The Heart of the Forest | Teen Ink

The Heart of the Forest

March 12, 2019
By Starks GOLD, Hartford City, Indiana
Starks GOLD, Hartford City, Indiana
11 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Monsters don't hide under your bed they sleep in your head" Unknown


The forest is a place of many things, including a never ending maze of great elder trees and small saplings yet to grow. At daytime the great trees rise up to collect the morning sunlight and the dew on their leaves sparkles like vampire skin that was exposed to the sun. The birds perch on the branches of the trees their beady eyes looking around with a early morning hunger. The forest is a peaceful and calming place in the morning, but as the moon kills the sun and light is sucked away the forest changes.The trees now hang ominously in the air their normal brown color looks darkened appearing just as dark and lifeless as the sky. The stars in the sky are hard to see through the tangling vines of branches from all of the trees. At night the birds as asleep their minds unaware of what the forest is like, even the owls do not stir here. This place is the center of everything in the forest, a dark place where nothing seems to grow, not even grass. The bare dirt on the ground is cold to the feet that touch them of the weary traveler. The traveler is nothing more than a mereteen, whose mind is unable to fear what lurks here in the center, the heart… The heart beats loudly and pulses in the ground striking fear into the teen, but they are unable to run as no matter how much they try. They run and run… but nothing works they always end up here at the heart. It speaks to them its voice pulsing and harsh. The heart always speaks down to the teen its entangling and trapping words never seem to end . You don’t matter… why would they care?.. Why don’t you just go back to bed. They don’t care.. Each word spoken is like a dagger with a poisoned tip to the teen a never ending battle in the trapping and entangling forest. The birds that chirp only repeat what the heart says… Why are you here? No one loves you… No one cares about you. Over and over… they repeat and everyday the teen is stuck here in this dark and trapping forest. Pulsing and harsh words are fed into them sinking into their skin with no hope of it ever fading away… At least that is how the forest seems. The forest always seems this way, trapping, dark and a maze. It is meant to seem this way because the heart says so, its words mean everything and write the teens life but… What if this wasn’t true? What if the teen did not listen to the voice and did not give up? Then the heart would lose its power. The forest would wilt and die off and the birds would leave with great caws of sorrow as their home was broken into tiny, meaningless bits.. What if… What if… Is a question that many can ponder but how many actually act on the question? What is the purpose of asking a question? Isn’t it to find an answer? Then why do we ask what if they listened, what if they cared, what if they saw… Why? They asked because they wanted answers to their questions but the heart keeps its grasp on them. It keeps feeding them lies and pulsing words over and over. The birds keeping chirping the words back echoing in the forest. Then… all goes quiet and the heart of the forest moves on to entangle another victim.


The author's comments:

This story was something that I wrote by using a randomized title generator. I decided to go down an interesting path with it using it to create a metaphor for depressing. The Heart of the Forest is meant to show how depression can affect someone mentally. Crippling them from the inside out. This story is not meant to scare people away from the idea of depression or people with depression rather bring light to it. The Heart of Forest shows how depression can move from person to person and how badly it can affect them over time, the damage done. I hope that this story speaks to everyone, even those who are struggling.


Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.