A Short Story About Love & Depression

I’m incredibly aware of the creaks that the mattress makes as I situate myself on his bed. I don’t know why. It’s not like I feel awkward or am trying to get comfortable without being obvious. I was just plopping myself down with my back lying against his covers like I always do; for some reason I just noticed the rustling of the sheets and the short, high pitched sound his mattress made when my ass hit it. He was already laying down next to me. Our heads inches apart, legs casually overlapped a little, and his hands holding his head up while mine were on my chest. It was one of those slow and painfully hot summer afternoons where you feel like nobody could possibly be entertained at the moment. You know when it’s like four o’clock and the sun is at its peak and the AC is so low your toes are freezing, but you still kind of feel hot mostly just because you know it’s like 100 degrees outside? That’s the kind of day I’m talking about. 

“Have you ever wanted to die?” I ask. I hear my words before I know what I’m saying. My lips had moved before I even thought about what I was asking him. I just said it. That’s kind of a morbid thing to just ask, don’t ya think? 

He looks at me with a little smirk on his face, a little unsure whether I am genuinely asking this or fucking around. I don’t know what the alternative motive would be, but I think he just needed me to clarify. I already knew what he was going to say when he let out a breathy “what?” 

“Have you ever wanted to die?” was my response, as if hearing it again with a little more inflection would assure him I was serious. “Like not necessarily have you ever wanted to kill yourself, but have you ever just wanted to not exist. Or, like, would be okay if something came out of nowhere and just killed you?” 

“Uh, I mean, I guess there’s been times where I don’t feel like existing, but never more than a moment. I always know it’s not an actual thing I want. It’s more just me being lazy or feeling low or not wanting to deal with something that I fucked up.”

“Oh.” 

“Why? Have you?”

“I mean, yeah… Okay. To clarify, though, it’s not all the time. Just sometimes. When I think about it, I want to. When I don’t, I don’t. But, there’s a lot of times I’ve just wanted to not exist. And there’s a couple times I’ve come really close to killing myself; I just haven’t.”

Whether I was too sad to think about it, I didn’t care enough to, or I made myself cry because I thought about what my mom’s reaction would be like. She’d think I was taking a nap or doing something when she came home and didn’t hear me answer. After a little too long she would come up and look and see I was sleeping, but she’d want me to get up and have dinner or just do something, so she would come to wake me up and realize I wasn’t asleep. Of course I’d leave a note and she’d probably see a bottle of pills somewhere and as she is piecing everything together her face would draw lower and lower until she was heaving for air. The tears and screams wouldn’t be able to come out fast enough. She’d shake me in the midst of her sorrow and adrenaline and she’d probably be begging for my heart to start beating, but I know she would have already known I’d been gone for a while. 

That shit gets me. The thought of that scene, which I’ve thought of so many damn times, just kills me in itself. 

But, I wasn’t gonna share all that with him though. 

“Sometimes whether I’m feeling depressed or not, when I’m driving or in a plane or something, I think how I wish that a car would hit me and kill me, or the plane would crash and I’d die.” Why am I telling him this? “It would just be easier like I wouldn’t have to deal with the guilt of intentionally destroying my family. I wouldn’t even have to make the decision. It would just happen, ya know? But THEN when I am happy, or I have things I’m looking forward to, I’ll get in my car or get on a plane and pray to God, pray to everything, that nothing bad happens and that I get to my destination safely.”