Broken

• Nicola Neill, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2021

I stand, frozen, with my fingers poised elegantly on the cold door handle. The silence deafens me, broken only by the thrum of my heart thrashing desperately in my chest. It sends quakes through my body at every reverberating beat.

Why am I hesitating?

My bag gets heavier on my back, heavy with guilt, regret, sorrow, shame, isolation. Fear for what’s to come. Helplessness.

I sink to the ground from the weight of it. A soft groan escapes my lips, a groan that spells out the weight, the burden which only I can carry. One that has broken me.

I am trapped inside my own head. Trapped by the veil, the blanket, which separates me from the rest of the world. It engulfs me with a layer of darkness. Everything outside of it is blurred, muffled. It takes away my awareness. I’m on autopilot.

To an outsider, I could seem perfectly fine. I’ve grown better at hiding the pain, the scars, the emotions welling up inside me and threatening to overflow.

I gaze up through the window at the crescent moon. Its bright light and beautiful curves taunt me. Like all good things, it mocks me with its perfection. Like people who wallow in happiness and joy, whose shining faces taunt me with something I can’t feel.

'Why are you leaving?' Says a timorous voice inside my head.

I glance around the house, the one that holds my childhood, as if it would give me answers. All that it reveals is stillness and shadows. Its simple tranquility says only that I shouldn’t go.

The voice gets stronger with my silence. You can’t run from something that is within you.

'I have to try,' I reply, with uncertainty that I ignore.

I rise with determination, reaching for the door handle again. I feel like I’m at the edge of a vast dark chasm. If I fall, there will be no coming back. Would walking out this door be running from the cliff, or falling into its gaping jaws?

I glance at my bedroom door, the one that holds my younger self. I think of the seven-year-old me, an unconscious smile taking over my features. She always tried to impress, perform, and never worried or reproached herself for mistakes she made. She always had fun. She had the joy that I now envy other people for.

Where did that little girl go?

Something clicks defiantly inside me. That little voice of reason gets a bit stronger, a bit louder.

'I don’t know,' it replies confidently, 'But we’re going to find her. We may be hanging on the edge of the cliff now, but we will climb out. We won’t hide in our own shadows.'

I turn away from the door and the darkness beyond, relief flooding through me.

I walk in a dreamlike state back to my room, my head ringing with promises to get through this.

Some call it depression. But I call it my demon. And I will fight it.