At that exact moment he had been sitting on the couch in Kurt’s living room sandwiched between his boyfriend and Finn.

It felt like a punch to the stomach, maybe less sudden, but just as violent.

It crippled Blaine, and he suddenly felt the overwhelming need to pull into himself. He furrowed his brow in confusion at the familiar feeling. It wasn’t the feeling that confused him (that was sickeningly familiar) but it was its occurrence at that particular moment that he didn’t understand.

He had been outrageously happy.

He and Kurt had spent the afternoon kissing. The kind of light happy kisses that had the ability to fill entire afternoons with only their buoyancy. They had bantered playfully while playing cards on the floor of the living room, sunlight streaming through the windows.

But suddenly and forcefully, none of it mattered.

Blaine needed to get away. And fast. His hand ticked nervously against his knee.

Kurt pressed his hand against Blaine’s ticking one and looked at Blaine with concern in his eyes.

Blaine couldn’t stand it. He sprung up from his spot on the couch, feeling unreasonably claustrophobic.

“Blaine?” Kurt asked with alarm in his voice.

“Um...” Blaine tugged fiercely at the collar of his shirt, which felt like it had a vice grip on his throat. His eyes darted frantically towards the door.

“I have to go. Mom wants me home by five.” He had turned on his heel before Kurt even had a chance to acknowledge this. He heard him calling after him,

“But you said your parents were out of town this weekend!”

He was running.

He slammed the door as he clambered into his car and gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.

Resting his forehead against the wheel, he tried to stop the spinning thoughts in his head.

Why now? Why when everything was going so well? Why did it have to happen now? I was actually happy for a moment.

But his questions only gave way to more questions, never answers.

His depression always hit him this way. Never in prolonged stretches, never long enough to have a doctor call it depression. His misery didn’t deserve the title.
Wringing his shaking hands together, he began to drive home.

When he walked into the empty house, a dizzying wave of nausea overcame him. He nearly tripped over his feet in his rush to get to the bathroom.

Crashing to his knees on the tile, he felt his body convulse and he retched over the toilet bowl.

Nothing happened.

Nothing ever did.

He willed himself to empty the contents of his stomach into the bowl and physically eject the dark thing suffocating him from the inside, but that would have been too easy.

He scoffed, his cold laugh echoing off the tiles. He pushed his sweaty curls off his clammy forehead and leaned back on his heels.

That would have far too simple; too much relief to ask for. To be able to vomit, and call his feelings an eating disorder. If starving himself or binging could have made the crushing sadness go away he would have done it.

At least his darkness would have had a name.

Pulling himself up shakily from the ground, he summoned the energy to take the stairs to his bedroom.

His phone vibrated angrily from inside his pocket, but he didn’t take it out. He knew he had worried Kurt, leaving so abruptly like that, but he couldn’t let Kurt see him like this. No. Kurt had to continue to believe that he was infallible.

Gazing upon his empty bedroom, he felt a second wave of it sweep through his body.

He clutched his stomach in agony, falling onto the bed and curling up as tightly as he could. Still gripping his stomach at the angry pain, he pulled his head deep into his knees and curled his legs up into his chest.

Smaller, smaller, smaller he made himself until he couldn’t do it anymore.

He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. He writhed in the pure agony of it for a moment, feeling his body convulse again and again.

Fighting with the cloudy blackness threatening to overtake his mind, he stood up, untangling himself from his own limbs. He walked over to the dresser and unearthed a small reflective object from underneath a pile of socks.

Taking the pointed shard of glass in hand, he glanced his reflection within it. He felt disgust as he looked at the face staring back at him. He knew that face looking back at him. He was Blaine Anderson: straight A student, lead soloist of the Dalton Warblers. He had wealthy parents, a nice house, clothes on his back, and food in his stomach. He had all his limbs, he was talented, gifted, blessed. He even had a loving boyfriend.

Most of all he was alive.

He threw the piece of glass down in frustration, watching it shatter into a thousand pieces with a trace of satisfaction.

He had no right to this pain.

He didn’t deserve to be miserable.

Besides which, that would be too easy. That would also give the doctors something to name his pain.

Cutting, “self harm”.

It was a label he couldn’t be afforded. He couldn’t fix his pain with blood.

Feeling his phone in his pocket again, Blaine whipped it out in frustration, glancing at the screen.

Kurt.

It would be so easy, so simple to pick up the phone and cry. He could imagine it. He would sob into the phone for hours, and Kurt would whisper the comfort of sweet nothings into his ear for as long as he needed to hear them.

But he couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone.
Tears would be too easy. He couldn’t fix his pain with tears.

So he remained composed, tossing the phone aside and staving off the waves of agony radiating from within.
He walked to the en suite bathroom of his bedroom, listening dully to the clicking sound of his shoes across the hardwood.

He opened the door of the medicine cabinet with a creak and reached for the bottle of prescription sleeping pills.

He poured out what was left into his hand. He was shaking again, from head to toe. He surveyed the tiny blue capsules in his hand with disinterest.

He could easily just take them all into his mouth and it would be over. The threatening darkness would disappear into nothing, he would slip away easily and he would never feel this way again.

But it would be too easy.

Too simple for his pain. He didn’t deserve such a peaceful escape.

So he threw them down with force onto the countertop and watched them slide into the sink.

Tearing at his dark curls from the roots, his fingers intertwined in his hair angrily.

He did the only thing he knew how to do.

He ran to the opposite end of the bedroom, flinging open the door to the tiny closet. Pushing aside heaps of unorganized clothes and unused sheets, he crawled inside, pulling the door closed behind him.

The complete blackness greeted him like an old friend.
Curling up inside himself, Blaine worried his bottom lip between his teeth and waited.

The spells never lasted more than an hour. He could only wait.

His overwhelming, unbearable, unnameable, sadness would lessen, and then fade completely.

He would build up the courage to climb out of the heap of sheets and clothes and open the door.

It would be gone as easily as it had arrived, and it would once again become unnameable.

He didn’t understand. He had been so happy when it hit. There had been no warning. There was no reason behind it. And that was what scared Blaine the most.

That he had no right to be sad. Nothing was wrong. And yet, everything was wrong.

What was he supposed call a depression so deep and so vast that it couldn’t be conquered with vomiting, or crying, screaming or tears? What was the name of a feeling so dark and unwavering; it could not be overcome with cutting, or suicide?

Blaine Anderson knew he didn’t deserve the relief that death would offer him.

It would be too easy.