| Chapter One ~ Boundless |

It is difficult to explain what it's like to live life as a ghost. To have a brain that insists on turning on you at every opportunity, ruining beautiful moments and, sometimes, claiming entire portions of time simply because it is hellbent on making you believe its lies.

And you fall for it, you do. I don't think it matters how long you've been aware of it; that constant tug-of-war of melancholy that you truly have no control over and no idea how you even managed to keep it at bay for so long, no matter how hard you've tried. Also, it wins. It's bound to. And when it does you usually have a decision to make. For the most part, though, I think I've been making the right ones.

Being able to spot the signs is incidental; knowing you can seek ways to prevent it from taking over and making you get bad again borderline irrelevant. It is important, don't get me wrong. However, it can also be illogical, or at the very least unrealistic, to think you are somehow free from it. Because you're not, and you will never be. At least not when you're like me. When you're like me, you're never safe enough, if at all. Life, time, the universe—whatever you choose to name it—is wicked. And it will make that fact known to you, at every opportunity.

Strength, I've always found, has little to do with it as well. You're not going to prevent anything by being strong. You can get through it of course, but that is a whole other matter. No, I don't think strength is key, mainly because one day, regardless of how tough you think you are, it'll creep up on you, and you will most definitely not see it coming. Before you know it, it'll start to take over, and if you are not careful, it'll take you, and everything else with it.

The way you decide to handle it is up to you. There is no rulebook, no manual to follow, no x amount of steps to go through, to complete. Only the finish line, and that is not immutable, but rather a shapeshifting ethereal entity; a gamut of possibility.

Me? I know that I will never be quite as I was. I will never have nothing wrong. And it is something I need to better accept. After all, we are all different, and the choices we make are ours to be proud of, to regret, to own up to.

People tend to equate episodes with sadness. They are quick to rule that if you are bad again, it's because there is a clear reason behind it—and it's usually just the one. It can be your childhood coming back to haunt you, or your life falling apart. Perhaps your work is too demanding, or your relationship is in trouble. If not that, then someone must've said something or done something that triggered it. You might have even lost someone, are about to, or had them disappear in front of your very eyes. Regardless, it is always one thing, and one thing only.

God, how I wish it were that simple.

Reality, however, is paradoxical. Your life can be absolutely fine, it still doesn't make you immune to melancholy. 

What I did that night was something I knew better, yet I did it anyway. I reacted—it was all I could do. And the manner in which I did was the only way I knew how, for it was familiar.

I hid it.

To be fair, I've always been good at it, and I had gotten away with it my entire life, with little to no consequence to worry about—for the most part.

Four months. That's how long I was able to manage this time. Just four. But I did it, despite knowing better. I did it.

That boy in the park? He didn't have a clue. He had no idea that, ten years on, at seventeen years old, one of the few certainties he would have left would be how much he did not want to make it to his eighteenth birthday. How he had known it, probably for longer than he'd ever care to admit to anyone, let alone himself. Or how that night was destined to turn into one of a mere handful of memories he would somehow manage to prevent from being corroded by sadness. He was so blissfully unaware of how quickly his innocence would be lifted, as well as how he would end up dealing with it when it were.

I often wonder what he would think of that.

What it would mean, to know that he was going to watch his older brother drown, no matter how hard he tried to save him. How he would end up taking care of every single person around him at the detriment of his own grief, his own sadness...himself—until it all got to a point where he could no longer bear it.

What he would say about the accidental overdose no one would ever come to believe was an accident, or the carefully planned incident involving a razor and shards of glass that happened to be anything but an accident. Being institutionalized, having no control over his own life, giving it up freely, with a willingness that was so unlike him, yet one no one would seem to notice. It went, just like he did, unseen.

What it did to him to go through it all, alone.

Had he known this, would he still be so certain? After all, he would, in time, grow to see his entire existence efface.

We take time for granted, and it truly does change on a dime. It is also ruthless once it imposes its pace and allows it to be seen. In my case, when it did, it had taken with it the few certainties I had managed to hold on to, making them all but vanish, convincing me that the cage that once held a heart was now bare. Slowly, I began to feel as though I was losing pieces of myself. Traces of what once was me.

I theorize a lot, and one of those theories is that there are two types of people in this world. The ones who know for a fact love exists yet never get to experience it, and those who don't really think much about it, because they are able to live it.

I believed I wasn't a perfect fit for either category. Perpetually stuck in the in-between. And while I never thought I would be able to experience true love, I did find some solace in knowing that I had, and would likely continue to be able to witness it as it took place. But if I were forced to add myself into one of those two slots, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat.

Years ago, during the months I was admitted, I truly did what I told my doctors I would do. I attended every meeting, went to every group. I made the cards, talked in my solo sessions, watched Friends in the common room with the other inmates—or maybe patients. Semantics, if you were to ask me. The point is, I was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that I was released early. Though I had to agree to every condition and decision made for me prior to and after that "release".

What no one knew, and what I was able to so masterfully hide, was that during those 183 days I never once stopped plotting, I just played along. And it worked, too. For the longest time, it worked. So when they did let me go, no matter the conditions they had for doing it, I was ready, because I knew exactly when, how, and what I was going to do. There was comfort in that, and I'd be disingenuous if I said it wasn't one of the things that helped me survive it all.

I wonder what that boy would think of that, too.

Though if I could, I would also make it a point to show him how sadness was not all he was ever going to endure. I would, of course, warn him of the bad that was ahead, but also try to make him see that it was only part of his life, not a constant. I would want him to know he would learn to live it, and that the bonds he would come to think were gone could never truly be broken, and how they would ultimately be mended, one by one.

Most importantly, I would try to make it clear to him how he would, against his better judgment and despite how big a fight he would put up in order to prevent it from happening, be able to feel again. Not just any feeling, either, but love—actual love. The one he'd spend years trying to experience. How it would take him utterly by surprise, and be boundless; how it would make him feel so boundless.

Now that I would like to hear his thoughts on, mostly because I believe it would somehow be much more sensical than anything I could ever come up with, at seventeen or even now, to be completely honest.

I think it would have helped me better understand myself, because I don't remember a lot from that time. I have memories engraved in my brain that I can so easily go back to, claim them as my own without fearing they be lost—like that night at the park. Yet others are gone. It's as though I have these breaches in time, and because of it, if I try to revisit a moment that occurred after that night when I was seven, I get taken to a random minute from two years later; if attempt to relive the one after that, I'll be transported to when I was eleven, or twelve, or fourteen...

I don't know if that's something everyone experiences, but I have always been curious to find out if these gaps are a mere consequence of growing up, or just another way my mind decided to make it so parts of me would remain lost, be it to protect me from the bad, or make sure I would forget the good that happened in my life.

I don't think, however, that I would like to find out. The way I see it, there is a fifty-fifty chance that those moments were horrible. And with my history, I would never take those odds. Besides, I've experienced enough pain in life to gamble.

In the end, sometimes things feel better if you drown them in the night.