He, who was no unaware and naive

While hurrying home, my thoughts had gotten to me, and at this point, I didn't even understand what I was thinking about anymore. my mind was lost in a deep void with nowhere to escape to.

As I made my way back through alleyways and crowds of people practically on autopilot, I thought to myself.

Why do I feel this way?

I have no idea.

What am I gonna do to fix my problems?

I have no idea.

Still, at the same time as being so in the dark and upset, I wanted to save myself from the hole that I was only digging deeper, but I was clueless as to what I should do, or why it was even getting worse. Am I lonely?... A little, but it’s not something I can’t put up with. All I knew was that I wanted to bet on myself to make it better. I knew I could do it.

Upon arriving at my house, I quickly hurried up the stairs without even taking my shoes off.

It was just my mother and I that lived here since, after all, I was an only child. To my remembrance, there was nobody for me to look at as a father figure while growing up, which led to me being by myself often because my mom was always at work, and still usually is.

But, It was a positive and negative thing. Being alone led to having more time by myself, and in other words, meant having more time to learn about things that I wasn’t taught in school, on the internet.- My number one resource for questions and help when my anxiety pushes me past my limits.

Sitting down in my desk chair, I sighed heavily. I prepared myself to search for answers out of desperation. By ‘doing it all myself’ I meant getting an idea on what to do and then going with it, because even I can see how trying to do something when you have no idea as to where you should start is impossible.

I simply typed-

“how to release yourself from depression”

It was embarrassing to type and I didn’t even bother to use caps lock or anything of the sort, but I was trying to find a way to get out of how I was feeling and this was the only way.

As I scrolled down the list of links I could click, none of them seemed like something I’d want to do. Obviously, at the top of the page was a national helpline, but going to that for assistance was the same as taking up the offer shown on the billboard earlier. I continued scrolling.

‘5 Ways to Help Yourself Through Depression (for Teens …’

“Not that one…. What about this?” I murmured to myself.

I had come across a link that actually seemed like it would be helpful

‘How to Overcome Depression: 5 Things You Can Do NOW to Make a Meaningful Impact’

I began reading what the page had to offer after waiting the second it took to load.

‘Take a different view.”

Isn’t that what I’m already doing by looking at this article?

‘Visualize a happy memory.”

Huh? I don’t have any of those. Geez, that sounds sad. Even for me.

‘Try making plan-’

“Okay, yeah I’m done reading this. It’s literally getting me nowhere.” I complained to myself.

Just like I had said, this was doing nothing for me. None of these were good suggestions. I was even getting a little mad at how hard it was to find something that was even remotely useful. I yawned and brought my hand to prop my head up on it. As I backed out of the page, I began scrolling more and more for literally anything.

Over the span of ten minutes, multiple sighs and instances of saying ‘No’ in annoyance that I was finding nothing instinctively curbed the silence that the whir of my ac was failing to eliminate.

“I swear if I don’t find anything in the nex- wait, wait, wait, wait, what’s this?”

Something that might actually be useful? No… Impossible, but I still had to make sure I wasn’t missing out on something that could actually help me out.

“15 Things you NEED to try in order to get rid of your mental health issues”

Before clicking on it, I thought to myself.

“15 Things that I “NEED” to try? Must be legitimate, after all, you can’t lie on the internet, it’s illegal.”

In the midst of searching for answers, I was still my sarcastic and joking self, which actually made me feel a little relieved since it was a way of showing that I wasn’t completely lost.

After clicking on it, I became a little annoyed since it was taking longer than usual, and that’s when it popped up.

My face became red with anger.

“THIS WEBPAGE ISN’T RESPONDING?! ARE YOU SERIOU-”

After that, I had to take a break. In fact, I actually ended up spending two hours in the bath reading a light novel by the name of ‘Eighty Seven (87)’ which helped me calm down. When I came back to sit down in my chair, I realized that It was already eight p.m. So, like usual, I decided that for maybe the fifth night in a row, I was going to pull an all-nighter.

“No more non-responding webpages, no more jokes, I’m getting an answer. I don’t care if it takes me days.”

…

It didn’t take long for yawning to become frequent, and my posture was slowly worsening as the hours went on. My search history on the day would take hours to scroll through if I were to try and the amount of time it would take to traverse through it was only lengthening.

As I leaned back in my chair to stretch, an annoyed groan filled the silence that occupied my room.

“Ughhhhh, what am I supposed to do? All of these pages are just copies of one another. I seriously don’t get it.” I complained as my eyes gazed over at the bottom of the screen.

“Page 230 of google? How long have I been doing this for?”

I wasn’t that shocked. After all, this is what I did most of the time. Sitting here at the computer screen doing whatever I please. But Honestly, I just wanted to find something that would help me soon enough in order to carry on with the process of getting better. I questioned if I was spending my time wisely, and if I was using the best search possible, but my gut was telling me to keep going for a few more pages.

At this point, some of the results weren’t even tips or advice on how to heal yourself. Just ridiculous blog posts about people who tried bizarre things in order to help themselves, or books (Which I wasn’t willing to dedicate my time to. Eighty-Seven being an exception).

Eventually, I came to realize that the gut feeling I had was wrong, but an idea popped into my head.

“Fine, what about this?”

My keyboard keys clacked as the letters came to spell out a simple sentence.

“How to keep depression from coming back”

Was it odd? Yes, and most people would say you should get rid of a problem first before trying to find out how to keep it from coming back. But someone who’s actually beaten depression is sure to know how to get rid of it, right?

Right.

Instantly after pressing enter, multiple links that actually seemed useful caught my attention.

In a matter of seconds, I chose the link that seemed the most interesting and was sure that I'd be able to take something from it.

“15 Ways to Avoid Depression”

Immediately, I was hooked by the first option.

“Exercise regularly”

I didn’t know if I was up for doing it regularly, because after all, I didn’t really need it. My body is already fit, and it’s not like I’m insecure about anything other than my hair. So, ultimately, I was willing to go for a run this one time. If I liked it, I’d keep doing it. If I didn’t then I’d just find something else.

I got up and closed out of my tabs without a second look at any of the other fourteen bullet points on the website, but I felt confident and assured that this would work. In an instant, my focus was shifted to finding clothes to wear for when I was going to run later. My clothing selection was important to me, after all. I liked to be confident in my clothing choice since, as stated before, I dislike most of my other features. It was like receiving a participation trophy; Being mad about losing (Which in this case, losing is being cursed with hair like this) And receiving the trophy (Which in this case, is wearing cool clothing) and feeling the slightest bit better because of it.

…

At least an hour of crucial decision making passed, and I had finally decided what I was gonna wear.

I chose a long, black and white checkered flannel and left it unbuttoned. It was frigid out, which was normal since it was almost twelve a.m., so I wore a pair of black sweatpants which complimented the white undershirt I had on. I had yet to put shoes on, but I was comfortable…. I was ready.

…