Twenty-One Wilted Roses

"Hey fag!"

"Fag! Over here!"

"Stop looking at my ass, fag!"

The taunting cry of everyone I used to know haunts me. I am no longer Jason. I am no longer me. I have one name at this school.

I am fag.

Ever since I told my best friend Derrick about how I was gay, my life seemed to be quickly tumbling downwards. It had been two years since I lost everything, and only in the past few months did my parents begin to talk to me again. Everything was so different. It was like three simple words was the key to an alternate reality.

I am gay.

That's what changed it all. I used to be popular. I used to have good grades. I was a straight A student. But once I spoke those three words, I lost it all. I am infamous. I am hated. A joke. A social outcast. No one likes me. No one else is like me. I am all alone. I am failing everything, school, my life, even myself.

I am nothing.

I leave school early today around lunch. I walk the few blocks to my house and enter through the back door. No one is home except my cat, and even she seems to glare at me. I head straight to my room and crash on the bed like I've done so many times before. And then I cry. I cry wishing for my life back. I cry wishing that I could be normal. But then I did something I've never done before. I pick up a razor.

I am cutting.

I feel the pain of the blade as my blood trickles down my arms.

I am bleeding.

I carve X's all over my arms to prove that I'm a failure.

I am alone.

I start to faint as I push down my arm with the sharpness cutting more and more.

I am dying.

I slit the edge of my neck and shut my eyes. All my thoughts blur. No one will care I'm gone. The pain is finally over. And as I shut my eyes everything fades to black. But before I go I think one last thought.

I am the boy that never finished high school, because he got called a fag everyday.