It

TW: suicide, mental health

  Today is the day it stops.

She is still in bed, the sun high in the sky, another night spent staring and staring and staring and staring and stari—I have to stop—ing and staring, her hands clawed around a rectangular hellhole, the flickering lights brightening her dull eyes and—I should stop—a muscle in her thumb is twitching from the up and down movement that brings the next thing and the next and the next and—

There are birds chirping. Her mother’s alarm is ringing. Her father is in the kitchen making coffee—why didn’t I stop—and her eyes feel like glue, sticking together and impossible to open and there is a spot, just above her left temple, that is throbbing, and the inside of her skull feels stuffed with wet tissue. She left the blinds open, and the sun shines into her room, because its a new day and—I should have stopped at midnight—its great and isn’t it wonderful to be alive.

She puts It down and slumps out of bed, feet hitting the floor loudly, her vision darkening for a moment and she stumbles—shit!—before catching her balance. She is like a ghost, passing through her room and floating toward the kitchen, where her father doesn’t turn around when he hears her, just says,

‘Again?’

In her head she gives him the finger. Her neck is—I feel like shit—hurting her. Yes, ok? Again and again and again and—

‘I need a charger.’ she says.

He points to the table, and she takes it, turns around and goes back to her bed, the frayed wire dragging on the floor after her.

In her room, she draws the blinds shut, and—jump!—but she lives on the first story. Her room is dark again and she can pretend its night and she can sleep for eight hours till morning, like she didn’t just do it again, lie in bed the whole night without sleeping and—my breath smells—her body feels heavy and there is a weariness in her shoulders her jaw her thighs and everything feels achy and so so so so tired and she needs to take a shower and work starts in three hours and right now—I did it again?—she gets into bed.

In bed, she turns and turns and turns, moving her pillow and folding it under head then throwing it to the floor. She is so nauseous—loser—and there is no position that will make her neck feel better.

She falls asleep when her mother leaves for work, and—I wish I won’t wake up.

___________________________________________

Her day was shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. She hates her job, she hates coming to work late—I should've put It down—she hates running to the bathroom so she can close her eyes for two minutes, she hates those ugly heavy purple bags that hang under her eyes, she hates how she doesn’t have time to put on makeup in the morning—I’m so tired—she hates how exhausted she looks, she hates how she takes It out and turns it on and turns it off and turns it on, she hates how she feels, she hates putting three teaspoons of coffee in her cup, she hates the skin-crawling nervousness it gives her and she is so so so so tired that she wants to throw up.

When she is—finally!—home and her work is done and she is so hungry because she didn’t have lunch, just coffee and coffee and coffee, for supper she makes a peanut butter sandwich because its easy peasy lemon squeezy and eats lying down on the couch, the crumbs falling and framing her face in a crude halo, some pieces in her hair. Today, she will shower and shave and wash—when did I last wash my bra?—her face before she goes to sleep. She is so tired and she will—

It buzzes.

She had promised she would stop—only a minute—and she will. She will stop, she is stopping, and there will be no more days like today where it was shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. And she knows that she will stop. She has to she can’t live like this anymore it is shit she can’t but. A minute, just a minute a minute a minute. Its only a minute. She puts on a timer for just a minute, and does the passcode on It.

The small bar at the top of It shows a timer, blinking forty five seconds, thirty seconds, ten seconds, five four three two one—

She adds five more minutes. It rings. Five more minutes. It rings. Fi—I’m pathetic!—ve more minutes.

In one of those ‘five more minutes’—loser loser loser—she gets a phone call and its her bestie and she hasn’t talked to her in three weeks and she waits for the call to go to voicemail—tomorrow I will call her. Two minutes later, she gets a text message:

‘Hey girl, I haven’t seen you in forever. Wanna go grab a coffee?’

She—should should should should should—doesn’t. She texts back ‘no’. She’s just so tired and ugh! and shitty and—

I’ll do it tomorrow!

She feels like shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

___________________________________________

Her parents came home and ate supper and went to sleep three hours ago. She is still on the couch, that muscle in her thumb is twitching again and—I did it again—she is so tired so tired and she still didn’t shower yet. She needs to shower—

A notification pings and slides into her view from the top of the screen. Her cousin just posted some pictures. She clicks on the notification and she sees pictures, so many pictures, all twenty five of them from the cousin’s wedding two weeks ago, the wedding that she spent an hour in the bathroom hiding from everyone else. She clicks on the first picture, and it zooms in and takes up the whole screen and her whole vision and it is everything she sees and—

It dies and turns black and—DAMMIT—she sees herself staring—is that me?—back out at her, neck telescoping forward, eyes puffy and red, neck hunched over, hands curled around IT. One second she was looking at her cousin being happy happy happy and now she was—loser—looking at herself and— why cant I be happy I should be happy and—

She has to stop shes going to stop she will stop stop because she has to and she will and she is going to stop and she cant do it anymore and she cant move and why is everything so heavy and she just cant bring herself to want to get up and do something and and and and and and and and—

STOP!

She is going to stop.

—Tomor

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