The Mind as a Garden: A Metaphor for Depression
My garden is an unfortunate one.
Once, it grew flowers of all kinds. All colors. All beauty.
Once, it was a place of solitude with no twinge of loneliness.
Once, it was warm, inviting. A place for visitors and friends to flock, to laugh, to find respite from the bleak world it was surrounded by.
Once, smiles came easily, quickly, brightly. If they ever departed, they soon returned to the faces of the loved guests.
Slowly, methodically, creeping in the shadows before gaining the courage to intrude into the light, the brambles came.
Carefully tended flowers choked out and replaced by thorns, by decrepit weeds that exist only to darken what is bright.
My garden is an unfortunate one.
Now, it grows brambles of all kinds. All sharpness. All pain.
Now, it is a place of loneliness where the mind is clouded by darkening thought after darkening thought.
Now, it is sharp, terrifying, a place where no one craves to dwell and from where friends by word only flee. No laughter, only tears. No respite, only an effervescent pitch of despair.
Now, any smile is faked, a mask made of plaster slowly being eroded by the tears it conceals. Once it is destroyed, it is never remade and the tear stains become a constant reminder of lost days and shattered hope.
Slowly, methodically, tiptoeing into the garden I hate but cannot leave, the brambles choke me. They turned on me like they turned on my flowers.
Trapped, alone, choked, and silenced.
They say there is survival of the fittest, and my garden proved itself unfit for flowers, only meant for thorns. But I am not fit for thorns, I am not fit for negligence, I am not fit to survive this.
My garden longs, I long, for someone fit enough to survive the pain. Enough of the slow, methodical creep and tiptoeing.
This garden will never be restored until the gate is unceremoniously broken down.
This garden will never be fit to grow flowers again until the weeds that bind my hands are cut to pieces and destroyed to the very root. The beds cannot be carefully tended until my ankles are released from the thorns that hold me in place.
So someone break down the gate and bring the Raid because this garden is crying out to be destroyed and remade.
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Alyssa is a college student, pursuing a degree in Theological Research. She is outspoken against the stigmas held about mental illnesses and has pushed for it to be treated like an physical illness when it causes absences in the classroom. In high school she was Copy Editor of the newspaper and wrote up to three articles a month, ranging from critical analysis of classroom dissonance to relating books like Narnia and Harry Potter to life after graduation. When not doing homework or writing, she enjoys playing with any dog she comes into contact with, experimenting with new process of making coffee, reading, and having deep conversations over meals with her friends.
alyssa-elliott