I stay, grasping onto the thin string of optimism I have left. I reassure myself that the sun always comes out after the rain. It’s been raining for a while now, but I have hope; after all, everything happens for a reason, right? I always remain hopeful that one-day conditions will change for me. One day I’ll be able to say, “I love living,” but for now, I am just treading water, trying desperately not to drown in life. Occasionally it becomes tiring, treading water, and I start to slip back into that dark place, where the voices tell me it will end when I end myself. I always manage to escape that place before the voices get me to do something irrational. It’s slightly difficult to stay positive when you feel like even God is against you.

In the early years of adolescence, my father caused the first tsunami of my depression. My parents had already paved their separate paths, but they both loved me as if they did not despise the half of me that came from each other. I resided with my mother during the week, and visited my father on the weekends. Eventually my mother tied the knot and produced a second child. It came to the point where I spent so much more time with my stepfather than my birth father that my birth father became envious. For a while he harbored resentment towards my stepfather by cause of simply being there for me.

Finally my father’s feelings of jealousy dissipated and he continued to move on. One day I went to my father’s and he informed me that there was someone I needed to meet. He introduced me to his girlfriend, Amanda. At first I enjoyed her company, but she started taking over my father’s life. She and her children moved in and I began to feel as if I was locked away, helpless, watching as burglars robbed me of my most prized possessions.

After a couple months, my father had completely thrown me away like a useless piece of trash. He never wanted to spend time with me anymore; my evil stepmother had put him under her spell. He changed into a completely different person, someone I could barely recognize. It was almost as if he had amnesia, completely clueless of the man he used to be. I was entirely convinced at this point that my stepmom was some new evil drug that corrupts peoples’ lives to the point of no return.

I never wanted to visit my father anymore. He made me feel worthless, unimportant, and insignificant. I felt that him dying would have taken the same toll on my spirit. I lost my dad. Some days now I think about what my life would have been like if he had never met that woman. There is nothing I can change about it now.