To the person who thinks...

To the person who thinks happiness is a decision,

What do you see when you look at me? Brown hair, glasses, eyes that switch colours between greenish hazel and blue, a smile.

How closely do you look at me? Do you notice how my hair colour has grown dull, that my glasses are covered in specks of grime and dust, that the light that once burned behind my eyes has turned to a small ember and died, or that my smile is drawn on with chalk and is faded and filled with cracks as it is almost washed away by the silent tear I cry in the dark of night.

What do you hear when you speak to me? A laugh, a sarcastic comment, how I ramble useless facts, or the countless sorries I mumble throughout the day.

How closely do you listen when I speak? Do you hear the empty hollowness in my laughter, did you hear the fourcedness in the sarcastic comment I made just so you would question and reprimand me on how I feel today, or the echoes of anxiety that follow the facts and sorries I spout throughout the day because I think maybe if I focus on the lives of other people I will be able to focus on something other than the voices of anxiety that scream in my head while depression yells across the hall like anxiety is the noisy neighbor, telling anxiety to shut up because depression doesn’t care while I stand in the middle of the hall, hands covering my ears stuck in a limbo between I don’t care and if one little thing is off the world is going to end which adds to the voices of anxiety in my head so the fighting and screaming on the hallway in my head never ends.

You tell me that happy is a decision, that you could live in a cardboard box and find something to be happy about, but do you know what it is like to feel numb.

People think that depression when you feel constantly sad, but I can’t even feel sad. You expect me to be happy when even my sad is a hollow pin pricked egg. You expect me to be happy when happy is something I haven’t felt since I was ten. You expect me to be happy because, you think I have a switch.

You think I have a switch because you see no physical evidence that my happy is long long gone. So I say it once again, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that depression and anxiety aren’t things I can measure for you with a meter stick, and the scars I have are ones you can’t see.

So I understand. I understand why you think I have a switch because I have no physical evidence that exists; after all the laws of science say if the five sense can’t interact with it, then surely it must not exist, so by the laws of science mental illness must not exist, but let me ask you this. Have any of you ever seen, touched, tasted, smelled or hear your brain? So if by the laws of science you are brainless, why should I care that you can’t seem to bear happiness is not a decision at all.

Signed the girl who knows all too well happiness doesn’t have a switch at all.