Niagara Falls

serotonin

I didn't understand what the word 'depressed' fully meant until I was in the sixth grade

Coming home from school one day in early spring, my hair bouncy in curls and a deep grin right above my chin, I decided to call my best friend at the time on my landline

I bring the phone to my ears to listen for any noise, expecting to hum the dial-tone, when I heard the following:

"The final stages of her cancer are finally coming to a close...in a couple of months the struggle will finally be over."

She, being my badass grandmother with with the wisdom of an elephant and strength of a lion, was deciding to cut the chord on her treatment and begin the end of her life

I listen to my mother discuss funeral details and I hear her voice break from the sobs every now and then, my right hand vibrating with fear she would hear mine almost identical

For the next month and a half, I spend every night slowly falling into a trance of anger and hated and sadness.

I hated my grandma for deciding to leave me, I hated the hospital for letting her, I hated my mother for planning her god damn funeral

But mostly, I hated myself.

Because somehow it was my fault right? I was the grandchild who always talked her ears off to the point where they began to leak a deep scarlett

The one who never ate for fear she would get mad at me for doing so.

The one who hid away from my cousins at family events for past reasons and because they honestly all scared the shit out of me.

The one who didn't say 'I love you' enough times in the hospital when I squeezed her hand so hard our hands would merge into one.

Everyday became harder to move or breathe or think or simply take notes off the whiteboard

Because honestly... What was the point of life if all it leads to is death?

when my grandmother passed about three months later... I felt a strange numbness in my chest

like a black hole swallowed every night i cried in a hospital where the only sounds instead of my sniffles were the beeps of a heart monitor

instead i felt..empty
Nothing i could do would fight death.
No tear i sprung or wall i punched was going to bring her back

Instead i fantasized about my turn being next

What would funeral look like?
Who would actually attend?
would my mother cry or complain about the bills?

What if i killed myself?

The miniscule thought became a plague that infected every section of my brain.

My dreams flooded with me tying the knot with my one true love
a noose

My mind floated off to space on what it would be like to just
Dunk my head in a pool and never come up

Or class field trips on bridges where i could "accidently" fall and snap my neck on the way down

i would sit down with school counselors
who would call my parents
who would call me

but the word depression was never used
It was always "hormones"
or "attention seeking"

because this is all teenagers are supposed to think... Right?