The End Comes Too Soon

Do it.

I bask in the glow radiating from the ceiling I covered in stickers of phosphorescent stars as I lie, sprawled across the bed beneath them. They represent the promise I made to myself the date of my diagnosis: that I’d always reach for the stars, and let them be my guiding light when things got bad. But things are always bad, that’s just what depression is. An altering of your brain chemistry that blatantly denies you happiness. At least that’s how I define mine. 

You mean nothing. You are nothing. Do it.

It’s been three years since the specialists named the suicidal voice in my head a symptom of “dysthymia”, or as I’d like to call it, die-sthymia, since it’s the fancy science term for long-term depression. And we all know how kids with depression end up. Like me, dead inside before they even get the chance to kill themselves. 

I’ve always tried to plan the way I’d take my own life. Of course, like anyone with suicidal thoughts, I first thought of the stereotypes I saw on the news: shooting myself, hanging myself, and overdosing. However, I don’t own a gun, my ceiling fan can’t hold my weight, and the strongest thing in my medicine cabinet is Tylenol. The stereotypes didn’t suit me. I had to find a more creative alternative. I’d see a train barreling down the tracks and step onto the yellow of the platform edge, thinking maybe I’ll jump and die during rush hour. Then I think of the hassle it’d be to gather my limbs and identify my dismembered body. I can’t put my parents through that. If I’m going to kill myself, I should at least grant them the right to an open casket funeral so they can say goodbye to me one last time. 

That’s why I choose to cut myself. I’m the one in control of disfiguring my body: where the cuts go, how many of them I make, and how deep they are. I could satiate my appetite for suicide by spilling a couple drops of blood, heal, and do it all over again. It allowed me to lead a somewhat normal life, baiting myself for the day I decided to end things. And today, my thoughts want them deep. Deeper than ever before. 

Today’s the day. End it. End it all.

I shift into a fetal position in bed, tucking both my knees to my chest as my eyes meet the photo of myself I keep on my bedside table. To some, it may seem vain that I keep an abnormally large photo of myself next to my bed, but vanity has never had anything to do with it. It’s my high school graduation photo, taken four years ago, when I was the happy, pretty girl, vibrant and full of life. That girl had her whole life ahead of her. The one I am today doesn’t. She barely has today. 

I thought I could be the girl in the photo again. I even framed it, holding onto the hope that if I looked at it hard enough, I would start to mirror her image. But she was easily perfect, and I can’t afford to be perfect, not anymore. Perfection is pressure, of the highest degree. It is something that can either make diamonds, or build a bomb. Pressure turned me into the latter: an insecure, anxious, suicidal ball of self-loathing, just waiting for the chance to explode. 

About two years after that photo was taken, I lost all hope for her return. The pressure to perform in all aspects of my life wasn’t motivating anymore, it was debilitating. It kept me locked in a depressive state for days, alienating everyone. Then it turned to months, and later, years. That’s when everyone alienated me; they knew the girl they loved was gone. And like we do with anything that’s gone too soon, I grieved. I placed some candles next to her photograph, and made it a shrine to mourn my past self. I kiss my fingertips and touch the forehead of the girl in the photograph before I go to sleep every night, watching flashbacks of her life in my dreams, as if she wasn’t me, but a separate entity entirely. Then in the morning I wake up with an aching hole in my heart, and the lack of dopamine in my head feeling more present than ever. Mourning yourself while you’re still alive and breathing makes you feel like you’re living on borrowed time. 

I fix my eyes on her smile. It’s captivating, the way it reaches her eyes, and makes her brown irises glisten like honey. My eyes are dark, almost black now, as if the light left them when I became the hollowed shell I am today. She even had dimples from smiling so hard. I wish I had something worth smiling like that about—someone worth smiling for.

I know it’s cliché to glance at a photo of yourself and reminisce about old times, but all I can think about is why. Why did the chemicals in my brain refuse me happiness? 

Because you deserve it. You deserve to die.

The scar tissue on my body starts to itch, resonating with the thought of reopening my wounds. 

Do it. You know you want to. 

And I do. I do want to. I just have to break my promise first.

I move to stand upright on my mattress, and with a deep breath, I reach for the stars one last time. I peel them off the ceiling, one by one, and throw them on the floor. Because what good is it to tell yourself to reach for the stars when you already had the whole sky crash down on you? I peel and I throw over and over again until there’s none left, and I’m standing alone in my room, now made a dark abyss from the lack of starlight. I’m giving in, and listening to my body. What it wants isn’t to fix the chemical imbalance. My body, it wants to die. I want to die. 

I thought for sure I’d have tears flowing by now. But when I step down from my bed onto the floor, my eyes lock with hers, and all I feel is anger. Her photo, it’s taunting me.

You’ll never be her again. She was everything you’re not. And you’ve got the filthy scars to prove it. Kill your–

The thought is interrupted as my fist greets her face, sending the picture frame flying into the wall. On contact, the glass protecting her shatters and the photo slides out from under it. I stalk over to the photograph intending to rip it to shreds, to make her pay for never coming back to me. But as I stand over it, over her, I realize breaking her won’t make me feel better. I need her to know if she never left, I never would’ve thought to end things. I need to make her watch me end our life.

I prop her against the wall and instead of going for the razor kit underneath my bed, I go for the largest shard of glass I can find on the floor next to the broken frame. I take it in my right hand, and point its jagged edge towards the base of my left forearm. My grip on the glass tightens as I start slicing to the rhythm of my intrusive thoughts. I start by my elbow and work my way down.

Do it.

Once.

Do it again.

Twice.

Again.

The voice in my head beckons as I throw my head back and squeeze my eyelids shut, concentrating on feeling nothing but the warmth of the blood trailing down my forearm as I butcher my skin. Just when I think I can last a little while longer, dizziness and nausea sweep over my body. I know if I drag this out my vision will begin to blur, and I have more to cut before that happens. It’s not enough for me to cut horizontally anymore. I hold the blood coated shard vertically against the group of veins present at the base of my wrist. The radial artery runs on the inside of the forearm from the elbow to the thumb. The artery lies just under the surface of the skin, all I have to do is press hard enough and—

I scream through gritted teeth as fresh blood gushes out of the point of incision. While any sane person would feel overwhelmed by the amount of blood, I want to see more. I need to see more. Through muffled sobs, I drag down and deepen the gash by force, and I feel the tips of my fingers begin to go numb. I blink away the tears that begin to form again, choking on shallow breaths as I stare at her picture to fuel my anger, and give me the strength to go for the other wrist. 

She’s mocking you. Finish it. Don’t be a coward.

“You… you did this to me!” I shout at her as I barely get my left hand to form a fist around the glass, and point it at the opposite wrist. I do the second wrist quicker than the first, my mind unable to register the pain properly from all the blood loss. I drop the glass shard as soon as I’m done, and I find myself unable to sit up anymore. The support from my spine suddenly gives out, and I collapse onto the floor, forced to look up at the ceiling again, arms outstretched and endlessly bleeding. This, this has to be it.

My eyelids feel heavy. I’m about to close them for good when I see a faint glow in the corner of my room. I must’ve forgotten a star. There’s just one star left in my sky now, and I know it must feel lonely up there, just like I feel down here. A single tear rolls down my cheek as I remain still, surrounded in a pool of my own blood. I close my eyes and pray for whoever finds my body. My wrists, my thighs, self-harm is not a pretty sight. It’s ugly, seeing the scars of someone who had their resolve to die outweigh their will to live.

Cold. I feel so cold. My eyes may have no intention of opening again, but it’s okay, I’m in the home stretch now. I’m laying in a field, arms sprawled out in the grass, under a sky full of stars. Genuine stars. I feel safe here. The voice in my head is quiet, and I’m at peace.

A light breeze washes over me, carrying the sound of laughter from a girl I know all too well. Because she was me. She is me. I feel her lie down next to me, her presence proving she’s been here all along. She never abandoned me, she was merely held hostage by my mental illness. 

She takes my hand in hers as I take my final breath. When my lungs collapse, I hear what she begged for all along:

Please, don’t do it. Don’t die.