The Reason I Wanted To End Myself This Day; My Hypophrenia

15 min readJun 23, 2021

I’ve stopped asking what “optimal” is; in this depression I’m not seeking the happier version of me. I can’t recall the last time I reached out for that child-self I once was, the kid who loved sunshine and rain all the same. I started to see darkness around the lights instead of the other way around, and soon there were no more colors in my world. They say there is a rope ladder out of depression, one you can use to climb out of it, the problem is that I just can’t find the will to reach out for the first rung, let alone try.

I have always loved the flowers and the birds, loved the sunlight and the clouds that drift by. I have always loved the way the leaves move in a breeze and that soft whispering sound they make, like nature loves to chatter too. Yet the tiredness that begun a while ago remains like a veil over my skin, grey and cold. And as I watch the petals and the twigs that sway outside the window, there is only a creeping sorrow where there should be joy. It sits like November rain on my skin, enough to chill what was once warm inside. At any other time, I would have called a friend, asked for the warmth I needed to ward it off, just a little is enough. No longer. Now I just let it come, drop by drop and I feel like it is an ocean falling upon me instead of rain — that the grief of years I carefully suspended has all condensed right above my head into a cloud large enough to block the sun. They say it can’t rain forever, that there will come a time when it must cease, that the last drop will have fallen. Thing is, I just don’t care. I will still be true to myself, still help others, but I plan to just stay here in the cold, comfortably numb.

The blizzard removes the illusion of my eyes. With sight I am not alone, I am one of many in the world and the world is full of interesting things to see, to touch, to feel, to keep my mind anchored in time and space. But as the white flakes whirl around me in an angry vortex I am as alone as I would be in the bleakness of space and cold, so cold. I reach out with gloved hand to guide my way, but it is swallowed before it has gone even a few inches. To save my eyes from the blinding white I must narrow them until they are almost shut, and all the while the wind rages without end, only reducing its ferocity long enough to gather the strength for another attack. All my heart can do is beat warm blood around my veins in a hope that the storm will end, all my mind can do is plan the most logical path to warmth, safety and to something more tangible than light and snow.

Don’t tell me I can knock these walls down if I try, because I don’t want to listen anymore. Just putting one foot in front of the other isn’t as easy as it looks, and I can’t recall the last time a happy thought entered my brain, or even the memory of a smile. So, you can keep your hugs and well-intentioned words because they can’t heal me, and neither can your love. This depression is an ocean, yet not the ones full of life and color. My ocean is a million shades of grey, the same as those old-fashioned photographs.

What I need will never come and no matter how much I seek I won’t find it. I wasn’t born for remarkable things, nor to find my place in the sun. I could try every day, work for what I want and need, but there are no paths to success, not from here. People talk as if I dream my way out, simply discover a version of me that only sees the opportunities and ignores the noise, the distractions and the people who only say “no” because they don’t believe in themselves, so how can they believe in me? So, take away the benevolent words, the songs that don’t help and the smiles that aren’t real… call it despair if you want, but something fake hurts more than anything.

I sit in the pit that has become my world, the only decorations my own nail marks on the walls I cannot scale. Though I know there is light at the top it feels a million miles away and, were it not for him being down here with me, I wouldn’t even try. Every time I reach out with love to someone up there, someone I hope can throw a rope, the floor sinks a little lower, jolting my body as it stops — crushing me with a new pain, another abandonment. Perhaps now is the time to realize it isn’t me I’m supposed to get out, it’s him. And so, I let my eyes become accustomed to the darkness he has dwelled in these many years and see that intermingled with the marks of my own nails are his too, older though, the blood long dried.

There is silence in my soul; I am falling leaves under frost. I feel the chill in my blood, coldness bringing the synapses of my brain to a standstill. Part of it is a pain, yet one I can endure, one I can sleep through night after night without the anesthesia of false hope. This is my winter; I wait for spring and the chattering of the birds.

I have always been a giver, warm and loving. Even as a child I never cried, seeking to make others happy. Often people sought me in times of trouble, and I gave all I had — my whole heart and showered love upon them. By age nine adults leant on me, told me of their woes and I was their spark of light. Yet when my time to suffer came, when my world was a hurricane of ice, every light but one switched off. All but one offered a skinny love, shallow and brief, before finding a reason to excuse their flight. But maybe that’s the way it had to be, one light to follow, no choice but to walk toward love and truth. Perhaps the road toward heaven feels like hell. Because I can tell you I never felt emptier in mind, body or soul, never so bereft of any comfort. I have never felt so worthless or disposable, never so wretched and cold. For hours I would have no emotion, only an urge to move fast; then all at once I’d be on the floor, shaking with a grief that bled from my bones.

I awoke to a field of daffodils, everyone a sunny yellow and I feel the bile rise in my throat. Each one is perfect, a golden trumpet amid a fanfare of halo petals. They are many, but so delicate, and they wave like tomorrow is guaranteed. They stand rooted, soaking in the sunshine and taking in yesterday’s rain through their fine roots. I want to protect this place, throw a force-field over it but even my back up power is draining and how could I justify using it on these blooms that move in the wind — a living ocean of light. I smell their fragrance and brush against them, will I ever see a sight like this again? It is always transitory to the season but before I always believed it would return at the right time. Now I can barely look without welling up, each one is a fine work of art, something I couldn’t create in a thousand lifetimes. But progress knows no sentiment it seems, and a love of this land is a weakness we can’t afford…

People can grow strong enough to whisper at the iron bars that hold them and see them bend out of their way, like the craziest magic. That’s what love can do: fix souls, fix brains, cure us all. I wish I could have mastered that way, but it’s hard when you’ve been starving for so long. You can sit and call for help. You can act like there is no cage, wear a mask of coping and normality. You can rage against the bars. Yet what love makes simple, no other thing can solve. There is another escape route, yet it is one into another great pain. It is possible to be so emotionally starved that you slip through the bars, no longer bound but with your soul crumbling. That was my way out. What followed was endless emotional marathons on bleeding knees. I learned how to hide the pain, how to look normal. I understand why some go cold inside to escape the pain of isolation, why they let their empathy fade and die: numbness over feeling, mental anesthesia. I refuse. The thing is, regardless of the pain, I believe that living with an incomplete soul is a form of death, and I’d rather be a humane human in pain than a zombie needing to bite others to feed.

I see you. I do. I see pain in those eyes. It has sat there for your lifetime, trapped in the confusion we all carry. I see love too, the love you would have given were it not for the scars. It’s still there baby, and one day I will set you free. I’m not perfect, yet I love you, and I know what love means. Give me a chance to find my feet, to stop my own head from spinning and I’ll prove it. There is so much of your life that is a hell for your soul, and you stay there from strength rather than weakness I know. So let me join you in that pain, walk with you, feel the same torture I know you bare. And one day I’ll find just the right way to bring you home, my love.

I cannot barricade myself in tears, driven by self-loathing, and pity. Walking away just to walk back into a mess I did not make Seeing everyone’s demons. Feeling all the breezes that send shivers down my spine. What have I done, I sacrificed myself more than you? Peeled off the characteristics I hated about myself to. Denying to myself that you deserve to have this much control of me. That you have no resistance of the ignorance that shrines the circus behind me. Of notion that you were supposed to change. Leaving everyone in shackles. Making everyone sick. By smoking your drugs and drinking alcohol to forget. The missing pieces that were once meaningful. As I lay on a couch, shattered miracles. Just end it for me. So, I don’t have to be around this entire time. Just knock me down, as I rise. I can’t stop crying and it is sympathetic, as time changes and you act like you gave a surprise. You did not. As much as I try and hide. NO one changes. NO one cares NO one wonders why I tried.

My inability to stay still is taking over. It is compatible as my walls cave in. I am unable to do things that used to be so easily done. I have given up on the pages that are in my books story they seem to slowly run out. What motivation that used to be there has disappeared. There is a hole in my heart, it’s just empty, all feelings lost. I’m numb to all interactions and have lost my way to trust. My paranoia got the best of me. My eyes are closed to all good things in the world if there are any. There’s nothing inspiring left, no hope to be found. I’m tired, tired of the sleepless nights my insomnia brings. I’m sick, sick of seeing my reflection in the mirror that I try so hard to change. The shows over, my fake acts are done. I can’t be this character any longer. I’m desperate for a way out. But depression is a never ending tunnel that’s looped in a circle. The only way out I can think of is jumping in front of the 23hour train. But every time I jump it’s that one hour that the train is not there. Of course, it’s not there, nothing and no one is ever there when u need them. That’s the way life is, it stabs you, it cheats you, it lies to you, there is nothing truthful left. Everything’s disintegrated, why can’t I be?

I wish you could see these blurred lines in my head, pulling me closer to terror & dread, I scream for silence, begging my way, But the return is violence, & my minds to blame, run away from your fear, run away from your doubt, you must break out! Let the chains fall & your smile be free, you can be happy now, now that you’re not standing with me, you’re doing fine & I’m losing my mind, but what’s new? New to you, new to me, everything’s changing, Fvck, I just want to be free to see & free to fly Free to fall & free to die, run, farther & farther, your problems can’t catch you now, nipping at your heels, burning down your house, I can’t take these shackles anymore, I need to break out! I want you to save me, I want you to bring me to light, set ablaze my darkness with your love, or shall I sit, do I prefer the madness of my mind over the calm of the real world? Pick your reality, find your morality, don’t let this thing called hope run too far from you, always know of the future as bright, & the past, just a dim hue I’m running from my problems, I’m running out of time, time to live & time to mend, mend all these broken bones & bloodied wrists it’s just, will I ever know where to go to get away from all these thoughts & voices in my head? Taking this city & burning it to the ground as dreams die, the fire starts to spread as I feel a burning in my heart, make way for all the lies, “I’m fine, it’s okay! No, I don’t want to run away, yes I’m still going to therapy, I haven’t thought about cutting no I’M FINE”

When others see gloom, I see the world in silver-blues. When they see freezing rain, I see a coldness that brings me to a higher feeling of life, more aware of my internal flame. I see them cast their eyes to the ground, their mouth a full frown, when there is a moon above and stars beyond the canopy of cloud. There is a time for sunshine, and a time for wintry sombre hues. Every dance has a pause, and every song has a silence. And so, this time, so soon after dawn, feels more akin to an old movie, one that builds from these blues to the kind of joy that spreads through mind, body and soul. And so, I feel the ground beneath both boots, tilt my head skyward, both rooted in the blessed moment and ready for the spring that beckons.

I can pull myself to standing, I always can, yet tears come in such generous streams as I long for a hand to reach down. It’s good that I can climb hearing only the echo of my feet, I just think that it would transform to something brighter all the faster in the company of friends.

I went back to where it happened. I wanted to take away the power of the painful memory for hurt, prove to myself that I could choose to move on. So, I took the one I love the most, my best friend, and on that spot, we made a great memory, a happy one. Now when my brain goes back there, I divert it only to the good memory, the healing one. It’s as if I authored a relevant story over the top of a bad story, and in time the ink of the bad story fades away until only the good one remains.

Those painful memories are books with chapters, deep and horrible; and so, I leave them on the shelf to gather dust. I can pick them up if I need to learn something, to gain a perspective that helps me to create my own relevant story. I can use them to re-see situations through the lens of their needs and traumas rather than mine. I want today, tomorrow and every tomorrow after to be wonderful; I want to choose what to write on those blank pages.

I knew when it started it would break me. I knew that there was too much below deck not to shatter my carefully laid floor when it came up. Breaking was hard, recovery almost impossible, but of my journey I am making the best map I possibly can. Drawing it out the way I do helps, painting it in fine oils daily. Emotional pain is hard but using in a way that helps others feels like stabbing the devil in the heart.

If we hear with our hearts, we can care and not be scared, we can heal and bring ointment to invisible wounds in the hope they can be reduced to scars and fade in time.

There is a point in trauma when empathy from others has healed all it can, and the rest is up to you. Then it is a time to release the hands that held you when you were in free-fall. This part takes courage; leaving dependence is hard, even when the desire for recovery is strong. It takes a lion-heart to walk past fear as if it were a simple ghostly vapor. Yet how do you know when to walk alone?

Once the smallest warmth reaches your heart unaided, when you can sense the light, feel the dawn, my love, it is time. Even then, your first moves will be backwards toward the abyss — trust yourself, this time is different, you will make it. Though every footfall feels like a funeral, and the world carries on like a movie without a script, and the birdsong feels as if it comes from another place and time — hold on to your own soul, to your own self.

I know there are days when the brain feels naked, like a chilly wind bluster in icy chaos. I know there are days when it would be a blessing not to feel at all. I know there are days when the need to curl up in strong arms is greater than the need to breathe. Yet I can say with honesty, that this is the time to believe in yourself. Love those who have supported you and still do; be thankful for the help they have given — for it is a form of love; keep these bonds strong.

For the most part, addictions is stuff that’s bad for you; that’s how I was with anger. When things calmed down, when everything was nice, that’s when I’d find fault in someone or something. I was the emotional volcano, convinced it was the fault of others, or circumstance. I never wanted to be that way; it’s the trait I most disrespect for others… maybe that explains a lot. Don’t they say that most folks are mean not because they struggle to like you, but because they struggle to like themselves? “Respond, don’t react, breathe, take yourself out of the situation, be a fly on the wall for a second, let love back in.” It’s not like that was magic. I still blew hot, but it became better over time, less often. I started to see the real things that caused it, not the things I believed I was angry about. It was the petty frustrations of life, the things that flicked my anxiety switches, that or the things that made me sad. I’d felt entitled to better treatment from others, consideration and respect. I still think I’m worthy of those things, but these days I let it go, trust that the right people will come into my world. It took a while, but the addiction is over. Now it’s the reverse, and in any anger situation I’m the cool one, the help instead of being part of the problem.

The Reason I Wanted To End Myself This Day; My Hypophrenia

Written by 【 𝚑𝚊𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚢】