My last day on earth wasn't supposed to be like this. It was simple, honestly, nothing special or secure in anything that I did. My lunch was good, a couple slices of pizza, which make my friends very happy. They liked it when I ate, because I had a nervous stomach and always had trouble eating out of fear that my anxious bouts would upset it all.
Band class was good. We played a piece that I had never seen before, and I wasn't very talented at sight-reading 16th note runs, so I dropped out and listened to the first chairs play for the rest of the piece. The notes, clipped and high, played so well in-tune that I spaced out for a second. I wished that I had been that talented. I wished that I had been that good. I wouldn't really have a chance.
When my friend scoffed at me normally, teasing, with a cynical smirk on her face, it wasn't any different than any other grin she had given me for the past fifteen years of my life, but it felt important.
I hugged her today, which was different. I liked to reserve hugs for special occasions, as they make my skin crawl and I feel as though I am too vulnerable. But I hugged her, and she seemed confused, but hugged me back, laying her head on my shoulder for a few seconds before turning away and slamming her locker shut, walking to her bus as I went out the other door to my car.
I could hear her laugh reverberate across the hallway, shouting with one of her choir friends about some other kid that I had never met. That I will never meet. That sent a shudder coiling down my spine, spinning my balance and chilling me. Shoulders brushed past me, annoyed, in the hallway, while I stared for a few seconds, drawing things in...making it last.
With a few more snide shoves, my feet found themselves stepping in time to my internal drum, and I didn't find myself to be moving until I had stopped outside at my car. On the drive home, my shoulders were tense, anticipating. The doubt sloshed in my stomach and I wondered whether my lunch was truly a good idea. Deciding against my better judgement, I kept driving despite the growing nausea in my gut, and ended up throwing up out of the window at a stoplight.
Horns beeping, fellow drivers swearing and laughing, I was reminded why I had to do this. I couldn't keep down a meal, just as I couldn't keep a hold of a conversation, just as I couldn't keep up with my friends in art, or band, or GPA, or classes. Just as I couldn't make people love me, I couldn't find any love for myself. I was a problem, and I always held the notion that problems were to be fixed. I, myself, was running out of solutions to my problem, so I picked a day to fix it in the only way I could definitely know would work.
But when I got home, my frozen arms clamped to my sides and my face stiff, my legs wouldn't carry me out of my car. I knew I would be walking into my end, and that once I got outside I wouldn't be able to stop myself. I remembered her face, smiling, and her hand, shoving me to the side when I made a bad pun. I remembered the sound of the first-chair clarinet that almost made me cry like a child. I remembered the tight burning in the back of my lungs as I heaved up my brave lunch at the stoplight.
Stoplight.
I stopped, and I picked up the phone.
I called my friend, putting the phone on speaker, and pressing my hands to my temples to keep myself from tearing my hair out. I locked my fingers into fists to keep myself from ripping my skin open, I kept my mouth mostly closed to keep my teeth from breaking the bones of my hands.
She ran to my house, getting off of her bus four stops too early, and in the twenty minutes it took her, I had already vomited twice more. She forced open my car door, unbuckled my seat belt, and dragged my stiff, lifeless body from the car. My muscles were pliable and unresistant, allowing her to carry my into the driveway. There, out of the tight, foul-smelling garage, she grasped my heavy frame in a hug, my knees weak and her supporting all of my weight.
I couldn't believe that I had broken so easily, and I hated myself for not going through. I should have gone through. Even as she called my parents and checked me into the psychiatric ward, I hated myself for still breathing. I hated myself for allowing my rib cage to hurt with anxiety, for allowing myself to eat enough to throw something up. I hated myself for being alive.
Even so, I knew it would have been wrong.
My last day on earth wasn't supposed to be like this.
So, I made sure that it wasn't.
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