20 Confessions of One Clinically Depressed

Confession 01: I am Depressed

                                                      Confessions 01: I am Depressed

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The letter sits on my dressing room table.

It's simple parchment, torn out of my Calculus notebook and scribbled on with my one and only chewed up black ink pen. I know what it says, down to each painful dirty detail. I know what my aunt's expression will be - frozen in cataclysmic shock - before they turn to my body hidden by my bed.

I know all of that, yet I can't help but cast it a furtive glance, almost as if, deep within me, I'm terrified it will fall. It contains everything that I need to pass on, everything that needs to be said, the final setting of the record.

While I'm alive, I'm speechless. In death, I'm outspoken.

At least, that's what I'm counting on.

I am depressed.

There. I said it. It's written, too, but I thought I'd let you know, since I'm not going to read you the letter. Now that the ugly truth has been exposed, written where any prying eye can see it, there's really not much that I can do. Not that I care, anyway. They're just words. They can't do much but form the basis of our society, dictate people, things, religions, whatever you want.

I look into the dressing room mirror, my letter haunting the corner of my vision. I take my features in one last time; who knows, this may or may not be the last time that I will see myself.

I guess that's what I'm hoping for. I'm tired of being haunted by my own ghost.

My long, dark hair, highlighted from the time I've spent in the sun as a life guard, is glossy and slung over my shoulder. My blue eyes, so vivid even with the partial light of my bathroom illuminating them, hold nothing but shattered promises and hopelessness.

I study my dead eyes.

It's amazing how the eyes are the window to the soul. I've managed to control my actions so well, school my facial features into the expected expression to my shrink, but I've never been able to manipulate my eyes and make them lie like I have my other extremities.

I've never been a believer, but I would like to know whether or not there will be mirrors in Hell, or wherever I'll go.

I don't want to go to a place and still see myself.

If I could never look again at my face, I would be fine. It's because of my face – because of my goddamn beauty – that I'm here, teetering on this edge, crying out with a hopelessness that will never be heard until I'm gone. Because I've tried. I've fought. And I'm fucking tired of all of it.

I take it all in. I look so much like my mother that it hurts. Right down to the high cheekbones and the curve of my jaw. I'm a reincarnation of the one person, who, when she was here, was the only person who understood and who cared.

" She's in a fragile state, Miranda, leave her the hell alone." I hear my uncle's voice permeate through the thin wall, and I know that my Aunt had once again marched across the living room to my door, intent to intrude once more.

Suddenly, a knock jerks me. "Katia?" comes Miranda's nasely voice. "Katia, what the hell are you doing?"

Anger, unheeded and white-hot, surges through me. "Nothing, ass!" I scream, releasing my tension. "I'm fucking reading. Leave me the fuck alone!"

I know I've frozen her, shocked her. I can picture her, her hand hovering uncertainly above the wood on my door, her face pinched up in disgust. Something incomprehensible – probably cursing me to hell and back – floats through the door and then she retreats.