Depressive Episode, August 2015. Junior Year. 

*I take a bite of the pizza, and reality breaks. This isn't the feeling of eating delicious pizza, it's a spiral of inevitability. This was a waste of time, money, and effort. The sauce and dough becomes mushy slop in my mouth. Why did we buy this, anyway? Why did Katie and Nasa and Andrew and I pool our money to get pizza at lunch today? We're just going to die eventually. Why do we bother eating? Why keep stringing this useless body along with continuous fuel when its destiny is to end up in the ground? Why not skip the toil and hardship of life and just end things now? …

*What was that? Do I want to kill myself?! Why? Am I going to do something to myself? Can I stop it? Is this the end? The last day of my life? What's wrong with me? Where did this come from? If I didn't have this pizza, would I still be okay? Would I have never "woken up" if we didn't order this? Was it always going to happen to me now? … 

*I don't remember the whole day or what I did next, but that sagging, gnawing feeling weighing me down like wet clothes wouldn't go away. It ate away at me like acid. When I tried to distract myself by playing a game or talking, it all slid back to that feeling of uselessness, like nothing was worth the effort. It terrified me, but I was frozen in it, unable to shake it off. I tried sleeping it off, talking about it, crying to my then boyfriend, but nothing worked. He didn't care about my sadness, my pain, my grief. How it was the end for me. He said it wasn't so bad; he'd lived with it for years; but to me, my life was over. I couldn't live like this…. 

*Another day of school. A doctor's appointment. Crying at home. Forcing a Subway sandwich down my throat. More crying. Losing interest in everything, even TV, games, talking to friends. Only in sleep could I be at peace. I didn't want the fast food I used to love. It just became a disgusting mess in my mouth, loathesome to feel, painful to swallow. Pointless. Tiring. Hopeless, like trying to run out of quicksand when you're chest-deep in it. Dark. Bleak. Pointless…. 

*The next time I forgot about the hopeless feeling was on video chat, five days later, doing Latin homework with a friend. For a couple of hours, the nagging, gnawing feeling took a break. I woke up in that moment, realizing I felt okay, and the dark feeling didn't start up again like it had before. Every other time I became aware of myself, the emptiness returned, but this time it was duller. I could still enjoy the pleasant moment before; it wasn't painful just to exist right now, aware of the futility of life. Maybe I would be okay; maybe it wasn't the end after all…. 