiger about to pounce. It was all I could feel. I didn’t even notice when my dad beat me later that night. I was too far gone, it didn’t matter anymore.

The funeral was the Friday after graduation. They had a ceremony beforehand. People told me they were sorry, that they hoped I would feel better. I didn’t hear them. Kristen tried to get me to talk. She gave up when I didn’t even look at her. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem to care.

I saw his face in the casket. They had cleaned it up and there wasn’t any blood. He looked dead.

It was when they finally buried him that it came. The pain left me and the emptiness moved in. People said their good byes and told me they were sorry. They didn’t seem to realize it didn’t matter. He was dead.

I could think about it. After the funeral I could think about it. The pain didn’t come; it was just empty inside me. Thinking about it didn’t hurt anymore. I went on with my life. But I never forgot it. I remembered the screech of tires and the scratched paint. I remember the blood. My hair was black.

But it didn’t hurt anymore. No. But the emptiness was worse. I wished I could feel, I wished the pain would engulf me once more. I'd rather go mad with pain than go mad with this empty gap in my heart.

I wanted to go back. I wanted to tell him that racing was stupid, that he didn’t have to prove anything. That it didn’t matter. But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. All I had now was memories and an empty hole. It drove me mad, I wanted to die. But I couldn’t.

The streets were quiet. I could still hear the car horns blaring in the distance, but they were now like a far off memory, like tires screeching on the blacktop. There were only a couple pedestrians walking on the other side of the street, dragging their feet and hunching their shoulders against the winter chill. They looked so sad and tired. I probably looked worse.

I rounded the corner and found myself looking upon a wide alley. Two men sat next to a dumpster playing cards. Their hair was greasy and unwashed and their rugged coats had holes at the elbows. Three children played further down, similarly clad. One didn’t even have shoes. Dirty brown socks covered her feet.

The two men glanced up quickly when they heard my footsteps, but upon seeing me, they resumed their game. The children were laughing and throwing something between them. It looked like they were playing monkey-in-the-middle. The girl yelled as the two boys tossed the can back and forth, back and forth. They laughed at her pitiful attempts to catch it and she was smiling the whole time.

She had so little. She didn’t even have shoes on her feet. She probably slept on the streets at night. But she didn’t seem to care. She was making the best of it and having fun.

She was probably an orphan with no one to care for her. She never had a mother to hold or a dad to kiss good night. But she seemed so happy.

She suddenly turned away from the boys and looked at me. Her eyes were so huge and innocent. I stared back. And she smiled.

She smiled and the veil was suddenly ripped away from me, the veil that hid me from my friends, the veil that hid me from myself. It was like the building tension in my heart had suddenly snapped. The pain that had been locked up for so long rushed through me like a flood.

I ran. I didn’t know I was running until I was far away from the girl, leaving her behind, trying to leave myself behind. I wanted to run away and never look back. I didn’t ever want to see myself again.

Tears flowed down my cheeks in a silent torrent. I hadn’t cried in so long.

I finally stopped. My legs screamed in protest and I finally fell to the ground. I was shaking. It took me a while to realize the shaking was an effect of my crying. I was sobbing openly now. I didn’t care if anyone saw me. I just let the pain engulf me and I didn’t think of anything else. He was dead. My life was dead.

My tears spilled into the puddle in front of me, disturbing the clear surface. With every ripple a new wave of pain washed over me. I didn’t fight it.

The tears slowed and the ripples became less frequent. The pain subsided into a dull throb in my heart. My body stopped shaking.

I found myself staring into the puddle as the surface smoothed out. I saw a pale faced girl with stringy brown hair and dull eyes staring vacantly back at me. He eyes were red and puffy and she had streaks on her cheeks.

It had been a long time since I had seen myself so clearly. A dark veil had covered me, hiding me from everyone else. I hadn’t realized it was also hiding me from myself. I saw myself in the reflection but I was a stranger. She wasn’t the same girl who three months ago was talking to her friends about college. She wasn’t the same girl who had been carefully planning her future and anticipating moving away from her family. She wasn’t the same girl who until three months ago had had a life. And I wanted that girl back… I wanted to go to college… I wanted to have a life again… I wanted to move on.

A single tear slid from my cheek and fell into the puddle. It sent a slow ripple along the smooth surface, obscuring the girl’s face. And I knew what I had to do. I had to leave this all behind. I would restart my long delayed life. I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget. It would be a long hard road and I would always have that sliver of pain and emptiness in my heart. But it wouldn’t engulf me anymore. I wouldn’t let it rule my life. That tear would be the last.

I got up slowly and dusted the little stones and dirt from my hands. I stared one last time at the reflection in the puddle. I smiled and turned away, heading for the nearest subway. I left my angel of depression behind, drowning in her tears.