Thank you

I have felt it for weeks, if not longer, maybe months at this point. This aching feeling of being alone and lost, surrounded by shadows in a world; unknown to myself. I was lost and alone. I kept myself busy to mask the pain of my reality. Nearly twenty five. Currently unemployed. Alone, single, lost. I kept finding myself in a constant state of depression, but instead of dealing with the feelings that were being locked into my mind. I decided, as I usually do, to push it all to the back and I distracted myself with work. Not a job, no. I distracted myself by studying for a test, that had the power to either make me or break me. Failure was not an option and knowing this… I realized my biggest fear.

My biggest fear, is not death, or snakes, or spiders, or being lost. Nor is it being alone. My biggest fear is not being able to succeed and it haunts me like a ghost. No, a poltergeist. See once I feel like I am doing well, like I am okay, it creeps up on me again and again tearing at my limbs and crushing me down with doubt and depression. Depression is the void. It is the nothing. It’s the anchor that most days holds me to my bed and makes tells me that I am nothing, and every time I nearly believe it.

These four walls to my room, I have entombed myself in for months. Not leaving, not even moving, simply existing and surrounding myself with books full of knowledge that I felt that I could not grasp. These four walls, my prison cell and the stress of the test is my guardsman. He watches me and throws things on top of me like I am balancing the world on my back and slowly I am finding my way down to the floor. I am crushing under the pressure of my own mind. I tell myself. “I am good enough”, “I will get through this”. He laughs as he throws another brick upon my already over flowing load.

The lights went dark for a week before the test. I saw myself. Empty and broken. Lost in the darkness, unable to figure out where I was, but I was here, in my room. Alone. Then of course this light appeared and I know that it sounds cliche, but this I promise happened. He came in with a torch in my hand and he set the world ablaze and I got lost in his beauty. He believed in me when I didn’t fully believe in myself and helped take some of the load off my back. I asked what he wanted in return and he stated, “Nothing”.

The day before my test came and my nerves were too much to handle I found myself in flames dancing around a pile of unforeseen remains. I lost it. I lost someone I loved that was close and dear with me, she passed, her heart unable to bear the world any longer. I cried for her, gently as he whipped away my tears. I remembered how she believed in me like he did, this beautiful friend. Who was now carrying too much. So I took some of his load and I stacked it on my back like I have done for my entire life.

The day came and again I felt weighed down to the floor. I was broken and I was bruised and my bones began to show just how grotesque I had allowed myself to become. I looked in the mirror and I didn’t even see myself. This odd shaped being that stood before me in candle light. I knew not, of my own name. I felt so dead inside, so drained. Then I got the message. “You are going to be okay, no matter what I am proud of you. I love you best friend”. Those words echoed and I pulled myself together, I picked myself up off the floor. Using all my strength to put back on the skin suite that I call my body and dress it in something that made me look “Okay”. I got into the car and I drove. I drove closer and closer to the Hell that has been calling my name for months, to the Hell that had to power to destroy everything in my world that I had worked so hard to create.

I walked into the room with the spinning chair I used to play on as a kid. I sat upon that thrown, tied down with no support. No air to breathe in a space claustrophobic enough to hear everything that was happening in my mind. I was asked each question and I thought hard to answer each one nearly breaking under the pressure of the brick on my back and the pitchfork held closely to me as I stood before the abyss of my own making.

I waited…

The test now finished I heard the words echo “You failed”, and I thought, “what now?”

I walked from the abyss, with my head down, not knowing the truth, could my mind be playing games? I left the abyss, I lost sight of the void. I crawled to the man at the desk, who handed me a paper that could determine either my safety and my flight or my eternal damnation.

I crawled out of the building past the gates and to the chariot. When I finally looked down…

I cried..

In dark Bold letters the paper read: YOU PASSED

Immediately the bricks that I stacked up ontop of myself fell off to the ground, turning to dust as they each, one by one, touched the black asphalt below me. I did it, but I didn’t do it alone. I had someone that believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself and that has me so grateful to be alive. See sometimes in our lives, we get so lost in our own minds, that we forget that we are not alone here. Sometimes our cells are locked tight, by us, and our fears. But, there is always at least one person. That will help to light our way.