Work Text:
Caught in a lie
Find me when I was pure
I can’t be free from this lie
Give me back my smile
He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there for.
Seconds slurred into minutes which slurred into hours, like his words had when they tumbled from his mouth.
He wasn’t drunk. He was sobbing.
The words were choking him; he couldn’t get them out fluently, only rushed out between cries. Cries of pain. Cries of loneliness. Cries of despair.
Eventually, he ran dry.
His body shook, fist clenching around a broken glass shard, from the vase he’d thrown at the wall in frustration.
He wanted to feel something physically, feel anything, anything that wasn’t the numbness that was taking over his brain.
He felt heavy. Heavy and numb, void of feeling, like some sort of object, an object for people to use as they saw fit.
He didn’t blame them. He was better an object than a person.
He was useless as a person.
When he spoke, when he tried to act like himself, he was annoying, immature, weird.
When he tried to be mature, shut off his naturally playful side, he was boring, judgemental, stuck up.
There was nothing he could do.
Nothing he could do but stare at the chat boxes filled with long messages from him that earned one word replies, which somehow never seemed to end the conversation.
The conversation always ended with a message from him that never got a reply.
Why did nobody want to reply?
Maybe he needed a different tactic. Maybe he needed to work out a personality in the middle of him being true and his mask. Maybe then people would actually want him around.
But eventually, he gave up.
There was no point in trying to message somebody, not when all the past comments swirled around his numb mind. Comments nobody had ever said to him. Comments that had appeared from the darkness of his mind.
You’re too annoying.
You act so weirdly, it’s embarrassing.
Grow up.
You’re so stuck up.
Why would anybody want to be your friend?
You’re so stupid.
Are you really going to wear that?
It’s pitiful to see that somebody like you exists.
Why do you think it’s okay to talk to them?
Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.
I want to kill myself.
He had wanted to. But he was a coward.
He was too afraid of death to put the knife to his neck. Too afraid of the unknown to close his eyes and let himself fall into it. Too fixated on the fact that once he did it, once he succumbed to the darkness, there was no way of returning.
Are you even depressed if you don’t want to die?
Are you even depressed if you can’t make yourself cry?
Are you even depressed if you live life and continue to try?
Ready to start the project? I brought a few things that could be useful-
His fist clenched tighter, so high on the adrenaline of his nightmares that he didn’t feel the level of pain he should have for the amount of blood streaming onto the floor.
But he wanted to feel it. He craved to feel it.
However the pain in his soul was overbearing, and made the glass slicing his skin feel like a mere pencil scratch.
Oh my God, Jimin.
It’s not that he wanted to hurt himself. It’s not that he was so drunk on pain that only drawing blood could make him feel better.
Self harm never made anything better. It wasn’t a way to cope.
It wasn’t blades slicing lines in his skin.
It was his nails digging into his wrist. It was his teeth indenting his tongue. It was his hand leaving a sting on his cheek.
It was a reminder. It was a reminder of being alive.
The pain in his palm reminded him that he held a life and if he died, if he killed himself, it would be gone.
It stopped him doing anything irreversible. It stopped him doing something he didn’t want to do.
You’re bleeding!
There were so many stories out there. Stories where one person suffered from depression and instantly got better when another person paid them a little bit of attention. Stories where suicide was glorified into romance, person A attempting to kill themselves and waking up to find a heartbroken person B who begs them never to do it again and hey presto, depression cured.
It made no sense to him.
Depression couldn’t be cured just because somebody claimed to love you. You could be the most loved celebrity in the world, and depression would still consume you whole.
Fuck I- what happened?
Just be happy then. Watch funny videos. Get out the house. Do things that you enjoy.
A temporary fix to a permanent problem.
Because throughout the day, he was happy.
He laughed with the few people he had left, tried new things, dedicated time to doing the activities he loved.
Nobody bullied him. Nobody abused him. Nobody made his life difficult.
Maybe that’s why people ignored him when he said he was depressed. Maybe it’s because they didn’t know that he meant it. Maybe it’s because they didn’t see anything bad happening, so assumed he must have been exaggerating.
Even if they tried to help, it wouldn’t matter.
At the end of the day, when he was lying in bed, alone or not, depression never hesitated to slip its arms around him.
And it hurt that happiness gave him up so easily.
Holy shit Jimin, there’s so much blood.
People never understood.
Depression was painted to be something that you got yourself into, something like a hole you climbed down for a few hours before somebody beckoned you back out again. Depression was painted like this mainstream joke for the younger generation, ‘rip me I want to die’, ‘oh my god, I’m actually going to kill myself’. Depression was painted like a choice.
Stop being so depressed.
If it was a choice, he could not fathom why anybody would choose it. If he had a choice, he would never go back down the rabbit hole.
People forget that Alice didn’t go to wonderland by choice. She fell.
But with so many people choosing to climb down after her, it was no wonder people never believed in talking white rabbits and drinks that made you shrink, because why would anybody choose disorientation over sense?
We need to get you to the hospital, the glass is embedded in your hand!
Whenever he trusted somebody enough to tell them what was going on inside his dark mind, they told him the same things as everybody else, as if the whole world was following a manuscript.
Tell your parents!
Go to a therapist!
Book a doctor’s appointment!
He’d told his mother. She didn’t believe him.
You’re not depressed, Jimin. Every teenager thinks they’re depressed.
She’d seen the scabs. She’d heard his cries. She’d been there when he fell down the rabbit hole.
But she didn’t believe that he’d been to wonderland.
And without her belief, the therapist couldn’t be paid, the antidepressants couldn’t be bought, the depression couldn’t be ‘cured’.
He’d tried to seek help from school before, too. They brushed him off, even when finding out he had cut himself. That was the first and last time he cut with a blade. Cutting didn’t help.
Jimin? Jimin, look at me. Look at me.
Maybe that’s why he never told Jungkook.
Maybe that’s why he never planned to.
Jungkook was somebody who could stand to talk to him, somebody who replied to his messages, somebody who actively tried to spend time with him.
Why would he annoy Jungkook with his depression? Why would he risk the only person who seemed to want to know him?
He wouldn’t. He refused to.
What’s wrong with you? Why are you being like this? Come on, you’re bleeding!
Maybe that’s why when Jungkook found him in this numb state, the younger didn’t know what was wrong, what was going on, why he was sitting on the floor and letting blood drip down his arm.
Jimin!
Maybe that’s why it was so easy to lie to Jungkook when the boy shook his shoulders frantically.
“Sorry, Kookie. I fell, smashed the vase, hit my head. I’m dizzy.”
Maybe that’s why Jungkook found it so easy to believe him.
Ah, you must have fell on the glass! Come on, get up. We’ll get you to the hospital.
Depression wasn’t like in the stories.
You didn’t need to suffer through some massive, traumatic life event to develop depression.
Sadness wasn’t all of it - it was frustration, anger, hatred, despair, hopelessness, uncertainty, insecurity.
Numbness wasn’t always triggered by painful events, sometimes it just hit randomly, no matter how happy somebody had been before.
Depressed people didn’t spend their whole time crying.
People didn’t work out how depressed you were from slight hints here and there.
Cutting didn’t bring relief.
Love didn’t form a ladder to help you climb out the rabbit hole.
Suicide wasn’t something every depressed person craved.
But Jimin wishes it was like in the stories.
Because if it was the stories, all he needed to do was tell Jungkook, hear a few compliments and have his wounds kissed, then he’d be fine.
If it was the stories, all he needed to do was cut a few times and then he’d feel fine for a few weeks, until the need tugged at him again.
It if was the stories, all he needed to do was pick up a knife and he’d have the courage to end it all, to die.
Or to try, and wake up to love and affection and promises of no more darkness.
Reality was harder.
It gave him less of a choice, constricted him to sitting numbly against a wall with glass digging into his palm because nobody wanted to acknowledge it.
He couldn’t get help from somebody else or bring himself to put an end to it.
Reality was the real cause of his depression.
Reality trapped him inside of a lie.
Caught in a lie
Pull me from this hell
I can’t be free from this pain
Save me, I am being punished