Bones

Her name was M. We met in a writing group, Manic Pixie Dream Girl-style. I was the shy creative and she was the girl with the short-cut hair and the whimsical attitude, destined to write me into my own. Her birthday was one day before mine, so we must have been so alike, we thought. But she used a typewriter and I used my laptop, and that showed our differences.

We had our first kiss in the parking lot. She'd won an award for a story about a drowning man and daring bravado. She slept on my shoulder the whole way home. It was peace, I thought. Heaven, if one could imagine, for a creative like myself who felt alone in a world even when surrounded by friends. She shined bright like a beacon in this world and I couldn't bearto look away, but even though she represented everything that made me happy, she fought her own battles deep within.

She read a lot more than I did; she would read Sylvia Plath and sip tea in the woods, while I played video games or Dungeons and Dragons. Do you know how Sylvia Plath died? After a long battle with depression, she stuck her head in the oven and suffocated herself with the carbon dioxide. I didn't know that until one day I saw M with a book--The Bell Jar. "What's it about?" I asked. I remember the cover was simple, contemporary, with bubbles resembling the modernism of the '60s.

"It's The Bell Jar," M said, "it's about a model who goes manic in depression. It's one of my favorite books." She gave it to me to read and I flew through it, the engrossing, thought-provoking, frank discussion of mental illness displayed a perfect descent into near-madness with suicidal thoughts and sadness. When I gave it back to her, I commented on Sylvia Plath's history. Her own mental illness, her suicide. That's when M told me--"I want to kill myself, too."

She hadn't eaten in days, she confessed, almost with a sense of disgusting pride. Almost as if she were bragging. "I've lost ten pounds." How had I not noticed? "I run every morning. I drink a lot of tea." She said this with such nonchalance as if she were the pinnacle of health.

She told me that every time she looked in the mirror, she didn't feel comfortable in her own skin. She didn't see the small, petite girl with the pixie-cut that I saw; she saw someone overweight, undesirable. I didn't understand. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, and I couldn't believe she didn't feel that same way about her own self.

She said again she just wanted to end it. She confessed she was going to do it, tonight, in her bathroom. Hopefully in peace. She begged me not to tell anyone.

I begged her to change her mind. I told her I would go home with her, keep her safe, make sure she made it through the night. She insisted--it was her decision, not mine. And to think she was my Manic Pixie, destined to help me into my own, no? But here I was, trying to pull the dream girl back into reality.

She left me alone in the library, The Bell Jar still on the table, telling me not to follow her, to leave her alone, to stop my begging. She went home and I didn't know what to do. Though I'd never said it, I did love her and I thought she loved me and I wanted to save her, to help her, but she wouldn't let me.

I found her sister and gave her the book. I told her about what M had said, about her plans, about how she felt. I don't know what happened that night. I knew that M would hate me for it--despise me, probably, wish she never met me. But I would rather she be alive and hate me than be dead and love me.

I don't know what happened after that; we don't talk anymore, and she hasn't spoke to me since. I know she's alive, and that's all that matters. It's ironic, that the only way to tell my Manic Pixie Dream Girl I loved her was to save her life and make her hate me. I guess our love was like skin and bones, stubborn and stuck, just like she was.