Only in Death

On Tuesday night, after finishing her homework, she began writing out her suicide notes to the sound of someone yelling. She had decided that she'd write a personalized one for the important people in her life, along with the general one that explained why she had ended her life.

The yelling in the background continued as she wrote a note for her dad, her mom, her younger brother, her two former best friends, and her best-friend-turned-crush. Each was an apology for hurting them if they cared enough to be hurt; a reassurance that they weren't at fault, no matter how much they had hurt her, how much and how long she had loved them, or how far apart they'd grown; and a plea that they wouldn't do anything stupid to hurt themselves.

In the note where she explained what had happened, she tried to sugar coat the truth as much as possible. She didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, even in death.

When she finished, she put the notes in a folder that she hid in her dresser in case anyone happened to walk in.

Next, she dug out all her old photo albums and flipped through them, adding captions to the pictures. Each page brought with it a feeling of longing for the simpler times. When she completed that task, she hid the albums with the suicide notes.

She had finished earlier than expected and took the remaining time to review her reasonings, just to make sure that she wanted to end this.

From her parents bitter divorce when she was in third grade until the most recent fighting with her new families, she had always felt at fault for anything that went wrong with her life and the lives of the people around her, simply because she never spoke up to change anything. The morning before, she had watched as her stepbrother lied to her friends about the argument he'd had with her father the night before and allowed them to think that he'd been beaten. It killed her inside to allow that to happen, but she chose to do nothing about it.

She had no dreams when she went to bed that night.