You Won't Even Realize

It starts slow, you don't even realize that it’s happening. 

You stop combing your hair and blame it on the rush you were in to leave for work or school.

You stop taking your medications, and blame it on forgetting to pick them up from the pharmacy.

You stop taking your time to sing and think in the shower and you make sure that you get out of the falling water as quickly as you can.

You fall out of your sleep schedule.

You start to stay up all night.

You start to keep yourself alive with coffee, because you stop feeling hungry.

You start taking the drive to work and school in silence, because the music doesn’t make your heart smile anymore. 

You stop praying for the work and school day to be over, because you know that as soon as you leave you will have to take another drive in silence as the world goes on around you. 

You realize, out of nowhere, at three a.m. when you are downing your first of many cups of coffee for the day. A morning coffee meant to refresh you from last night’s sleep, that you are drowning. 

So you start forcing yourself to brush your teeth and hair and to pick up your medications and you try to think of ways to save yourself while you are in the shower. But you get out of the shower and you wrap yourself in a towel to sink to the bathroom floor and you let yourself cry.

You don't know how to help yourself though. 

You don't know how to ask for help, because you are ashamed that you have let yourself become this seemingly irreparable mess

And with a heavy heart you pick up a pen and you start to write, you write about the good times and the bad, the happiness and the sad and you don't stop until your mind goes blank. 

Then your best friend calls and you pretend that you haven’t been avoiding their calls, that you have just been busy. 

And they tell you just how much they miss you. 

In that moment you are only thinking about what you have written. 

You make small talk until they finally hang up and you are left alone again with what you have written. 

You look around at your unkempt house and you find yourself at your lowest point. 

But the hardest part is when you push yourself up off of the floor and you leave your house to go and find someone who can help you fix yourself. Who can help you understand the way you are feeling and who will reassure you that you are not the only one feeling this way. 

You will still feel like the only one feeling like you are at the bottom of the world, but you will be able to believe that you are not alone.