I had a dream where I got depressed again. depressed to the point where I spiralled out of control, and, as expected, everyone ostracised me for it. I dreamt of being sidelined, rejected, as though my illness were an inconvenience they had finally grown tired of tolerating. In the dream, I lied to escape things, and people called me out for it. They said not to use my illness as an excuse. The suffocation came back. The exhaustion I know too well returned, wrapping itself around me like an old enemy. When I woke up, I felt more tired than before I slept. Sometimes, it’s hard to distinguish my reality from my fantasies— not that my fantasies contain rainbows or unicorns. They are filled with scorn and rejection, a mirror-world where my fears thrive even when nothing real has happened. Sometimes, I think I shouldn’t have been born at all that I should have died inside my mother’s womb. A harsh thought. A selfish one, perhaps. But it comes, uninvited. I miss the little girl I once was the...