The End
The end a very very very very long loong long long long final title for htis hcapter ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ;ha; ha ha ha ha ha
"Listen."
"What?"
"Shhhh. Listen"
I am. I am listening, but I don't hear anything. I say so. "I don't hear anything, though."
"God, shut the fuck up, will you? Just listen."
I am trying harder. Listen, listen, listen. There is nothing. I try harder. Wait; maybe there is something. Faintly, I hear: "grabbeling hands. everything counts in large amounts." Sounds like circus music.
"That song?" We are standing in the woods. It is cold out here. And I haven't seen one rabbit, and that was the whole point. This is dumb. I want to go back.
"God, you are so stupid. It's not just a song. It's INXS."
So it's a band. Big fucking deal. I do not understand the significance of this. Why can't we just keep on walking? So he hears a song ou there somewhere. And it's INXS, whoever they are. So what? This is dumb.
"I'm going back," I say.
He is my cousin Scott and he thinks he is very cool. But I do not think he is very cool. I, in fact, think he is a fool. Because his stupid mom said he knew where to find rabbits out here, ahe he didn't bother to correct her, and now here we are out the woods and he is training his ear on random music floating in from the suburbs.
They live in a subdivision here. They refer to it as "the sub," which drives me crazy. We live in a neighborhood, and this whole "sub" business sounds very annoying to me. Plus their house is about ten times better than ours. I hate having to realize how shitty our stupid house is. Same with our cars and our whole stupid life. Scott's life isn't like mine, that's for sure. His family likes him, and he has a car, and he plays in the high school band. He has a girlfriend and his parents, who are still married, know her and she hangs out at their house and feels comfortable. I think this visit out here is what is finally doing me in. Funny, that my last straw would be a stupid Easter dinner out at my cousins. But I can feel that it is, the last straw I mean. Something in me has just snapped today, but in a calm way, actually. I am just done. I can't keep going on, and even if I could, I just don't want to anymore. Too many things that are not reversible have changed in my life, and I don't want to continue with this altered life. I don't want to go on without the people I've lost, or with the people I am stuck with. I don't want to go on with this deformed version of myself that I'm left with from the wreckage. And the wreck is still ongoing, so God knows I don't want to stick around and see how much worse I can get.
Have you ever seen a tree that grew up with a fence in its way, so it is all deformed around the tree and growing out in bulges and winds up all crooked and weird? Well, it's not the tree's fault, is it? But regardless of fault, it is the tree who must live with it's own deformity, its own limitation, right? The fence in the way, its shape is retained. Only the tree had to warp itself in the process of life, the timeline pushing relentless along and no fix to be had. Well, sometimes that tree lives a full life as a crippled, bent over, bulging beast. But somtimes, the tree can't live with it's warped self, feeling a tall, straight, strong tree inside it that never got to be. Instead, it's own strength wound up being used against it in the process of surviving, and mangled it's true form. Sometimes, those trees die early.
I am such a tree. I'm sick of trying to get people to understand what is being done to me, how wrong things are. I am sick of their rolled eyes, their exasperated sighs, their annoyed looks. I am sick of trying to make anyone see my own reality. They see me how they want to see me, however it is convenient for them. My dad, he wants to think I'm just fine and dandy so he doesn't have to do anything about anyting. My mom, she wants to think I'm the problem, the cause of all and any problems in her stupid marriage, and you know what? Maybe I am. Because when I'm not around, Nick will be happy. And maybe that is a valid perspective by my mom, then, that I am the problem in her life. So fine, off I go.
And you know, I really don't even feel mad about it anymore. Not now. I guess it could be that I've run out of anger. Or that it proves so inneffective for me that my anger sparks have just been doused in the rains of disinterest and apathy. I don't know. I really don't.
I just know that I feel peaceful for the first time since I can remember. Since my grandpa was around, that's for sure. And I don't even know if I ever felt this peaceful back in the days when my life was happy, back when I lived with my grandpa. Because there wasn't the contrast. Once you've been through hell, then the absence of hell is all the heaven you need. It's all I need now. All I am asking for, and there's no one to ask for anything in my world except me, so it's me who will provide myself with that peace. I deserve it. Or even if I don't, it's the only light that draws me now.
"Where you going?" Scott has noticed that I'm walking away from his listening post in the trees.
"Back to the house." I don't even know what he is doing. Maybe it's me, and I really am just a weirdo who can't follow normal things. Or maybe he is a freak standing in the woods outside his 'sub' listening for invisible sounds that sound like INXS, whatever that is. I don't know. I don't care anymore. I feel very light. I feel like the woods might just absorb me.
Scott is saying something else to me, but he should know better, since he so clearly pointed out that I am a poor listener.
We already ate dinner. It's about 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon in late March, and the woods are pretty. Some of the trees, the babies, have been tricked by a warm day here and there this month, and little green nubs have poked their heads from inside the crusty grey branches. I hope they make it, these brave little buds of life, but I know they won't because there will be frost and snow before life is safe to support them. They will die as buds, little green folds of optimism and hope, frozen dead next week.
I am surprised that I only lived sixteen years. Not even really sad at this point, just more curious about it all. I thought I'd have a little more time here. And I guess I always figured I'd be able to hang in there until I got to the other side of hell, where things could be back to some kind of normal. Or even to a new kind of liveable life. But it's not happening. I am not making it across the pit. I am swallowed up in it, and maybe it's just my perspective from the bottom, but I see now that there never was any other side to get to. This is it. My life took a crash turn many years ago, and this is where the road dropped off. Just the way it is. All that hanging on I did, for years, holding out for making it out and onto safe land.
That holding on, fighting to stay sane, that is what was the worst, though. Because now that I've hit bottom, I realize that it's very peaceful. The bottom is a far better place to be than clinging to the sides as you bounce your way down. All that hitting the sides.
They're all in my aunt Sharon's back room. Only she's not really my aunt, she is my stepdad's sister. But I like her; she has always been nice to me. She sees something in me that makes the old core of hope spark inside me. She thinks I'm witty and talented and a good dancer. But what good does her perception do when she is far away and I never see her? And I don't fit into her world, anyway. It is easy for her to toss charitable compliments my way; she has no responsibility to help me. I feel good and perform for her for a few hours a year, and then she is all happy and likes me and smiles huge when she stands in her doorway and waves goodbye to me as we back out of their smoothly paved driveway, then she closes that big front door and goes back into her cozy house to have coffee or watch TV or enjoy her children. Me, I slump on the splintery wooden bench that are the Nick'd seats in our van, freezing cold because there is never heat in our lives, trying not to fall off the bench when I doze off on the hour ride home. Because falling off means the ridiculously looped homemade seatbelt of Nick's creation is likely to break my spine if I go down. Say, from Nick's insane turns, fast stops, rage punctuation, whatever.
But tonight, I don't even care. Fine, break my spine on the way home. Whatever. Maybe I will get the back bed on teh ride home. Unless Nick butts in and says it is not my turn. Which it is not my turn, that would be right. But my brothers and sister and me have our own system surrounding the van seating, and we do not need his butting in. We are fine, thank you very much. Idiot.
But tonight, I really don't care. Because it will be my last ride in the van. My last look at a starry winter night, and tree shapes against the sky. My last time to love the night and to marvel at the invention of cars and highway systems. (Although, I've long had a problem with our highway system, and think it could be vastly improved by implementing my I-wish-it-were-patented idea of an elevated roadway. It could be manufactured in standardized pieces that could be locked into place somehow and create a seamless road. But the road would be elevated, constructed like maybe a story high over the ground. Then, just think of this, no animals would ever have to worry about getting hit by a car again. Just picture a world where everyone shared one giant expanse of green yard together? Little kids could run and run and run and never have to get hit by a parent because they "could've been hit by a car."
I am just so tired.
I don't feel like going in there right now, while they are all sitting around in that bright room drinking coffee or wahtever. Nobody is truly comfortable, but nobody else acknowledges that. Is it possible that they are comfortable because they don't register thier disomfort? How can that work. The mind is quite fascinating.
I almost died one time. This story has to do with me going over a dam; can you believe it? True story. Goes like this, as follows:
"Amber, get back here."
I want to get back there, but I can't, because my leg will not come back. It is being sucked steady on the wrong side of the dam, down the waterfall into what I would come to learn was the uppermost chamber of the fish ladder. Know what a fish ladder is? I didn't until after what happens next.
"I can't." My sister is panicked now. She can tell that I am not joking around. My leg is truly being sucked over the dam.
It is my own fault, of course. I was trying to scare my sister, and first I put my arm over and pretended I was being sucked over the dam. Must not have gotten a satisfactory response (or perhas was so good that I exploited her caring for even more rise out of her). Anyway, brought the arm back, no problem. The force of the water was very... forceful. So, I did my leg next, to make my sister even more scared, but this time I was unable to get my leg back. I try and try, but I can't get it back. My sister's face is a mask of shock and terror.
"Quit it!" But I couldn't, and my leg started losing the tug of war, and more of me was inching over the dam wall.
"I can't get it back," I tell my sister, and we are both terror stricken. But the dam doesn't care about two silly girls, and neither does the water with it's very strict agenda, and down I go, sucked right over and into the fish ladder.
I will just say to you that at the bottom of the third fish ladder chamber, I lost the strength to push myself up and out of it. The force of the water pounding downward into the chamber and onto my head and arms was too strong. Thick, and strong.
I thought I was going to die. But I didn't. And now I am. And this time, like last time, I feel very peaceful about it. Because that is what I felt at the bottom of that concrete box. My life did sort of appear to me in a single, all containing flash, but what I made not have made clear is that even so, I had free reign musically and entertainment wise. I had that power. And it doesn't make sense outside the context of accepting my death down there, but I can accept that. And I wonder if when I die tonight, if right before, I will have a similar flash. Is it a more than once kind of thing? Why hasn't anybody looked into this before? Why can't we know more about this? I want to know.
I am in the way back of the backyard now, sitting on the ground behind a clump of fallen trees. I can see them all in their in the lights, pretending they enjoy each other. On the way home, my mom and stepdad will totally cut them all down, and my mom will be right there. Even babies are not safe. The ridicule will flow freely all the way home in the dark, me sitting there on the splintery bench with my hands in my lap, nodding off and trying not to fall sideways.
Here's how I'm going to do it.
I am going to call Donny first. I think. I haven't decided that one for sure, because it is possible he will try to talk me out of it. But I really can't imagine going and not saying good bye to him. When it really comes down to it, he has been my best friend for a long time, even though I have gotten shitty to him and don't deserve his friendship a lot of the time these days.
Another problem is that I do not know if I can type fast enough. Because I will be typing my good bye note, and I have to get it done before my mom and Nick will be home because I am not allowed to use the typewriter usually, but I really want to have a nice, typewritten note to leave behind, not just my own chicken scratch. And they will be gone to a churche meeting for only like forty-five minutes, which does not give me the luxury levels of time for writing the note and killing myself.
Man, I am really looking forward to this. I will finally be able to sleep, even though everyone says don't do it for that reason. But I'm telling you, and them, it is a worth it reason. You try living in a house where you hate it and you can never get comfortable (let alone warm!) and you tell me how you will feel about suicide. The thing that is confusing me right now is that I am really getting dizzy and it is hard for me to think straight. I wonder what is going on. I wish I could just lie my head down. I wonder why I can't. I am going to. Okay, now my head is lying down on the leaves, and it feels so, so good. I like lying down out side like this. I wish I didn't feel so tired and groggy. I didn't even eat that much.
I should stop hinting, though. It is drugs and alcohol that I'm thinking of, and that is not so mysterious. I jsut want to be wasted twenty-four seven. Have you ever had that feeling? I don't like it very much, because it is not at all like the feeling of wanting to party hearty with your friends. This is a different thing. It is like booze as an eraser. How hard can it be for some grownup to start a stor like that. It can't be long.
Are you following me? Because I'm not. Boy, I just want to close my eyes. I am also getting really sharp pains running through me. They do not feel normal or okay, but they don't last long and plus I am just so tired that I cannot lift my head up. I wonder if they are going to be looking for me. Because I really like this.
Just close my eyes for a minute..
Ow! Oh man, my stomach. Where is my mom. Shit: I have to vomit. Puke my fucking guts out if you want to know the truth. Oh, I don't want to though.
So tired.
I wonder if someone slipped me something, because this stomach pain feels valid, and why am I so tired that I'm falling asleep out in the woods? They are probably looking for me to go home by now.
Oh, if I squint I can just make out the window on Sharon's back porch. It is an enclosed back porch, and what is that? It is my stepdad, and he is standing in the dark on the back porch. And he sees me. He is looking right at me. I try to sit up, but I can't. I can barely move. Is he smiling? He is. Nick is smiling and looking straight at me. I am trying to crawl to the house now, because the pain in my stomach is so bad that I think I might be deteriorating from the inside, and he sees me, but he is just standing there, smiling.
And it hits me: he won. The fucker won, even in the end. I will not be taking my own life tonight, because Nick has already taken it for me. He won.
I am almost done. I am at the very end. And I can tell my time is short. Very short. Shorter than I can really do anything with or about. Suddenly I am not so sure I wanted out. The bastard has cheated me even this.
Oh, what is this? There is a little dog. Where did you come from? Hey, stop it. It is licking my face. Oh my God, it is so cute. A cute little scruffy dog. I wish I could lift my hand to pet it. But it is licking my face and now it is curling up by my neck and lying down. Oh, it is so soft. And it is looking right into my eyes. Good bye, little dog.
Thank you.
"Listen."
"What?"
"Shhhh. Listen"
I am. I am listening, but I don't hear anything. I say so. "I don't hear anything, though."
"God, shut the fuck up, will you? Just listen."
I am trying harder. Listen, listen, listen. There is nothing. I try harder. Wait; maybe there is something. Faintly, I hear: "grabbeling hands. everything counts in large amounts." Sounds like circus music.
"That song?" We are standing in the woods. It is cold out here. And I haven't seen one rabbit, and that was the whole point. This is dumb. I want to go back.
"God, you are so stupid. It's not just a song. It's INXS."
So it's a band. Big fucking deal. I do not understand the significance of this. Why can't we just keep on walking? So he hears a song ou there somewhere. And it's INXS, whoever they are. So what? This is dumb.
"I'm going back," I say.
He is my cousin Scott and he thinks he is very cool. But I do not think he is very cool. I, in fact, think he is a fool. Because his stupid mom said he knew where to find rabbits out here, ahe he didn't bother to correct her, and now here we are out the woods and he is training his ear on random music floating in from the suburbs.
They live in a subdivision here. They refer to it as "the sub," which drives me crazy. We live in a neighborhood, and this whole "sub" business sounds very annoying to me. Plus their house is about ten times better than ours. I hate having to realize how shitty our stupid house is. Same with our cars and our whole stupid life. Scott's life isn't like mine, that's for sure. His family likes him, and he has a car, and he plays in the high school band. He has a girlfriend and his parents, who are still married, know her and she hangs out at their house and feels comfortable. I think this visit out here is what is finally doing me in. Funny, that my last straw would be a stupid Easter dinner out at my cousins. But I can feel that it is, the last straw I mean. Something in me has just snapped today, but in a calm way, actually. I am just done. I can't keep going on, and even if I could, I just don't want to anymore. Too many things that are not reversible have changed in my life, and I don't want to continue with this altered life. I don't want to go on without the people I've lost, or with the people I am stuck with. I don't want to go on with this deformed version of myself that I'm left with from the wreckage. And the wreck is still ongoing, so God knows I don't want to stick around and see how much worse I can get.
Have you ever seen a tree that grew up with a fence in its way, so it is all deformed around the tree and growing out in bulges and winds up all crooked and weird? Well, it's not the tree's fault, is it? But regardless of fault, it is the tree who must live with it's own deformity, its own limitation, right? The fence in the way, its shape is retained. Only the tree had to warp itself in the process of life, the timeline pushing relentless along and no fix to be had. Well, sometimes that tree lives a full life as a crippled, bent over, bulging beast. But somtimes, the tree can't live with it's warped self, feeling a tall, straight, strong tree inside it that never got to be. Instead, it's own strength wound up being used against it in the process of surviving, and mangled it's true form. Sometimes, those trees die early.
I am such a tree. I'm sick of trying to get people to understand what is being done to me, how wrong things are. I am sick of their rolled eyes, their exasperated sighs, their annoyed looks. I am sick of trying to make anyone see my own reality. They see me how they want to see me, however it is convenient for them. My dad, he wants to think I'm just fine and dandy so he doesn't have to do anything about anyting. My mom, she wants to think I'm the problem, the cause of all and any problems in her stupid marriage, and you know what? Maybe I am. Because when I'm not around, Nick will be happy. And maybe that is a valid perspective by my mom, then, that I am the problem in her life. So fine, off I go.
And you know, I really don't even feel mad about it anymore. Not now. I guess it could be that I've run out of anger. Or that it proves so inneffective for me that my anger sparks have just been doused in the rains of disinterest and apathy. I don't know. I really don't.
I just know that I feel peaceful for the first time since I can remember. Since my grandpa was around, that's for sure. And I don't even know if I ever felt this peaceful back in the days when my life was happy, back when I lived with my grandpa. Because there wasn't the contrast. Once you've been through hell, then the absence of hell is all the heaven you need. It's all I need now. All I am asking for, and there's no one to ask for anything in my world except me, so it's me who will provide myself with that peace. I deserve it. Or even if I don't, it's the only light that draws me now.
"Where you going?" Scott has noticed that I'm walking away from his listening post in the trees.
"Back to the house." I don't even know what he is doing. Maybe it's me, and I really am just a weirdo who can't follow normal things. Or maybe he is a freak standing in the woods outside his 'sub' listening for invisible sounds that sound like INXS, whatever that is. I don't know. I don't care anymore. I feel very light. I feel like the woods might just absorb me.
Scott is saying something else to me, but he should know better, since he so clearly pointed out that I am a poor listener.
We already ate dinner. It's about 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon in late March, and the woods are pretty. Some of the trees, the babies, have been tricked by a warm day here and there this month, and little green nubs have poked their heads from inside the crusty grey branches. I hope they make it, these brave little buds of life, but I know they won't because there will be frost and snow before life is safe to support them. They will die as buds, little green folds of optimism and hope, frozen dead next week.
I am surprised that I only lived sixteen years. Not even really sad at this point, just more curious about it all. I thought I'd have a little more time here. And I guess I always figured I'd be able to hang in there until I got to the other side of hell, where things could be back to some kind of normal. Or even to a new kind of liveable life. But it's not happening. I am not making it across the pit. I am swallowed up in it, and maybe it's just my perspective from the bottom, but I see now that there never was any other side to get to. This is it. My life took a crash turn many years ago, and this is where the road dropped off. Just the way it is. All that hanging on I did, for years, holding out for making it out and onto safe land.
That holding on, fighting to stay sane, that is what was the worst, though. Because now that I've hit bottom, I realize that it's very peaceful. The bottom is a far better place to be than clinging to the sides as you bounce your way down. All that hitting the sides.
They're all in my aunt Sharon's back room. Only she's not really my aunt, she is my stepdad's sister. But I like her; she has always been nice to me. She sees something in me that makes the old core of hope spark inside me. She thinks I'm witty and talented and a good dancer. But what good does her perception do when she is far away and I never see her? And I don't fit into her world, anyway. It is easy for her to toss charitable compliments my way; she has no responsibility to help me. I feel good and perform for her for a few hours a year, and then she is all happy and likes me and smiles huge when she stands in her doorway and waves goodbye to me as we back out of their smoothly paved driveway, then she closes that big front door and goes back into her cozy house to have coffee or watch TV or enjoy her children. Me, I slump on the splintery wooden bench that are the Nick'd seats in our van, freezing cold because there is never heat in our lives, trying not to fall off the bench when I doze off on the hour ride home. Because falling off means the ridiculously looped homemade seatbelt of Nick's creation is likely to break my spine if I go down. Say, from Nick's insane turns, fast stops, rage punctuation, whatever.
But tonight, I don't even care. Fine, break my spine on the way home. Whatever. Maybe I will get the back bed on teh ride home. Unless Nick butts in and says it is not my turn. Which it is not my turn, that would be right. But my brothers and sister and me have our own system surrounding the van seating, and we do not need his butting in. We are fine, thank you very much. Idiot.
But tonight, I really don't care. Because it will be my last ride in the van. My last look at a starry winter night, and tree shapes against the sky. My last time to love the night and to marvel at the invention of cars and highway systems. (Although, I've long had a problem with our highway system, and think it could be vastly improved by implementing my I-wish-it-were-patented idea of an elevated roadway. It could be manufactured in standardized pieces that could be locked into place somehow and create a seamless road. But the road would be elevated, constructed like maybe a story high over the ground. Then, just think of this, no animals would ever have to worry about getting hit by a car again. Just picture a world where everyone shared one giant expanse of green yard together? Little kids could run and run and run and never have to get hit by a parent because they "could've been hit by a car."
I am just so tired.
I don't feel like going in there right now, while they are all sitting around in that bright room drinking coffee or wahtever. Nobody is truly comfortable, but nobody else acknowledges that. Is it possible that they are comfortable because they don't register thier disomfort? How can that work. The mind is quite fascinating.
I almost died one time. This story has to do with me going over a dam; can you believe it? True story. Goes like this, as follows:
"Amber, get back here."
I want to get back there, but I can't, because my leg will not come back. It is being sucked steady on the wrong side of the dam, down the waterfall into what I would come to learn was the uppermost chamber of the fish ladder. Know what a fish ladder is? I didn't until after what happens next.
"I can't." My sister is panicked now. She can tell that I am not joking around. My leg is truly being sucked over the dam.
It is my own fault, of course. I was trying to scare my sister, and first I put my arm over and pretended I was being sucked over the dam. Must not have gotten a satisfactory response (or perhas was so good that I exploited her caring for even more rise out of her). Anyway, brought the arm back, no problem. The force of the water was very... forceful. So, I did my leg next, to make my sister even more scared, but this time I was unable to get my leg back. I try and try, but I can't get it back. My sister's face is a mask of shock and terror.
"Quit it!" But I couldn't, and my leg started losing the tug of war, and more of me was inching over the dam wall.
"I can't get it back," I tell my sister, and we are both terror stricken. But the dam doesn't care about two silly girls, and neither does the water with it's very strict agenda, and down I go, sucked right over and into the fish ladder.
I will just say to you that at the bottom of the third fish ladder chamber, I lost the strength to push myself up and out of it. The force of the water pounding downward into the chamber and onto my head and arms was too strong. Thick, and strong.
I thought I was going to die. But I didn't. And now I am. And this time, like last time, I feel very peaceful about it. Because that is what I felt at the bottom of that concrete box. My life did sort of appear to me in a single, all containing flash, but what I made not have made clear is that even so, I had free reign musically and entertainment wise. I had that power. And it doesn't make sense outside the context of accepting my death down there, but I can accept that. And I wonder if when I die tonight, if right before, I will have a similar flash. Is it a more than once kind of thing? Why hasn't anybody looked into this before? Why can't we know more about this? I want to know.
I am in the way back of the backyard now, sitting on the ground behind a clump of fallen trees. I can see them all in their in the lights, pretending they enjoy each other. On the way home, my mom and stepdad will totally cut them all down, and my mom will be right there. Even babies are not safe. The ridicule will flow freely all the way home in the dark, me sitting there on the splintery bench with my hands in my lap, nodding off and trying not to fall sideways.
Here's how I'm going to do it.
I am going to call Donny first. I think. I haven't decided that one for sure, because it is possible he will try to talk me out of it. But I really can't imagine going and not saying good bye to him. When it really comes down to it, he has been my best friend for a long time, even though I have gotten shitty to him and don't deserve his friendship a lot of the time these days.
Another problem is that I do not know if I can type fast enough. Because I will be typing my good bye note, and I have to get it done before my mom and Nick will be home because I am not allowed to use the typewriter usually, but I really want to have a nice, typewritten note to leave behind, not just my own chicken scratch. And they will be gone to a churche meeting for only like forty-five minutes, which does not give me the luxury levels of time for writing the note and killing myself.
Man, I am really looking forward to this. I will finally be able to sleep, even though everyone says don't do it for that reason. But I'm telling you, and them, it is a worth it reason. You try living in a house where you hate it and you can never get comfortable (let alone warm!) and you tell me how you will feel about suicide. The thing that is confusing me right now is that I am really getting dizzy and it is hard for me to think straight. I wonder what is going on. I wish I could just lie my head down. I wonder why I can't. I am going to. Okay, now my head is lying down on the leaves, and it feels so, so good. I like lying down out side like this. I wish I didn't feel so tired and groggy. I didn't even eat that much.
I should stop hinting, though. It is drugs and alcohol that I'm thinking of, and that is not so mysterious. I jsut want to be wasted twenty-four seven. Have you ever had that feeling? I don't like it very much, because it is not at all like the feeling of wanting to party hearty with your friends. This is a different thing. It is like booze as an eraser. How hard can it be for some grownup to start a stor like that. It can't be long.
Are you following me? Because I'm not. Boy, I just want to close my eyes. I am also getting really sharp pains running through me. They do not feel normal or okay, but they don't last long and plus I am just so tired that I cannot lift my head up. I wonder if they are going to be looking for me. Because I really like this.
Just close my eyes for a minute..
Ow! Oh man, my stomach. Where is my mom. Shit: I have to vomit. Puke my fucking guts out if you want to know the truth. Oh, I don't want to though.
So tired.
I wonder if someone slipped me something, because this stomach pain feels valid, and why am I so tired that I'm falling asleep out in the woods? They are probably looking for me to go home by now.
Oh, if I squint I can just make out the window on Sharon's back porch. It is an enclosed back porch, and what is that? It is my stepdad, and he is standing in the dark on the back porch. And he sees me. He is looking right at me. I try to sit up, but I can't. I can barely move. Is he smiling? He is. Nick is smiling and looking straight at me. I am trying to crawl to the house now, because the pain in my stomach is so bad that I think I might be deteriorating from the inside, and he sees me, but he is just standing there, smiling.
And it hits me: he won. The fucker won, even in the end. I will not be taking my own life tonight, because Nick has already taken it for me. He won.
I am almost done. I am at the very end. And I can tell my time is short. Very short. Shorter than I can really do anything with or about. Suddenly I am not so sure I wanted out. The bastard has cheated me even this.
Oh, what is this? There is a little dog. Where did you come from? Hey, stop it. It is licking my face. Oh my God, it is so cute. A cute little scruffy dog. I wish I could lift my hand to pet it. But it is licking my face and now it is curling up by my neck and lying down. Oh, it is so soft. And it is looking right into my eyes. Good bye, little dog.
Thank you.
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