Intervention

I’ve waited and wished my time to become being a genuine guy, I’ve adopted chivalry and made me become the person I know I should be, instead of the person everyone else knows me to be. From one end of the spectrum to the other, I cleaned my act up and stripped myself of anything negative about me and my persona, including the fights, binge weekends where every meal was vodka or beer, and gaining a reputation amongst the opposite gender. Though it was tough to leave behind a lifestyle what I seemed to fall effortlessly in to, I never had any qualms or grievances about changing myself to become a better person, the only thing I had was people naysaying me and attempting to pull me back to my roots instead of letting me grow.

The more I worked on myself the more of a change I could see with me and the people that were around me, but the more I became who I wanted to be, the more I found myself being walked over and used. I always wore my heart on my sleeve and gave my time to others that wanted my help, but the more I was knocked back and put down through abuse, the more I started to lose the will in wanting to be this better person that everyone boasts about wanting to be themselves. I slowly fell into this depression that I can only describe is feeling like you’re at the bottom of everything looking above you through a toughened plane of glass, it’s like I fell without realising and this numb feeling I have is nauseating and needless to say, I lost track of who I was aiming to become.

My personality left me like the acquaintances and friends I thought I’d made, no one wanted to talk to a clinically depressed man who can’t fathom how he found himself in this state and with my personality gone I lost my sense of humour too, and I often wandered around wondering about how I ended up being in this state and contemplating if I made the right choice leaving behind what I knew to be the real me? For weeks my mood never changed, I'd finish my usual day at work and go home to bottles of alcohol that I’d consume in silence, staring at nothing but thinking about everything. Who had I now become thinking about who I used to be as if this person that is me had died? Why do I think of nothing else but sadistic thoughts of inflicting the worst pain to crucify what I am and what I now feel? Why am I looking at this knife on my kitchen counter longing to stab or cut myself with it repetitively?

The vodka and gin I’ve consumed are rolling around inside me taking me as their willing victim, I’m dropping my head to the bottle of Prozac pills that never affected me in my left hand, and in this moment I have lost all sense and life in me. I want sulphuric acid to wear my face, I want this knife to take my soul, I want nothing less than to have myself brought down to my knees. That place in my mind is somewhere I have never visited until now, I have dived into the depths of my mind where rage and anger roam and to the sanctuary where love and lust lies, but I have never hit this sweet spot where everything around me is forgotten and I slip into a world where it is just me and the chemicals flowing around my body with the alcohol.

I feel calm and at peace, the Prozac I was prescribed by my doctor has never given me this buzz and this place I’m in is far away from anywhere I have been before, I have this aurora in me that makes me carefree and thoughtless. Scoring this knife up my left arm is exhilarating as my veins begin to breathe in the fresh air, that staleness inside me rushed and escaped like victims inside a burning building, and yet I still feel no pain as I’m bleeding out and beginning to create a puddle beneath me. My only task now is to sit back and enjoy the ride as I close my eyes in my empty apartment, I no longer feel alone and depressed, I feel like I have escaped, happy and content.

Feeling a presence in the room, I open my eyes to see a lady in black, wearing a tattered and torn long dress with an overthrow on her shoulders contrasted with her pale white skin. She hasn’t spoken a word to me, she is just sitting opposite me sat back in my armchair with her arms extended using all of each arm of the chair, as if she is awaiting me to make a move or utter a word to her to instigate or strike a conversation to break the ice. I can’t help but fixate on her with my tunnel vision, she’s strangely addictive and seductive to look at but all the while she gives off a vibe of doom and gloom and a bearer of bad news delivered with care and slight animosity towards me, and now she leans in permanently fixed on my eyes and without moving her lips I can hear her words whisper into my ears.

“Young man, you are but a pity to yourself and a slave to others, look at the state you’re in. Time’s will get rough and people will grind you, society will always knock you back and times you may feel cancelled out, but is it really worth being this way? You have a heart that is worth its weight in gold, you are a man worthy of being a role model, all derived and spurred on from a past that would have seen you work as a slave under my husband for the rest of your life.”

“I have intervened before the Bogeyman would have swiftly taken you away to the Underworld, supplied you to the rest of the great unwashed and filthy sinister and sinful souls, when you have no place in belonging there. The Devil’s right-hand man will curse as he will be lurking around you anticipating your demise from your depression, because he will not have this soul for the taking, not as long as I am here. The Devil may cry without another soul to his army but I will not allow this to happen, you shall remain in purgatory until your day has truly come, instead of this predicament and hole you have found yourself in.”

Refreshing my eyes by blinking she’s disappeared into thin air, now I know I’m caught somewhere between being alive and dead, and I can see the dead walking around me and in the road outside. My breathing is steady and in metronome but minimal, and the blood that was gushing and free-flowing has stopped, my arm is clean but the cut still remains wide and open exposing the muscle fibres, veins and arteries I have torn. Light headed and slightly dazed, this must be the effect I have been waiting for, that slight fuzzy feeling and tingling in my fingers are now married with my thoughts of meeting the Devil’s wife.

Bemused of this farfetched event that has just occurred, I rest my eyes to ride out the rush and I drift off hoping that I would just pass away as I fall asleep, hoping to not wake up so I could join the Devil’s army of fortunate souls. Before I knew it I was opening my eyes to the afternoon sun shining upon my face, I could feel the warmth attempting to penetrate my skin and heat up my body, but I had a weird feeling inside me that had joy mixed with anxiety and excitement with a pinch of hesitancy; it was a similar feeling to a new beginning but more of a second chance. Her words repeated in my mind and my ears rung of her firm and gentle voice, echoing her words to me telling me that my time isn’t yet to come, at least not tonight.