I’m sorry this had to happen, I guess. Not sorry enough, you’d probably say. You’re right. I’m not sorry enough to stop swallowing these pills. I’m sorry but nothing could make me that sorry. I force the thick cherry liquor down my throat. This is the last time I will have to force myself to do anything.

The lotus takes me down a wide river. I am approaching a waterfall, and beyond that I know there is nothing. I am so relieved there is no afterlife. I don’t want to be anymore.

I am not.

I am throwing up. Pink. This is not a good sign. I retch, therefore I am.

The bathroom floor is cold beneath me. My face is stuck to the linoleum. I smell like sweat and vomit. I can’t believe I failed. It never occurred to me that I could fail. I squeeze my eyes shut and hope to spontaneously die. I don’t. It is 3 a.m. on a Monday morning, so I sit in the dark kitchen and wait five hours for the school bus.

……………………………….

I look into the windows of your house, which are dark. Inside there is more dust than should have had time to build up.

I call your number. “This number has been disconnected. Please hang up and try again.” I hang up and try again. And again. And again. The prerecorded voice seems so calm, she almost has me convinced that trying again will work.

I don’t understand how we could have eaten lunch together only five hours ago. I don’t understand how you could leave without telling me.

……………………………………….

I am terrified. I can’t go on, I can’t keep fucking breathing. It’s a kind of existential rape, you know, when you don’t want to breath but your lungs keep fucking doing it on their own. I can’t stand living for another second. I’m shaking and crying and my fingers are fumbling on the knot.

I almost fall off the ladder trying to climb to the top. I’m crying so hard that I already can’t breathe.

I jump.

The closet bar and cheap wire shelving unit collapse on top of me. The metal bar strikes me in the back of the head. The ladder hits my shins. I realize how completely absurd life is. This is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me. I laugh hysterically. The noose is still around my neck.

……………………………….

I want to die. I would do it right now if there were anything lethal in this depressing girl’s bathroom stall. Instead I curl up and cry. I keep crying until I can’t. Then I stare blankly at a wall.

My teacher comes in and asks through the metal door if I am sick. I do not respond. She leaves.

I do not respond because I have not spoken in two weeks. No one has noticed.

There is a line for the bathroom. An older girl uses a coin to turn the slot on the outside of the lock, and forcefully evicts me. I curl up into my familiar ball in the corner, under a sink. I start crying again. Every so often someone kicks me in the ribs. I don’t understand for the life of me why they keep doing that.

…………………………..

I want to die. I’m afraid it will hurt, but my desperate desire outweighs that. I try to open the window, but the screen has rusted shut. I claw at it until I tear holes in the mesh. My fingernails are ripped off. The wire is cutting my knuckles, and still the screen will not come off. My hands are covered in blood.

Years later I realize it was only a third story window. I would just have broken my legs.

……………………………….

Do you want to play with dolls? The therapist asks.

How will this help? I ask

Just play! She smiles and hands me a mommy doll, a daddy doll, and a little girl doll.

Am I supposed to enact scenes of domestic violence with this? Because my family isn’t like that, I say.

She stares at me as if I were an alien. I am satisfied that she is as predictable as everyone else. I will not tell her anything.

…………………………….

I am so angry. I don’t remember why. Angry at everything. I punch my pillow furiously. My father comes in. He says I am making too much noise. He pushes me onto the bed and takes my pillow away. He leaves.

I pick up a pin and tear at my arms, until they are solidly red and burning and I am not angry anymore. I lie down and try to sleep without a pillow.

…………………………………….

I pick up a serrated knife and drag it against my leg. It hurts like fuck. This is the happiest I have been in a long time.

………………………………………

I have not eaten in several days. I am so tired. I bleed more calories than I eat. I have a bag with thirty Seconals. I will never have to eat again. I take five and collapse to the floor.

I wake up twelve hours later. The linoleum floor is cold beneath me. It has been five years and I don’t understand why I am alive.

……………………………………..

I’m sorry for burdening you by telling you this. I’m sorry for burdening you by being alive and I’m sorry for burdening you by dying.