Trigger Warning: Depression, cutting. You have been warned.

XXXX

She had perfected the art of crying silently. It was a useful skill, really, being able to hide so completely that no one even knew she was upset. She could sit in class, head down on her desk, and sob and sob and sob, and no one would even notice.

Sometimes it was good to be invisible.

XXXX

She was sick, sick of having to pretend to be fine, sick of pasting a smile on her face day after day after day, sick of assuring her friends that it was "nothing" that she was "fine" when nothing could be farther from the truth. Sick of feeling the crushing disappointment when they accepted her statements and stopped asking her, sick of dying every time they couldn't care enough to really see.

How hard can it be, she wanted to scream at them. How hard can it be to see that I am crazy, insane, out of my mind? Can it really be so difficult to notice that something's wrong with me? I can't see anything else, yet somehow no one else can see my pain. How is that even possible?

She was so good of an actress that she even almost fooled herself sometimes. Almost.

Because, when it came down to it, the depression was so much a part of her that she couldn't imagine her world without it any more. It was her one true friend, she thought to herself with a slight, hysterical giggle. The only one who could be bothered to stick around with her always, the only one who could see through her weak protests and careful facade.

And that was when she started to love the depression.

XXXX

Every morning, it hurt to get up, and some mornings she just couldn't face the world. She'd roll over and tell the girls that she'd be down in a minute, not to worry, not to wait, and they'd leave just like always. She'd stay in bed and try to sleep for as long as possible, then wake up and dream some more.

She lost track of how many times she'd wished she could just live inside her head. Everything was bright and sunlight in there, the world functioning just as she'd always wanted it to be. She could lose herself for hours in her dreams, the one place where she was happy.

But always, always the real world came back to bother her.

XXXX

The pain was probably the worst part. She could handle the sadness, and the insanity, and the hopelessness, but the pain was just too much.

It was like being encased in concrete and thrown into a river, struggling to move even as she drowned in the water. It was like having all the air sucked out of the room, to be left, breathless and gasping, huddled on the floor as the very life was drawn out of her body. It was constant, and it was intense, and the only thing that helped was more pain.

She knew it wasn't healthy. She wished she didn't have to do it, but there was no other alternative, and so she did. The scars ranged all over, up and down her arms, down her sides, across her stomach and all the way down her legs. The new ones changed seasonally, so they would never show, but the scars always remained, faint, pale reminders of reality.

She didn't know how she would explain them. It was a good thing no one ever asked.

Sometimes it was good to be invisible.