it starts with a break up or a fite and usually ends with a death... can u guess wat it is? its wat some call sadness, the proper word for it is depression. Its not something we really want, but it pushes itself into our lives anyway, even if we try 2 get rid of it. It brings along with it tears of salt and water or even tears of blood from our eyes. you begin to cut yourself, and give yourself away to get rid of the pain, but the pain never goes away. It stays with you until the end of time. whether you like it or not. suddenly you lose everything... your laughter, your love, your self esteem, your smiles, most of your friends, your happiness...and everything turns black...and cold. Your friends and parents begin to worry about you. They notice the sharp pain in your eyes, the look of suicide in your face, the dark circles under your eyes, the paleness in your cheeks, the blueish tint in your lips. they see your life going down hill... they try to help you but it just doesn't work...
No one really knows why we have sadness or depression. we just know that when it comes, it hits hard.
I had a similar idea for a story, only it's kind of an occult drama so the metaphor for depression was a parasitic entity called a wallow. The "wallow-haunted" have all the symptoms of clinical depression... it was meant to illustrate the difference between real depression and just being sad (that a lot of people think it is, so they're like going up to a person who is physically ill and saying "Just get over it!" only because they don't see symptoms like in other illnesses, or because they think they've been depressed before and was able to get over it.)
I mean, everyone's heard it described as "black and cold" and involving suicide-- usually they can just shrug it off and wonder "what's up with that?" because the 'image' of depression -- the view from the outside -- it's been done a million times.
What people need to get from a depression story is a look from the inside: the self-injury can't be arbitrary-- the reader should experience the reasoning and emotions behind the cutting, and gradually (because if it's sudden it's more difficult to relate) drawn into the stage where you're really not caring if you starve, if you stink, with the weight pressing down on you all the time , and the headaches, the just loss of control of yourself... that loss of self-control must be something everyone fears, so most try to convince themselves it won't happen to them -- but a story like yours ought to put the reader in the point of view that it does. >:-D
