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“Get the other ones!”

“Sure, sure.” I removed two more invisible bugs and pretendedto flick them away down the hall. “All done! We’ll tell Mitch to clean those up,” I said, smiling.

“Okay,” Andy said.

Jordan and I kept on walking toward the lounge, and I thought he might say something about Andy. But instead he said, “What do you do when you slap Dwayne Johnson’s ass?”

I said, “I really don’t know.”

“You hit The Rock bottom,” he said.

“I hate you,” I said. But I was laughing again, and it felt good.

And I thought to myself: If only we were just two regular people walking down a hall together—in a school, maybe, instead of a psychiatric ward. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. And yet I might as well ask for the moon on a string.

January I-have-no-fucking clue,

maybe it’s February, 2023

Dear no one,

When I look out the window, nothing looks real to me at all. Buildings, stoplights, pigeons, streets, trees: everything is a ghost of itself.

I am a ghost of myself.

An hour ago I called my boyfriend. I begged him to visit me, but he didn’t want to. I told him I need him to come to the hospital and bring a knife.I want you to murder me.That’s what I told him.

He hung up.

Mom, you were right. Fuck that guy.

I’m crying again. I’m always crying. My nose burns from cheap hospital tissues. And I’m just sitting here. Taking my last few breaths.

I’ve never been able to explain it to anyone. How the despair is like a black hole. It sucks everything into it, even the words I need to describe it.

I don’t want to go on. I can’t go on. I’m broken and I can’t be fixed.

There’s nothing to look forward to, not now, not ever. Even if I feel better for an hour, or a day, the dead, dark feeling always comes back. The despair aches. I’m actually in pain.

The doctors gave me a new medication and it makes everything worse. I want blackness. Oblivion. Nothingness. Forever.

This is the best thing I can do.

It isn’t a cry for help.

It is a choice to leave.

I’m done. It’s too hard.

I don’t expect you to understand.

This is what I want.

I’ve got a pair of bandage scissors. If I weren’t supposed to die, they wouldn’t have been so easy to steal from the drawer.

I know how it’s done. Cut vertical, not horizontal. Don’t hesitate. Breathe slowly. Focus.

The blood’ll come slowly at first, and then much faster. It’ll hurt. But then it’ll be over.