THE NOTE OF THE CRYING GIRL

I hate the feeling of doomscrolling for hours and hours, after you had told yourself you would get out of bed.

I hate the feeling of being so hungry your hands start to shake and yet be too tired to reach out for the bread on the side of the table.

The feeling where you drown in self hatred, the feeling that nobody on earth has ever noticed you for who you are.

Depression seems so silly when you don’t have one. Even I myself reflect on how one can be so stupid enough to fall under its deep comma. Just snap out of it, wake up, eat, and you will feel better, my better half tells me and yet, I'm cocooned in the endless night of my own disgusting reflection.

“It is a temporary solution to a permanent solution” famously said by Robin Williams, but what if that “temporary” is something you have to carry your whole life.

“In the darkest corner there is still brightness” my teacher once said, but what if all I can do is to stare at the brightness but never reach for it.

And yet, there is a part of me that craves for the darkness to stay in me. Like a vampire, blood drip gives me back a life that I have lost, like a poet, every screeching voice comes out in artful forms.

The darkness destructs me from the inside, but surely that is life itself, isn't it?

“Attention seeker,” the internet points fingers at me everywhere I look. “Overthinker”, “Drama Queen”, “the Crazy Girl”, my name shifts between those I encounter. I'm nobody, yet somebody, a blob in space that is taking up oxygen.

The world is not kind, and even more so to those who suffer.

The sound of the crying girl never reaches the source of help, but only of her haters and peers, leading her deeper into the world of darkness. The words of the crying girl are ignored or laughed, and she beats herself for the voice she uttered. The sound of the laughing girl is crying in the inside, but nobody notices, because “I thought she was happy”.

We all are the crying girl, an imposter that got too good at hiding herself.

It is up to one and each of us, whether we make a world where she can find a shoulder to cry on, or have to keep up a smile in her darkest days.

Yui Nitta is a second-year student at Okayama University in Japan, studying Anthropology. She writes, drawing inspiration from her Japanese American background, and explores ideas through stories and essays, hoping to publish works that inspire and connect people in the future.