I only broke my soul

          I am paralysed. I can’t get up. My limbs don’t want to move. I blink once, I blink twice. Is the world still turning? Everything seems foggy. How do I find my way? Is this poison in my stomach? It hurts so much I think I’m gonna vomit. I toss and turn in my bed. I take painkillers, but nothing helps. Will this pain ever go away? Will there always be nails in my body, pining me down to the bed, stopping me from moving forward? Will I always be stuck in this darkness? Is there a future for me? Is there any present?

            I didn’t break my bones, I broke my soul. My eyes are okay, my sense of direction works just fine. I lost my life. I lost rational thinking. I don’t have stomach ulcers. It’s fear and stress, turned into a little monster, eating me from the inside. Bad genes didn’t do this to me. I didn’t have a bad accident. It’s not one of my stories. It’s not my imagination. This. Is. Real.

Why won’t you listen to me? Am I just a body to you? Is there nothing in me beside bones, meat and skin? If I really broke a bone you would run to help me. You would recommend a treatment. But when my soul breaks you say that I overreact. I am making this up. It happens only in my head. Get yourself together – you say lightly. Stop caring so much – you roll your eyes. When I speak openly – you diminish my pain. You get irritated. When I don’t talk about it – you ask: Why are you so weird? One step ahead, two steps behind. You want to know, but don’t want to understand. You look at me, but you don’t want to see me.

            Sometimes I’m glad it is the way it is. Because it means that bad thoughts never crept into your head without notice. Your breath never becomes short, every time, when somebody mentions this one, specific thing that pulls the wrong trigger in your brain. Your insides never fell over because of stress. When you go to bed, you sleep. When you wake up, you are awoken. You don’t fear for tomorrow. You feel calm. Your soul never hurts. Maybe that’s why you doubt. Understate. Stop worrying so much – you say, looking at my tears. If it was so easy, don’t you think I would? Why are you doing this to yourself? You are mental! – you say, seeing the scars on my forearm. Maybe I am. But do you really think screaming it to my face will help me?

I wish I could show you my soul. Show you the band-aids I put on it. Teach you how to bandage it. Show you the scars that It wears with pride. Scars that scream: I am still here. I made it. I wish I could tell you, how your words hurt it. How I soothe it. About the darkness that surrounds. It. About the ways I fight it. But you do not want to hear or understand. You don't even want to try.

Try not to use your robotic words. Try not to spit them without thinking. It really doesn’t cost that much. Think. Instead of saying: You overreact. Ask: How can I help? Instead of giving me meaningless advice, ask If I need someone to be there. Don’t categorize. Try to listen. Believe my words. Read about it. Educate yourselves. Don’t look for reasons. Don’t ask: Why? Maybe there is one. Maybe there isn’t. You have to learn that those things may come from the thin air.

And depression
Is

A disease.

Anxiety. Psychosis. Schizofrenia. Paranoia. Anorexia. Bulimia. All of those are diseases. They don’t touch the body. They touch the soul and mind. Those fleeting parts of us, that we take for granted. This is not our imaginations. Realize it. Sometimes it takes next to nothing to destroy somebody’s life.  It also doesn’t take much to save it. Your words can hurt or heal. All you have to do is choose them wisely. All you have to do is think. Don’t ignore somebody’s pain, just because you haven’t endure it. You never know if one day it won’t get to you.

Ask me about the rain

                
              I hate small talk. Small talk – what a perfect way to describe it. Because those conversations are really small. So insignificant to our lives. And I’m not talking only about things like: I’s a nice weather out there. Damn, It’s raining. Thank god It’s weekend already. No. I don’t really like all those stupid questions people ask you when they get to meet you. Where do you work? How much do you earn? What are your parents doing? Do you have a car? Where did you go to school? Why do they care for such trivial things? Is this really helping them to know me? Because my job doesn’t really tell that much about me. Not many people follow up with a: Do you like what you do? Did you always wanted to do this? How many people ask for your favourite memory from high school? Or your worst teacher and why you didn’t like him? This can say so much more about the person, don’t you think? But people like plain, boring facts. They don’t need to follow them up with more questions.

                If you want to know me better ask me about the rain. Not about if it would rain tomorrow. Ask me if I like the smell of the rain in May. Ask me what I do on a rainy afternoon. Don’t ask me where I work, but what are my dreams. Don’t ask me what my parents do, but what they have taught me in life. Instead of asking about money, ask me what makes me happy. Don’t ask about what I had for dinner but what would be my last meal if I was sentenced to death. Don’t ask about my religion but about my life philosophy. Don’t ask me if I liked the book, but what did I get from reading it. Don’t ask me about politics, ask me about the world I would like to live in.

                Doesn’t it sound much better? Much more interesting? It works both ways. Don’t tell me about your office job. Tell me what you do when you get back home, how you forget about it. Don’t tell me what you bought or how much you spent. Tell me, when was the last time you did something for the first time? I really don’t care how many pools your hotel had and what drinks they served on your tropical holidays. Tell me, how did you feel during the journey? What did you find out there? Did you come back wiser? I don’t want to know what car you drive. Did you ever got in and just drove without a plan? Where did you get? Tell me about the best day of your life. Tell me about the first time you broke the law. Tell me how you got in trouble in high school. Tell me about your favourite time of day or night. Tell me something nobody knows. Tell me whatever you like, as long as it matters something to you.

                The problem is – people don’t like questions like that. Maybe it’s because they are not use to them. They stumble with their answers, because they have to think. It’s so much easier to answer like robots. I work as a secretary. I have a Ford. I was in Italy. I support democratic party. I graduated from here and there. Did the art of conversation disappeared with years? Did we lose it in the pace of today’s world? Or did it never exist to begin with? Maybe we always liked to hide ourselves behind plain facts. Let’s start asking for more. Let’s start looking at the world through other people’s eyes. Let’s talk about something other than everyday life. Isn’t it enough we have to live it?