A Bad Night

A Story by Bailey

What a 'bad night' means to me

It usually starts off slow. At first it’s just feeling a little down, just a little sad. Then it builds, and builds until it’s taken over and all I can think about it how sad I am. How fucked up I am. I don’t know what starts it. I don’t know why some nights are terrible and others are perfectly fine. I’ll just be watching a YouTube video, or scrolling through Tumblr, and then it’s like one drop of it, whatever it is, gets into my brain. That one drop is just the beginning of the downpour. If I’m talking to someone I’ll start s**t talking about myself, saying that I’m a terrible person and that I don’t deserve to be happy. I’ll apologize over and over and over again for anything and everything. They’ll try to convince me that I’m a good person and that people love me, but it does nothing. I’ve already been infected. It keeps getting worse until eventually I come to my breaking point. Usually by then the person I’m talking to has already gone to bed, or they’ve become irritated with me which doesn’t help. I’ll start crying. At first just a few tears, then it crescendos into a storm of snot and tears, but I can’t be loud. I can’t wake up my parents. I can’t let them know that I’m upset; they’ll just get mad and yell at me to stop, so I try to muffle my sounds. I’ll shove my face into a pillow, or a blanket, or a shirt, anything to keep myself quiet. I can’t breathe, I can’t speak, I can’t stop, all I can do is cry. I hate it. I’ll try to stop. I’ll try to breathe normally, I’ll try to stop crying, but it usually takes a long time. I’ll sit on the floor in front of my mirror, rocking back and forth, holding myself, crying uncontrollably, thinking: what’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why can’t I stop? Why? Why? Why? Make it stop. I want to stop. I don’t want to be like this anymore. I’m tired, so tired. Too tired. I’ll want to pull my hair out. I’ll want to scratch my skin till I’m raw. Sometimes I do scratch myself, not hard, not to the point of intense pain, just a little to distract myself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t tell people about this stuff. I don’t tell people when I get to this point. It’s when I get to this point that I finally realize I probably do need help, but I never actually get help. I always convince myself that I was just overreacting; I was just being dumb and there’s nothing wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with me. I’m okay. I’ll be fine. It always goes away eventually.