Miriam Tellez (she/her) // Contributor
JJ Eng (they/them) // Illustrator
The days are all the same: endless, heavy, boring. There’s no sadness nor happiness. Just a sense of hopelessness that lives rent free with me. Every little thing requires superhuman effort.
The mere act of living feels like carrying a body that died long time ago. I just can’t recall when all this started, and I don’t think it’s ever going to end.
Only one of my friends knows what’s going on. She tries to make me feel better. The advice is always the same, though: “you need to talk about this with someone, Miriam”
Usually, people don’t ask if something is wrong. And even when they do, what should I say? “Oh well, I just feel like I am inherently worthless, something evil and rotten is consuming me from the inside and I feel like I am, in all the sense of the word, doomed and bound to death”
What answer you give to that? Who am I to vent my feelings like this?
My world is confined to a room, one friend, many ignored messages, fake smiles and my phone screen.
Is this all I could ever be?
There are two things that I have always considered essential to my existence: reading and studying.
I knew something was wrong and started to worry more when I considered dropping out of university. Me, the same girl that cried tears of joy with my mother when I got accepted.
But I knew I needed help when I tried to recall the last book that I read.
I couldn’t
I can’t really explain… I just know that for me, reading was being alive.
I was dying.
I was no longer a religious person. God was a weird concept for me.
“Only the weak, the broken ones need a god” That’s what I used to think.
And I was there, miserable, weak and broken. Perhaps God could help.
But God heals and gives comfort to the desperate souls.
I was a corpse. Inside of me was nothing but a painful void. Soulless.
Still, I tried
“God… remind me that I am alive, could you?”
The silence hit me like a bullet in the temple.
I feel the void swallowing me entirely and I can’t take this anymore.
I promise myself that I will find a way out.
My first therapy session was two weeks after that day. I managed to keep myself together.
I was preparing myself mentally for it. But the point of therapy, for me, was letting my guard down.
“So, Miriam. How can I help you, what is going on?”
I was not prepared.
I collapse right there and then, spitting out every single detail of my pain. I allow myself to be honest because even if I wanted to lie, I can’t hold it anymore, and the emotions are like a waterfall. For a moment, I felt stupid and dramatic, but the truth is that I was tremendously desperate, I didn’t care about anything in that first session. I was hopeless, this was a matter of living or dying. I needed some kind of salvation. I am in the hands of whoever this person is, because I don’t trust mine anymore.
They notice it.
Therapy is not a place to get nice advice but a deep dive into yourself, and most of the time, for me, was a direct confrontation with my own thoughts. It’s hard to admit that you are broken, but harder to recall when and how. But it is worth it, I swear.
The good thing is that you don’t have to be that way anymore.
Some sessions are better than others. Some days I feel hope. Some others, the idea of having a different life when I am not depressed feels just impossible, happiness seems like a foreign land to me.
I keep going
This is not all I will ever be.
Finally, I feel alive again. The war against my thoughts is over. I need to remember everything I learned in those sessions.
When times start to get rough, I remind myself a couple of things:
Don’t be confused, this sadness is not tied to your blood. You are not condemned.
You’ll realize it, I promise you: you will.
Never forget that you are alive. Don’t allow yourself to become a walking corpse, a soulless
skeleton. Hold on to everything that reminds you that you are still alive.
You need to get out of your mind. Start by getting out of that room.
You got this.
-Miriam <3