Have you ever just stopped and thought of your life, up to everything, this point right now, so hard, that you wish everything could stop? But not the pain. Never the pain, or the angst, or the music that made you want to scream and punch out a window. Because every moment that you let go, every moment that you think you’re okay but break down crying, every moment that you feel like this day, today, you’re gonna die, no matter how bad it gets, you want it all back. It’s the weak chink in your armor, because every time you cry or every time you let your guard down. Every single f*ing moment you want to pull out your razor and every single time you want to jump out onto a busy street, right in front of a moving car, you always can say that you’re so sick of everything. Your life, the people around you. There’s so much pain that you can’t staunch, but you don’t want to stop it. You can die.
But you’re just sick of yourself, aren’t you?
Because you cried yourself to sleep for one week, every single night, until your pillow was soaked and you screamed into your pillow. Piles of tissues appeared everywhere, but you didn’t do anything about them. I felt like nothing ever got better. It didn’t. I still feel like I’m going to scream, or cry, or whatever. I still feel like I will never climb out of whatever the hell I fell in. I write to movie end credit songs and playing TV shows. The constant lull of background music, music you can’t really find anymore as just normal songs, is strangely soothing. I wrote suicide letters with my tears staining the pages. I really had no one. You tell yourself that you’re not a sad story on the days the sun is out. That you love people and you actually have friends. And then for some reason, you get triggered by some small little conniving piece of s***, son-of-a-whoreson-b**** situation or person and then you’re just so…angry. So mad, so hurt so sad. You feel like you’re about to explode. And you f*ing liked those movies that made you feel feels and cry until you’re thoroughly embarrassed. You wrote suicide letters to calm yourself down. You thought you were never going to make it, that you would’ve committed suicide before you would get married or become a parent. You thought about how you didn’t care if you died, just take me now and leave me be. You thought about how easy it would be to just down a bottle of pills and just lie there on the cold ground. You thought about a funeral that no one would attend.
I don’t even know what the worst part is. That I’m a spoiled brat and I hate myself or that I can feel happy. That I think of emptiness and no one loving me and black sharpies. Pills. A noose. Tears. Maybe a stretch over my beautiful hips that would be marred with scars. That you have no friends. That you’re just some freak, and everyone is purposefully rejecting you from their happy happy lives. That…that you are never good enough. You think that you’re some stupid, useless piece of s***. Your life is a lying bag of s***. You cry too easily. That you’re just angry for no reason but it feels so good to just blast some angsty music. That you can deal with everything your way. I always thought that I could take on the world from my room, just my bed and stuffed animals and my desk with my drawing tools, writing tools and my music. I think that everything is complete and utter bullshit; the world is falling apart. I anguished so personally over the fact that gay people didn’t equal rights. That they are hated. How is it that I am so full of hatred, but I wanted compassion at the same time too? Is it an inner, eye-of-the-storm kind of peace? I tear up over the fact that children were starving and couldn’t get a proper education while I am so lazy and selfish. That I am truly.
Worthless.
But I could never bring myself to cut my hips with a razor in the shower, even if I was sobbing. I thought about popping pills and trying to get my hands on some drugs. Get high. Get numb.
I think I’m so pathetic that I wasn’t able to do any of those things, not even get in on a little bit of mary jane in my high school bathroom drug dealings.
And while most people would think that oh, it’s alright. Just talk to me. I’d like that, but I feel like I’m just…falling. That I’m crashing layer through layer of saran wrap, then concrete buildings and then through the ground. And everyone who just doesn’t understand…they tell you that everything will be better and to hang on. They will never. Understand. No one will except for the people who have thought of committing suicide or self-mutilated or anything. Depression. Angst. Tears. You know you’re slowly dying like some kind of fading angel. Nobody wanted you up here so they all turned their backs on you, scorned you. You fade.
While people might think that I hope to change these present tenses to past and tell some inspiring story of how I will learn to love myself, some part of me wishes that I could stay angry all the time, just crying and shrieking at night but calm and dead in the day. I don’t. I don’t want to change anything. I’ll tear myself apart slowly. I know I’m going to have piles and piles of suicide notes until one day, I actually disappear.
I scare myself sometimes.
CHAPTER ONE
I stood in front of the entrance. I stared at it like it was some ferocious beast, ready to eat me any moment. Any time. I felt some of the bigger seniors in their fancy letterman jackets sort of shove me on the shoulder. Book bags thump into my side and I was vaguely aware of a girl spilling her coffee in the parking lot.
I finally took a step forward. Another. Another. I bought new shoes for this delightful occasion. I stare at the black converse on my feet looking all white and clean.
The first day of school. I take in a big gulp of air and I exhale like a giraffe with a ladder down its throat. Right. Sophomore year. I check the first class on my schedule again, crinkling the paper once more as the frail, fuzzy crease almost started to tear apart. English in the upper hallway of the East Wing, room 28. Everything will be fine.
I make it through the doorway as a room of faces is turned to look at me. Drill holes at me. I shake my head. I’m insane, a raging lunatic sometimes. I swear. I chuckle lightly to myself and shake my head a bit, like I was somehow sharing a joke so personal that only my ego could understand it. I take a seat in the middle row, the last seat left. The teacher walks from her desk to the front of the classroom. Hey, I’ve seen her a few times before in my freshman year…
So.
Today happens to be the day that I first entered the hospital. It’s sort of like a…anniversary of the time where I had to get my stomach pumped because I looked into the mirror and opened the medicine cabinet to swallow exactly seven, orange and blue pills, ducking my head under the running sink two times to help me swallow them all. I then vaguely recall my sister coming into the bathroom, and her scream was barely audible as I just sensed the cool tile underneath me.
When I woke up in the hospital bed, I suddenly wondered why all of my favorite bands had depressed people in them. Why some of the band members are gay or bisexual. Then I thought about how I should’ve left a suicide note so I wouldn’t have to explain everything, I would just…be.
“…so don’t forget a three-ring binder tomorrow. I’ll be passing out handouts tomorrow on the book we’ll be starting to read.”
We then move on to a syllabus that she passes out and tells us to get signed by a parent. I just take the single sheet filled with dense text on both sides and I fold it into a tiny square. I tuck it into my pocket. I’ll just forge something later. I hear someone exclaim at all the material we cover. Someone states that they refuse to read MacBeth. The teacher’s voice just rides over everyone else’s, trying to appease everyone. She says we’re going to do some icebreakers, and that everyone has to calm down.
I see that everyone sits down. I feel my vision go a bit blurry. The classroom fills up with splotches of white and the entire room is tipping to the left—now a violent churn to the right. The feeling of passing out slips by, and then I feel myself stabilize. I hear distant murmurs and names. Some hobbies are stated and some places—Florida, Acadia, Italy. I had a lot of fun this summer. Look at my tan!
I see some of my friends as they state their name and then they described their summer. It was kind of strange to see them morph again—some of them were leaner, most of them had a more bronze complexion. I am still pale. I am almost sickly. I’m slim with a slight build from my history of intense competitive swimming. I’m continually getting slimmer and losing all of my muscle—I haven’t been back at the pool in ages. I sigh.
The person next to me says that his name is Joe. He went to summer camp in Pennsylvania.
My turn.
“I’m Hope and I—“ I tug my long sleeves over my wrists—“I just stayed home and watched TV this summer.”
I thought everyone knew for a second. Then the person next to me spoke and I finally breathed. Suddenly, the only thing I could focus on was…my wrists. Jagged flashes of a steamy shower whipped by. Some shaving cream and hot water. Half shaved legs. I suddenly can place all of the scars on my hips, because sometimes I purposefully tried to make a pattern out of the short, straight lines. That was when I still swam. It was easier to hide them on my hips rather than my wrists. I think I have a tic-tac-toe board on my left hip.
Don’t worry, I stopped doing that when I quit swimming. Making patterns with my cuts, that is. I now make neat, straight cuts.
I sat with my right thigh raised and constantly wobbling. When the bell rang for the next period, I sprang up and I was the first one out the door.
I briskly walk to the girl’s bathroom and vehemently shut a stall door behind me. I push down my sleeves to what? Make sure everything is in place? I see white strokes run across and for some reason, I feel my heart settle a bit. I calmly lift a hand to unlatch the door and I smoothly walk out.