Do you know how it feels?
It. This… This feeling of despair, hopelessness. When you just want it all to end. No, you want to end it all.
You don’t? I’ll tell you.
Imagine yourself sitting in the dark.
In a corner of an empty room. It’s so dark, you can’t see anything. Then, a door opens. You can see a familiar face. They’re saying something, but you can’t hear. All you hear is mumbling. But it’s getting louder. Like they are screaming, so you can hear them. But you can’t.
Are these supposed to be words?
You cannot make sense out of any of it.
– Help me! Please!
Please, just give me your hand… I don’t understand…
Maybe if you stand up, while you can see, because, well, the door is open.
But you can’t walk. You are sitting on a small piece of floor, while all around you is water. Dark, black, freezing water. You also don’t know what’s in it and how deep it is. Maybe a shark, maybe a monster. Or maybe it will freeze you to death. Or maybe, you’ll just drown.
In the meantime, the door has closed.
Someone opens another door. Same story with them.
And another door. And another one. And another one. Finally, as you cannot hear and/or understand them, your loved ones start to throw tennis balls at you.
So many tennis balls. One after another.
This room has at least a million doors.
They start to open simultaneously, with people throwing those yellow bombs at you at the same time.
Each of them has a message on it. “Just be positive!”
“Just be grateful!”
“It’s all in your head!”
“Motivation speech”
“Motivation video”
“Look how people have it worse than you!”
“Get a grip!”
“Just snap out of it!”
Not one of them said:
“We love you.”
“We believe in you.”
“You can do this.”
“You are stronger than this.”
“We UNDERSTAND you.” “It’s going to be okay”.
All the doors close.
You are alone, again. In the dark. Again. A million tennis balls around you. But this time you have bruises from all the “good intentions”.
And all you wanted is a hand.
About the Author
Andrea Lovrić was born in Croatia, currently lives and works in Ireland is a writer and financial accounting. Her short stories have appeared in „Zimske priče“ in Zagreb, and Poem collection in Irish Writing center in Ballyfermot „2020 Visions“
Connect with this Author: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JadeL321/
Andrea’s words on multiculturalism: “In a multicultural environment and in the world we live in, you are not weird, you just didn’t find your tribe yet”.
