Kyuhyun’s POV

I looked at Donghae and slightly regret how much I kept pressuring Donghae to tell me. I leaned closer to him and made him lean on me. He continued to sob as I felt my own tears begin to fall.

No one deserves to feel anguish and listening to how Ryeowook lived his live is pretty difficult. He lived his life in so much despair and I didn’t even know. I didn’t know until it was too late.

I didn’t look beyond the surface and thought that everything was fine when in fact, nothing was fine. Ryeowook’s problems kept pilling on top of each other and when I did notice, I thought he was just having a bad day and let it pass my head.

Now that I look back on that day we had our first kiss during the vacation, he looked hesitant... wary. I know that if I look back that I would find more clues to Ryeowook’s troubles but I’m afraid to look deeper and realize how much clues I’ve ignored.

I continued to hold Donghae in my embrace when he moved back to his seat and gave a weak smile.

“You should continue listening,” Donghae suggested.

I looked at him through blurry eyes and saw how his eyes were bloodshot red. I quickly wiped away the tears from my face and saw Donghae do the same.

I took the 10th tape from my bag and switched the previous tape with the 10th tape, making sure it’s on side a.

The soft whirring of the tape could be heard in the small space in the car as I waited for Donghae’s voice to come once again.

You might think that people who commit suicide are people who are weak, people who just want attention that’s why they do the things they do.

Let me tell you from my firsthand experiences that we are not like that. There might be some people who are like that but for the most part we are not like that.

If you’ve never experienced or heard from other people’s experience, let me share my own experiences with you guys.

I feel like I have to start from the beginning but, we all have to start somewhere right? So to start things off, I should tell you what depression is.

Depression is something that everyone experiences in some point in their life. Some people are better at handling depression that others but everyone experiences it. A person may get over their depression for a time being, but something would usually trigger it again and the depression comes back again.

To make a clearer picture on what it’s like, imagine walking on an uneven body of water. Imagine walking on a beach or something, in which the levels of water suddenly changes without any warning. You walk along the uneven water but your eyes are blindfolded and you can’t see anything... you just continue to walk. You keep walking along the nice temperature water and unknowingly, you go deeper and deeper until you find yourself drowning. The only way you can keep your head above water is to float on water and hopefully stay alive.

Similarly, depression is like that. There will be things that trigger your already scarred life and just like the water analogy, those triggers will make you go deeper in your own misery and before you know it, you’re already drowning. The only difference is that you’re painfully drowning in your own misery.

There are many ways that people do to keep their head above water and momentarily forget about their painful life. Some people smoke cigarettes and/or other drugs, take drugs in a different way like injection or digestion, others do different types of self harm.

There are other ways but those are some of the major things that people do to momentarily forget about the thought of suicide. People are capable of distracting themselves if they really want to but sometimes you don’t really want to distract yourself anymore and want to simply end it.

Any type of self harm acts like that safety floating device that keeps you from drowning. Self harm preoccupies your mind from thinking about suicide. Is the feeling of depression still there... yes. Is self harming a way to cope with depression... in a way, yes. Are there other alternatives to face depression... yes.  But realistically, self harm is the main go to for people who suffer depression.

Depression is not something you can choose. Depression is something you have to cope with and sometimes people are better at coping with depression than others. On many cases, those people who are depressed don’t know they have depression and they keep walking and walking until it’s too late. It’s too late and you find yourself drowning. 

That’s how I felt.