The Silent Disease (A Short Story)

            It’s neither an infection nor a gene; in fact, it’s a disease. Let’s face it…it’s not going to go away. You can hide as much as you want, run as far as you can, or lie to yourself, but it is always there. Once you have caught the disease, it forever changes you for the remainder of your life. You are no longer yourself or in control of your thoughts, actions, and emotions.

            Your mentality is screwed up and you feel alone. Everyone is out to get you, trick you, defame you, and belittle you. That’s just the beginning of the symptoms because there’s more. Not only do you feel a strong hatred for the world, you start to hate yourself, your existence, and your whole meaning of living.

How did it start? How did it spread? How did you get to here? So many questions to ask, but no one is there to answer them. The world is cruel and is not a place for the weaklings to thrive. You are a nobody and nobody cares about you. Let’s face it, if you disappeared off this planet for a day, a week, a month, or ever forever, the world still turns with or without you.

The first signs of the disease start somewhere internally. Not your organs or your insides, but as in your psyche. You feel the sense of loneliness after you contract the disease. And in that time frame of your loneliness, you have deep reflections and think about everything. Things on why this is happening because you have no idea what’s going on. You are afraid to seek help because it’s a sign of weakness and that’s not allowed our society. Only the strongest and fiercest survive and by going for help, you know you will get torn to shreds. So you keep quiet and tuck all of it into the deepest darkest corner of your mind. Pretend it never happened and that you are okay, but in fact you are not.

Next, the disease evolves to the next stage where you start to feel alone and in a state of denial. That loneliness has turned to make you think that no one is there to help you or cares enough anymore to help. So you decide to seek help, but you meet the wrong people. There are the two groups of people that you find which are practically of no use and causes more distress. They are the ones that exploit your cries for help and laugh at you and the ones who help in the beginning, but later leave you stranded by yourself. Now, you tell yourself that everyone out there is nothing but trouble and more pain for you.

From that stage, you begin to shut away from everyone you know and everyone you see. You can’t trust them because you’ve been hurt and left for the wolves to finish you off. It’s understandable because our mind is protecting ourselves from the unnecessary pain. But that pain intensifies and disconnects you more from our world. Trust no one, everyone is there to hurt you, and you are alone. Those three simple mindsets strengthen the disease and you start to lose control. You begin to think of the uncertainties of living. Is there a god? Is it fate? What’s after our lives?

It’s natural you start to think like this because you want to get away from this desolate place where you are uninvited. You question your purpose in life, why you were born, why you are being treated like this, but it’s not helping. So you resort to religion or even pick up religion along the way hoping that if there was somebody out there protecting us, watching us, and guiding us, they would come and hear your cries of help. You pray and wish things to get better and go back to how they were before the disease, but you never get heard. All the tears you cried for help praying begin to take its toll on you. You realize that perhaps there is no god to aid us and that fate never really existed. As a result, you decide to make your own destiny by thinking about the afterlife. Can you start over? Will you be in someplace better? Will there be peace in the end?

The final stages of the disease are beginning to develop as you consider taking control of your life. Of all the things that you try to create to make your life better, it’s not working. The only way you have control is how you die and put an end to all of it. A getaway from the living hell and you are not afraid. You know there is no god to aid us, nor heaven or hell to go to. By now, you are certain of one thing. No one is going to miss you if you are gone. Oh yes, they might be sad for a few days…weeks if you are lucky, but in the end, they still carry on with their lives. They’ll forget you sooner or later like everyone. Suddenly, you think about the people who have taken control of their lives and saw the media attention they received after. And that’s when people finally care and decide to make a difference in their community. Every now and then, people forget about why people took control. And every now and then, we see the media hungry for this kind of sad twisted news like vultures circling a deceased corpse. That’s when people decided it mattered to them. At least you started something after you took control. At least you made a difference, but not for long because people always forget the fallen and the causes.

Depression is a disease and it spreads fast within you and to others. Once you contract it, don’t underestimate what it can do to you.