The illness in me E-Book

Domenic-Lukas Keip

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 125

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Diel is a 19-year-old teenager like many others. He lives in a nice house, has busy parents and still goes to school. But what sets him apart from his "normal" peers: He suffers from a mental illness. At first, he tries everything he can to fight it. He can't count on his parents. Nor can he count on his only two friends. So he is trapped alone in a spiral of exclusion and loneliness. Will he manage to escape it? Or has he already reached the point of no return? In his book, the author describes what bullying and its consequences do to people, the momentum it creates and how isolated and supposedly without prospects the victims are. This story has a questionable ending, perhaps we will succeed in changing things in real life.

Leseprobe

Foreword

Help is something we all need at some point in our lives, whether asked or unsolicited. It's easy to ask someone for directions, ask your parents if you can spend the night at a friend's house, ask your teacher if they could explain the last subject in more detail or ask the doctor if they could take a closer look at your broken arm or runny nose. But what happens when asking for help is no longer so easy? When you don't even know exactly what's wrong with you? How do you ask for help or, more importantly, who do you ask? If you suddenly find yourself in a place where everything is gray, sad and desolate and no one takes you serious when you tell them about this place, what would you do? When everything seems helpless and pure despair puts a knife to our throat, we cry out for help on the inside, but on the outside some may be met with rejection. Some therefore remain calm and answer the question "How are you?" with a smile, followed by a half-hearted "Fine". When in reality, some people are haunted by a monster hiding in the darkest corners of their mind. You want to fall to your knees in front of your loved one, crying and sobbing, begging for the suffering to end. Mental illness cannot be cured with a plaster or a band-aid. Even medication is usually only good for alleviating the symptoms, but offers no cure whatsoever. It is difficult to understand what is happening to you while you are defenselessly at the mercy of the illness. It is even less clear to outsiders what is going on with the person in question. The person affected needs help. Whether they outwardly reject this is irrelevant. Cries for help can be hidden, they can come to light in seemingly random comments or in the form of self-harm. This book tells the story of a person suffering from a mental illness. His story is not a creation of wild imagination. His life before the illness, his symptoms and the end of the story are all realistic scenarios based on research and personal experience. The protagonist needs help. Just like many other people on our planet.

First act

Chapter 1: Just a dream

No matter where you looked, flowers of all different colors grew everywhere in a seemingly endless sea of meadows. Diel stood in the middle of this colorful flowerbed. He walked slowly forward, his hands searching the flowers around him and his eyes wide open. Something peaceful emanated from this place. He looked around and tried to name the different flowers he saw. Roses, orchids, daisies, poppies, lilies, there were so many and yet each one looked more attractive than the next. After a while, Diel noticed another flower in the distance, but this one was bigger than all the others. He walked over to it. All the flowers so far had reached up to his thigh, but this one was almost twice his height. He kept walking towards it and the closer he got to it, the more the other flowers disappeared from his field of vision. This one flower seemed to surpass them all, it was a remarkable feeling, a desire that he had never felt before. He was now standing right next to it. Now he looked at it very closely. He couldn't see the head and the stem of the flower had no leaves, it was a pure grass-green stem from which a transparent, slightly reddish liquid seemed to run. It had the resemblance of a sweat. Diel stretched out his finger and let the liquid flow towards it. It was cool and had a strange consistency. It felt like honey, only without the stickiness. He brought his finger, which was now completely coated in the liquid, to his mouth. A seductive smell beguiled his nose and he licked his finger. It was sweet with a bitter aftertaste. Diel was overcome by a sudden desire for more. He grabbed the stem of the plant with his two hands and began to suck the liquid directly from it. But less and less liquid came out of the stem. As if in a frenzy, he began to sink his teeth into the stem of the flower. He felt his mouth filling up again with the sweet, tempting taste. He bit further and further, tearing whole pieces out of the stem to fill his mouth more and more with the liquid. The liquid began to collect in his mouth and crawl out of his mouth. Diel noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe, he tried to swallow, but the liquid didn't seem to be getting any less. Panic crept in and Diel tried to break away from his feeding frenzy. But he couldn't stop. He swallowed and swallowed, but it didn't help. He noticed how the liquid was not only slipping out of his mouth, but now also through his nose. He felt like he was suffocating, drawing fluid into his lungs every time he tried to breathe. He tried to cough, but his swallowing reflex seemed to be stronger. He tried to scream, but his cries were silenced by the masses of fluid in his lungs. With the last of his strength, he tried to free his hands from the now darkened stem. And he actually managed to free his left hand. Reflexively, he put his hand in his mouth, hoping to stop any more liquid from entering him. His mouth continued to move, biting and biting. The sweet taste took on a metallic note and his hand ached. Desperately, he tried to understand how he could escape this situation. He tried to push his fingers further down his throat. He made it so far back that he activated his gag reflex with the help of his index finger. He fell to his knees and vomited. He felt his mouth and nose emptying, but he still couldn't breathe. As well as vomiting, he tried to clear his trachea by coughing. He finally succeeded in clearing the liquid. Relief slowly began to spread and Diel looked at his left hand. It was covered in a mixture of blood, vomit and the strange liquid. He looked up at the stalk. The wounds he added to the stem seemed to be closing. The stem, which had turned black and green, turned back to a bright cheerful green. Then it began to move. It bent and Diel could see that the head of the stem was moving downwards. The plant as a whole seemed to be bending down towards him. Diel just stared, his thoughts jumping around like a pack of wild dogs. Confused and frightened, he looked up. A black half-open flower looked down at him. The head of the plant had five petals. They were all pitch black. The head came closer and closer until it was only a few centimeters away from Diel's head. Diel now took a closer look at the flower. It seemed to have small yellow dots. Tiny, barely recognizable. Diel felt uncomfortable, he wanted to get away from this plant. He crawled back slowly, but the plant seemed to be following him. Suddenly he heard a soft buzzing. So quiet that you could hardly hear it if you made the slightest noise. Diel looked around, trying to locate the source of the sound. It seemed to be coming from the flower itself. It came closer and closer to his face and the buzzing became louder and louder. Slowly, the petals moved apart. Diel froze in shock. The petals revealed a disgusting mouth full of rows of razor-sharp teeth. The inside of the petals seemed to have tiny yellow teeth themselves. Inside the mouth, Diel could make out a feathery body. It looked half decomposed, consisting only of bones and feathers. Some bones seemed almost transparent and liquefied. The teeth gnashed together and dragged the body further down into the black and red, slightly sweet-smelling mouth. Diel could not move, his legs trembled. The mouth came closer to him and the buzzing became deafeningly loud. He noticed a salty liquid running down his cheek to his mouth. Sobbing with a shaky voice, he tried to push the flower away. "Please, let me go. Please, please. I don't want to ... I don't want to yet. Please," suddenly a black carpet of teeth wrapped around him. He woke up.

Chapter 2: Just a day at school

He turned off his alarm clock. Diel looked around. He recognized his room and a look of relief spread across his face. He slowly got out of bed and looked out of his window. It was still early morning and the sun was only just beginning to show itself. He staggered towards the bathroom, still a little dazed. He picked up his blue toothbrush and looked in the mirror. Dark circles under his eyes in a pale face marked with tears glared back at him. Diel wiped the remnants of his tears from his face and brushed his teeth. Then he went to his closet. He opened it and stared inside, somewhat annoyed. The clothes were all neatly and carefully put away. He took a bunch of colorful T-shirts from the closet and threw them on his bed. Some had different motifs of characters or logos on them, like Winnie the Pooh or Bugs Bunny. Diel took a black T-shirt from the wardrobe without a motif. He also chose a pair of dark blue jeans and black socks. Once in the bathroom again, he tried to flatten his somewhat disheveled blond hair with water and combed it to one side. He quietly picked up his rucksack, crept down the stairs, past the kitchen table and headed towards the front door. He glanced at the clothes rack. There were three cloth jackets hanging there. A white, a red and a black jacket. Diel took the black one and put it on. He opened the door, went out, put on his hood and ran to school.

When he arrived at school, he immediately went into the classroom and sat down in his seat. He unpacked his school materials and avoided looking at any of his classmates. Suddenly, he received a slight push from behind.

"Good morning, sleeping pill. Have you had an exciting night?" A broad smile with brown hair jumped into Diel's face.

"Morning, Aiden," Diel replied dryly with a smile on his face. Aiden looked at Diel a little skeptically.

"So?"

"So what?" asked Diel, confused.

"Did you have an exciting night?" Aiden asked. He was always very pushy if you didn't answer his questions straight away.

"No, everything's normal. I was asleep."

"You can tell me a lot of things, but you definitely haven't been sleeping. Unless we both mean different things by sleeping," Aiden winked at him. Diel let out a winding laugh. "Anyway, Osore and I are going on this extracurricular study trip for a week tomorrow. And you didn't want to go, so I wanted to ask you if you had time to maybe feed my hamster while I'm gone?" Aiden smiled broadly.

"Can't your parents?" Diel asked, somewhat confused.

"They're on a cruise. Won't be back for three weeks. And you're my best friend, so of course you're my best alternative." Diel looked Aiden straight in the eye. Diel felt a certain pressure, similar to being pressed for time.

"All right, I'll do it. But you owe me one," joked Diel.

"Thank you very much. And as a token of my gratitude, I promise you that I'll make sure no one talks to Osore," laughed Aiden. Embarrassed, Diel broke eye contact with Aiden and looked at his school books on his desk. The school bell rang and all the students took their seats.

The lessons felt like an eternity. Diel kept trying to listen to the teacher, but he kept drifting off and thinking about his dream again. It was not the first nightmare he had experienced, but the fear of death felt so real. The image of the flower, the teeth and the plea for mercy still made him shudder. At some point, the bell rang for lunch. Diel waited for Aiden to come over to him and then they walked into the cafeteria together. They sat down at a corner table, further away from the other students eating there. A student with black hair which reached down to her shoulders approached the two of them. She sat down with them and gave Aiden a pat on the back.

"And yet another boring day at school that doesn't want to end," she joked.

"Hang in there, Osore, it'll soon be over. Then it's a week's beach vacation," laughed Aiden.

"If the teachers play along, but they'll make sure we don't run out of things to learn," she unpacked a lunch box and a bottle of water from a paper bag. "Diel, you look a bit pale, are you okay?" Osore smiled a little sheepishly in Diel's direction.

"Everything's okay, just a little tired," he waved towards her.

"I thought you slept through the night?" Aiden teased.

"I never said I sleptwell,"Diel said somewhat expectantly. No one responded further.

The lunch break never seemed to last long for Diel. Osore and Aiden talked about tomorrow and what they wanted to see on their trip.

Sometimes I just feel out of place. I can't have a say, but it's also my own fault. I don't need this study trip and I can't party wildly on the beach. What if I were to do something stupid there? I'd be somewhere far away from home and embarrass myself in front of everyone. That would also be embarrassing for Aiden and Osore. They're so excited about the trip and then I come and ruin the whole mood. It's better this way. Even if I would like to talk to Osore about the trip now. In general, it would be nice to talk to her alone again. When she laughs or smiles at me, I feel like everything from before disappears and I can just be me. It makes me feel like I'm in the right place. How can a girl turn my head so much?

The bell rang and all the pupils went back to their classes.

"Well, boys, I'll see you later," Osore called to them as she fought her way through the narrow corridor full of students. Diel and Aiden just waved to her and then squeezed through to their classroom themselves.

"Man, these fucking hallways. We have psychology now, don't we?" asked Aiden.

"Yes, just four rooms further on," Diel replied.

"Well, let's go then, regardless!" Aiden took Diel's hand and stormed through the crowd. Many of the students looked on in annoyance. Diel was a little embarrassed, while all you could hear from Aiden was a half-hearted "Sorry!".