The Room

Imagine sitting in a room by yourself. A room with mammoth proportions. Big enough to make you feel like an insignificant entity between its walls- a mere, helpless child. It is also barren enough that every word you might utter will be answered back with its own echo. As such every word you say will in itself be a hollow reminder of how alone you are. No windows are present to bring in the cheerful daylight or any light that might have happened to grace that establishment from the outside. The room appears to be quite ordinary in shape, almost squarish although very poorly lit. A single, tiny yellow bulb flickers gently in the middle of the room, suspended by a mess of wires about five feet off the floor so you end up having to avoid it to not knock your head on it if you wish to walk around the room. The yellow streaks being emitted through its glass desperately inch their way towards the walls, but are unable to do the thick, black coat on the bricks the same favour they did the floor around the bulb, which was just cement that had been slapped onto the earth to create a flat, rough surface. Neither of the two were a pretty sight. They were both bleak and grim and lacked any expression that a home might. Or even just a house. Or a prison for that matter. Those walls, and this floor- they were even worse than the prison walls and floor. The prison walls and floors have an identity. An area of belonging. These walls and this floor have no sense of belonging. They do not have an identity. They merely exist. They have no purpose. Yet here they are around you, as you sit on the floor in a corner. They are as much a part of you as you are a part of them. The two sides of the wall meeting up behind your rigid back provide little comfort or support, but you don't really have much choice in terms of your seating besides the sandpaper-like floor and the smooth, ice-cold walls to lean on.  There is only one door along one of the walls. It is a large, heavy, wooden door of the deepest ebony. There are no etchings or marks on the door or any sort of visible effort to make it any more aesthetically pleasing or homely . You've tried going through it to maybe find a way back home, but every time you open the door, the light bulb immediately turns off and you become enveloped in complete darkness. The outside has no Sun. It has no Moon. It has no stars. It has no light. It has no life. The ground is flat and everything around you is too dark to see. You do not  know where you are. You do not know where home is either, or if it even exists anymore. There is nothing there except for you and your own thoughts and so you have scurried back inside each time and closed the door so that the light would come back on. The room is easily in sub-zero temperatures and every breath you draw goes rasping and wheezing to your lungs, stinging everything inside along the way. Your hands and feet gave up a long time ago. They are now just numb lumps of flesh and bone attached to you that have little function other than helping you to prop yourself up against the cold wall. Sitting there staring at your surroundings you realize how pointless the light bulb truly is. It only provided enough light to dimly light up its immediate surroundings- the centre of the room, where the true nature of the room's emptiness is put up in a not-so-glamorous fashion as you look around, trying to find something worth looking at. The light is unable to brighten up any corner to even a minute extent, such as the one you are sitting in. Each corner lies shrouded in darkness, and as you look over at each one, you find that you are unable to make out if anything lies in the shadowy grasps of the darkness. For a second a thought enters your mind. What if something is sitting there. Not necessarily someone. Just something. Your mind begins to get clouded in what is a cocktail of hope and dread. What being may lie in the freezing, bitter darkness? But then again, whatever demon may be present, it would at least perhaps be some form of company, would it not? Concepts of day and night become strange, abstract thoughts as time seems to have been caught up in one place as you sit there, not knowing how much of it is passing. Sleep has turned into a luxury you barely seem to receive anymore. Your thoughts and dreams are rarely ever your own. Your existence is now you merely plodding away in the dark. After being on your own for long enough, as if by strings being pulled by an unknown puppeteer, you hear voices. Strange ones. It is never clear what they seem to be saying. What sparks your interest about the voices is that they seem to be coming from outside. Every time you hear the voices you jump up and make a dash for the door. Maybe there is someone outside who can help you. Maybe there is someone else with you. Maybe you are not alone. And so every time you have opened the door and strolled out, expecting there to be help. Expecting there to be an end to the misery. But every time that you have opened the door, you have only been greeted by darkness. Even a breeze would have been welcome, but nothing moves. So, trying not to lose hope, you fumble around until you feel the door again and you retreat inside. However after what seems like an eternity later, you hear the voices again, and so you rush back out into the darkness, looking for your saviour. But alas, there isn't one. Once again it is just you standing in a universe of shadows. This will happen again. And again. And again. And each time you will run out. And each time you will be alone. Each time the voices will seem to guide you, but each time, it will be you standing in a numbing darkness, away from everything you once knew and loved. Each time you will be alone and each time you will try to cling onto the fragile skeleton of your hope as you walk back inside. Eventually the voices will begin to ring in your ears. You'll be hearing them more and more often until you are driven to insanity. You are trapped in a hell where you must trudge to and fro, never knowing what to believe. You will cry from desperation and you will cry out of frustration. The resentment you have for the voices will only grow until you are nothing more than a destitute shell, unable to do anything about the torture. You will yell. And you will cry. You will claw at the thick black paint on the wall. You will beg for death as the voices turn to screeches and your fragile and isolated reality blends into shades of dementia and hysteria as you break down into a breathing mass no longer capable of feeling anything but pain. Anything that you once were no longer exists. Everything that you once had is gone. Your insides will hurt. Everything on your being will embrace pain and make it a part of itself, and you will be there to feel all of it. Your very bones will quiver with hurt and anger as you lie in the cold. Your throat will have shriveled up and dried from yelling in the cold, from calling for help. From calling out in desperation. From begging to not be alone anymore. The only thing you will be begging for by then will be the end. Your world will have collapsed. You do not know what to do or where to go. You must merely plod through the delusion that is now your life, if it could be called that. Your choices will only include pushing through your own hell and mustering up every fiber in your body to push, even though there is nothing to push towards, and walking out, into the pitch-black darkness for an eternity until you by chance stumble back, or death. Welcome to your battle against depression.

Author's Note

It's the very first piece of writing that I've shared with people. I wrote about my experience with depression, or tried to do it justice anyways. I haven't properly separated any paragraphs because I wanted it to all be in one big chunk so it felt unending, which was how the depression phase felt. I'd say "be nice" but I'd rather receive constructive criticism on how to improve so, fire away. (Okay be a bit nice please)