As I sit in the darkness of my apartment, I hear creatures scratching and banging against the exit door as they smell the savory scent of a final meal. There are not many humans left, and I wonder if this apartment complex is the last that holds human life. Indeed, for the past five years, it had felt as if there was no life outside of this mere apartment. Despite the apocalypse beginning three months ago, I have felt as if I was utterly alone for the better part of a decade. As a result, the banging I now hear against the door from mindless, bloodthirsty creatures is reminiscent of the sound of lost friends, family, and acquaintances trying to reach me. While these creatures wish to tear my soul from my body and feast on my mess of a corpse, leaving my apartment when in my crippling depression was more challenging than any mountain, river, or horde. Had I experienced what I have experienced in the these three months, I would have felt prepared to confront such challenges. However, this preparedness is far from willingness. I still think that those challenges would have been met with shallow reward as social vindication that felt completely irrelevant to my survival. Today, I would be capable of facing humans and their expectations, but I would be as understood by humans as by the very zombies outside my door.
Nevertheless, I longed for a time when I could show the world my progress and show pride in my work on my own personal well-being. When this all started, I was only on my first week of a month-long treatment regimen on Lurasidone. I was in the full force of the side effects that accompanied any therapeutic potential of this drug. Due to a highly treatment-resistant unspecified bipolar disorder characterized by chronically relapsing depression and hypomania, this drug was supposed to be the substance that would finally save my life from another suicide attempt.
The prelude to my prior suicide attempt began in times more everlasting in my mind than any apocalypse.