Deep End

YESTERDAY, SHE ENDED HER LIFE.

I don’t know her. I don’t know her name. I don’t know her story or if she had a little sister and three pests for brothers. I don’t know what her motivation was or what she was thinking in those last moments. I don’t know how long she felt the way she did.

But I’ve felt the way that she did.

I’ve felt the feeling of pills rolling in cold palms and felt the numbness that comes with worn razor blades. I’ve felt like there was nothing worth living for. I’ve felt the hollowness that comes before and after each purge.

I’ve gone off the deep end before – stopped talking to my family, abandoned my friends, locked myself into a room that I couldn’t find the energy to leave. I’ve felt the unsettled, restlessness that comes at three in the morning. I’ve cut and colored and made drastic changes to my appearance. I’ve gone off the deep end before, but she literally went off the deep end.

Yesterday, she ended her life.

She jumped off of the bridge that I overlook every day, study and stare at every evening after sitting through tedious lectures and feeling alienated in a room full of other nineteen year olds. She was nineteen too.

I don’t know her. I don’t know her name. I don’t know her story or if she had a little sister and three pests for brothers. I don’t know what her motivation was or what she was thinking in those last moments. I don’t know how long she felt the way she did.

But I’ve felt the way that she did.

I witnessed the rescue team load a body bag into the ambulance from behind a window pane – another victim gone. And I watched the heavy traffic rush by, as if nothing had happened, as if some girl hadn’t just face planted into a foot of ice and given her life up to some sort of struggle.

Yesterday, she ended her life.

Today, I began mine.