I often wonder what it must have been like for them, finding me there. Sprawled on my bed with my crimson wrists pressed against my lips.

They never spoke to me about it. They never spoke to me at all. Clearly none of them had been given a talk on understanding suicide – or perhaps they had, but had chosen to ignore it. After I got back from the hospital, all I received from my flatmates was awkward silence. I didn’t blame them – they had never taken the time to get to know me even before this, why should I expect any more from them now that I had given all three of them a sight that would probably haunt them to their graves.

For days after my suicide attempt I stayed locked up in my room. My parents didn’t call – they hadn’t been told and I wanted it to stay that way. I sat on my bed – freshly changed and clean – and tried to be as still as possible, listening to my heart thump louder than the tick of my clock. It wasn’t until the third day that Luke came over.

He came into my darkened room and sat on the edge of my bed. I looked at him, wondering what he must think of me. He was the only person I had anything slightly resembling a friendship with, but he had no clue what I could become – what I had become. I watched him as he shook his head, words failing him for what I was sure was the first time in his life.

"What?" I whispered into the black – the first words I had spoken in at least a day.

"I can’t believe you did this," he said, though his words were irrelevant – disbelief was etched in every corner of his face. "What were you thinking?"

His words were soft, but his meaning was not – I bristled inwardly. What was the point in trying to explain anything anymore, if nobody was willing to actually understand? "I was thinking that I was sick to death of her making me feel this way. I’d rather be dead than have to keep feeling like this. I’d rather be dead."

I could see his eyes seek me in the darkness – it was difficult, he hadn’t been here for three days like I had. "She’s not worth it."

Without meaning to, I chuckled bitterly. "You don’t think I know that? I just wish she knew… how much… what I…" I sighed. It was impossible to articulate anything I felt.

"She knows, you know."

My head snapped up. "What?"

"She knows about you… about you trying to kill yourself."

Everything froze for a moment. I teetered on the edge of something dark and dangerous, and I knew that no matter what words I was about to hear, that I was about to be pushed into the rest of my life. My life without her.

"...and?"

"She… she just said ‘oh’."

I blinked. ‘"Oh’?"

"Yeah. She didn’t seem too surprised, to be honest."

I nodded, though my blood was boiling. She expected it, had she? Expected me to wipe myself off the face of the earth because of her, and the only response she could think to give was ‘oh’? I pulled the blankets of the bed around me tighter, trying to ignore the fact that my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly keep grip on them.

"And she didn’t… did she ask if I was okay?"

I saw Luke pause, and I knew, before he shook his head, that she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. Because she didn’t care about me anymore.

And just like that, I was falling.