Cared for By No One

            I sit here with tears dripping down my face, blood smeared everywhere, exactly everywhere, and a decision staring me right in the face. With a rope firmly tied to a hook in my ceiling, a bucket ready to metaphorically and physically kicked, I still have this impending decision to make.

            A simple one, it is to me, but to others, not so much. Perhaps, just maybe someone looking upon my situation would turn away in disgust, declaring how selfish I am to take my own life. How melodramatic I’m being, just like the “typical teenager”. I have no response to those, not any that would defend me in any case.

            Because I am selfish. And I am melodramatic. And yes, these things have left me suicidal and feeling insane. I’m selfish because I’m taking my life, while there are others out in the world lying, just waiting for death in a hospital bed. I am also melodramatic; there are tons of people in the world that have taken abuse physically, emotionally, and in turn abuse alcohol and drugs.

            At the end of the day, in the later hours of twilight – dusk – everything gathers into one big dust ball, and suddenly, you can’t ignore the huge fucking elephant in the room anymore. You can’t keep pushing emotions down until they explode into a fit of rage; you can’t just keep barely surviving with the razor blade cutting down your arm. You just can’t do anything anymore.

            I don’t care about the clichés that come bearing across my name, I don’t care about the shame that I’ve brought upon my family, it doesn’t matter. And it never did. I guess why this is why this all works out; since I’m so cold-hearted and emotionless.

            The “fuck my life” phrases, the “I hate my life”, all the “I wish I could end it all right now” add up to nothing. I’m not Goth, I’m not Emo, or a Satanist. I’m none of those things; I’m not labeled.

            Quietly, enough so that I can hear my mother’s cries and sniffling as she finished her drugs, I cross over to the bucket underneath the hook in my ceiling where I used to hang a plant. How conveniently it was placed, as if it knew one day that I would be using it for other purposes. Other important purposes.

            I gently step up the bucket, and fit the noose over my neck and setting it just an adjustment that was a little bit over uncomfortable. My feet set firmly onto the top, I begin to think. Thinking of all the memories and experiences I’ve been through that have taken me here.

            The nights of drawing that sharp razor blade down my arms, whenever my mother hit me once again, when my supposedly “best friend” literally stabbed me in the back with his Swiss knife and stole the drugs we had gotten together, or the time I was raped at a rave, a place where again my “friend” Stacie had taken me to.

            The day I bled so much that I passed out in the bathroom, and I was taken to the hospital by my real friend and first boyfriend Victor. And the day Victor was pushed out of the window of my apartment by my high on crack mother. The day I finally got back at Stacie and stabbed her, and was sent to juvie even though she never spent a day for hurting me in the first place.

            And as I think, I have to admit that there were a few good memories. Happy, cheerful memories like when my mom for once wasn’t high, and we would do regular things like play board games together, or went out for ice cream at Dairy Queen. And the first time I kissed Victor in his Camaro that he’d built with his own money during the summer, along with the first time we’d gone the whole way, and all the memories that led up to that.

Other than Victor, nothing much else.

            What stops people from committing suicide, when I can’t? Why do people who continue to destroy their lives on their own like my mother can’t die, even when she literally killed my one and only boyfriend, but the police where convinced that Vic was just suicidal? Why don’t people understand that drugs and alcohol only numb the pain; that they just come back more painful and even more raw than ever?

            Nineteen years I’ve had on this earth; almost two decades worth, and I think I have more insight than a wise seer. A little self-conceited for me to feel that way, but sometimes I really do, like when I’m standing here on this bucket ready to hang myself while a part of my brain tries to make reason of why I’m doing this to my body.

            Why are you taking your life? It seems to whisper, but it knows the answer already. I can’t go on anymore. I whisper back, and it seems to understand what I’m saying as if I’m held together by two different people.

            This self-hatred is like a black hole burning itself into my very soul. I’m crippled by the tears and sadness that overcome me; I can’t seem to get out of this rut that I’ve been born into. If I had a purpose, then it must have been to warn young children about the false consequences about drugs and alcohol like committing suicide and fierce depression.

            Because I can’t think of anything else but hanging myself right now; and every day is just a struggle of what method to end my life is that day. I can’t help it. I can’t help but already feel dead.

            I’m doing it now. It’s happening now. I seem to suddenly realize, as my hand grips onto the top of the rope. I close my eyes, tears still running down my face, and I can’t help but think what if?

            What if my mother wasn’t a crack head and my father was still alive, would things be better? What if I had never trusted Stacie in the first place, and focused solely on school? And if I met her, would I have never gotten raped? And even still, would I have found as real of a connection of love that I had with Victor? Would I have ever met him?

            If I had been born…”right”, would I have been able to find my purpose in life to be happy? I think I would have. But I guess I must have just been born underneath a curse placed over my head.

            My mind is suddenly paralyzed and I’m unable to move as I think about Victor once again. The first time I met him had been at the park, and I was just sitting on a bench feeling depressed since that day, my mom had thrown a vase at me and it split my eyebrow open.

            “You look sad.” He said, almost appearing out of nowhere as he walked up to me. I noticed that he held a loaf of bread in his arm as if he had come to feed the pigeons.

            “I am,” I said, clasping my hands together and staring at the ground. I wasn’t in the mood to really be social.  “You should leave; I’m not very much of a social person right now.”

            He smiled at me, and I flinched a little. He seemed confused by my reaction, and leaned a little bit away from me.

            “Sorry,” I apologized sincerely. Even though I didn’t feel like talking, he intrigued me. I was curious about him.

            “No problem,” He said, leaning back into a safe distance. “What brings you here, stranger?”

            “I don’t know,” I admitted, widening my eyes a little. I didn’t know why I came to the park that day; maybe because it was quiet, and no one was trying to physically harm me? Probably something along those lines.

            “Well, apart from that wicked cut on your eyebrow,” He joked, “I came over here because I thought you looked pretty beautiful just sitting here, staring down at the ground as if you were a part of some sort of photography book or something.”

            “What?” I asked confusedly. “That didn’t really make sense.” I said, immediately refusing to believe that I was “beautiful”, because I knew for sure that I most definitely wasn’t.

            “I have no reason to lie,” He said, smirking at me. “I thought you were so beautiful that I would attempt to ask you out…on date.” He said hesitantly. I noticed that he started to rub his hands together and jiggling up and down, like he was nervous.

            I was instantly taken aback. Me, being asked out by someone as attractive as him? I’d seen him around school, but after all, the high school is a pretty huge place; I’d only seen glimpses of him in the hallways.

            I didn’t know him, hell, I didn’t even know his name; he could be a rapist for all I knew. But the way he looked at me straight forward until he asked me out, the way he seemed genuine whenever he spoke, I couldn’t help but feel attracted to him, as if I were drawn towards him.

            “I’d…I’d love to.” I answered back hesitantly, feeling my cheeks heat up.

            Things only got better from there. With Victor, I was able to feel alive, I didn’t have to cut every night, and I didn’t have to feel so depressed. With him, I was able to feel love, a feeling that I’d never felt from anyone else. And it was more than just sex, more than just teenage lust or “puppy dog love”. It was real. We were real.

            And then, my mom just had to get high once again over crack. All she did was abuse drugs all the time, and cared for no one but herself. That’s why she didn’t feel bad when she “accidentally” pushed Victor out the seventh story window in our apartment. She claimed that she tripped over an extension cord that I had left out, and fell into Victor as he was crossing the living room to go to my room.

            Of course, the police thought it was fishy, but as soon as they found out that Victor had depression and bi-polar problems, they automatically assumed that he committed suicide, especially when they found out that his parents had asked his doctor to prescribe mood stabilizers (happy pills) to him.

            Victor’s parents were heartbroken, and just a few weeks ago, they had brought up the subject about adopting me into their family. I was ecstatic; it wouldn’t take that long for the papers to be sent through, but after Victor died and they knew that my mother did it, they were done. They moved literally three days after his funeral, at which I couldn’t even attend because they were afraid I would “make a scene”.

            Suddenly, I stop thinking about Victor. I stop thinking about the pain because I can already feel my fingernails scratching down hard on my arms, begging and pleading for me to stop. I look down and see red, raw marks running down my arm, and I realize the time is now.

            My knees buckle as I imagine Victor’s beautiful face, and I feel a cold wind caress against the nape of my neck. And I instantly know it’s him; he’s come to welcome me. I know it.

            Feeling the reassuring wind settling against my back, I feel the strength in my legs to let me go. I love you, Victor. I suddenly say in my head involuntarily. I feel the cold wind around me stirring, swinging around the room wildly as my posters and other papers go flying around the room.

            He doesn’t want me to die. He wants me to stay. A part of me protests, and I realize that I can’t commit suicide. Victor will go on living through me. He can’t have brought me up this far from the deep hole I was in for nothing, just so I could kill myself like it was nothing. Because it was everything. Victor was my everything, and he always will be.

            And just like that, I realize the first little steps of what I need to do. I realize that I can’t kill myself; I need to get off this bucket. I start to step off the bucket, ready to get off, not thinking about the next chain of events that will happen.

            I step off the bucket, with the noose still accidentally wrapped around my neck to my death.

            Even Victor my savior could not save me.

            I had no purpose after all.