The death of Me

1.

Some of these words are taken from my personal entries. This book is my experience with mental health, and I'm not invalidating how anyone else's works.

TRIGGER WARNING (self harm, ed, drug abuse, emotional abuse) THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRETY OF THE BOOK.

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[Wednesday 11:32pm]

"I didn't even know she was depressed"
Is something Amayah imagined people would say if she committed suicide.

Which is ironic because a part of her depression was making sure no one realized to take away the burden of other people worrying about her health when she didn't even care about her health.

She bit her bottom lip in pain as she made another scar across her upper thigh and for a second the noises from downstairs went mute, her anxiety shifted its focus and stopped running across the room, along with her heart rate, and she placed her finger on the red on her thigh, brushing the liquid to draw inanimate objects before it went dry.

Sometimes seeing blood relieved her. One of the first time she realized this was when her mom and her were out grocery shopping. After they had finished and they were packing the groceries into the car she accidently hit herself on the corner of the boot on her temple and felt a sharp pain and felt blood. This was when relief washed over her and it was because the blood validated her pain. It wasn't like tripping or falling where you could just claim it hurt, it was actually evidential that she was hurt. Her bleeding meant that the pain existed and her mom could see it.

Maybe its what happens to your mind after you've gone through so much pain just to be told its all in your head. That none of it was real and it was all made up by your anxiety disorder. And sometimes that's how Amayah saw it when she cut. The blood was proof it's not just in her head-she's hurting outside as well.

Her phone rang on the floor next to her, pausing her playlist from the speaker on her bedside table and she got up to set it to radio so it would continue to cut off the noise from downstairs and answered the caller ID that had her heart slightly racing.

"Hey Nzuri"
Nzuri meant pretty in Swahili, his home language.

She had heard the word a thousand times thanks to his mom growing up but she blushed regardless.

"Hey Khalil" she tried but failed to contain her smile. And he knew just as much he had a way with warming back up to her. You wouldn't even question that they hadn't spoken for a week after they had gotten into an argument the last day before their school break.

"Asleep?" He asked already knowing the answer.

"Am I ever"

"You okay?" He knew she struggled with insomnia but not to what extent nor why, with her being stubbornly impassive sometime.

"Yeah, I'm fine" She answered, looked at her thighs and reached for her pajama shorts tossed on her bed and laid down after placing them on.

"Go to sleep after this call," he asked, noticing it was almost three thirty am.

"No sir, I have two episodes of Archive 81 I can't afford to not watch right now"

"Lets watch them together some other day"

"You hate horrors"

"You'll hold my hand" She smiled even though she hated that he always figured out how to make her forget how sad he'd previously made her feel.

"Is there a reason you called Mr. Ahmad?"

He shuffled nervously in his bed, his flirts never got him far with Amayah. "I wanted to ask if you're free next weekend?"