rituals

There is a point in the seventh grade when I think about suicide. I get all after-school special-y about it. This is something that teenagers go through. I ask Tara if she ever thinks about. I'm trying to stand out amongst the rednecks and hillbillies with my depression - suicide is so urban and sophisticated. Being alone inside the house after school before my father comes home, I can process the horrors of the day. After escaping the last possible opportunity for harassment for the day, getting off the school bus, now I'm ready for my breakdown. I take out the serrated kitchen knife and run it across my wrists. It's the isolation, I can't breathe. I know I won't do it, but take comfort in the option. And as long as I have the option I can keep going. I know my existence doesn't have to be like this, but I'm trapped for now. I take a few sips of my father's vodka to be dramatic. I was never into getting drunk even back then, but apparently I am into wallowing in my misery. It's the fear, never being able to relax, never feeling safe. Sitting on linoleum floor in the kitchen, leaning against wooden cabinets, wanting to hide, to disappear, I put the knife down. The insanity of being harassed and never fighting back, hiding it, being ashamed of it, never talking about it to anyone is hurting me. I'm living two lives now, both bleak. There's no help, no hope, not even a glimmer. Sometimes I pray before I go to sleep that when I woke up in the morning everything that I have known to be my life will actually have been just a dream. TV helps. I watch Oprah everyday after school. I put a frozen burrito in the microwave before the show starts. I eat a Little Debbie snack cake while I wait for my burrito to be done. I drink nothing but coca-cola, day after day. I take my burrito to the living room and eat it in a blur of gagging despair while I watch Oprah.