Hello, I Dislike You Intensely. Have a Nice Day.

I woke up knowing something was wrong. It would only get worse from there. I still had images and sounds from the night before flashing and rattling in my head, not giving me a minute's peace. Not when I tried to read, not when I tried to watch TV, not when I tried to do homework. It was when I sat staring catatonically at a page of proofs that I felt a thing creep slowly from the back of my head toward the front.

"Oh, no," I said. "God, please, no."

I barely even had time to be frantic - already it was making me dead, it was making me not care for anything. The only person who could have helped things I'd had a catastrophic fight with the night before - it was too much to ask of him right then, it was too soon after; I was on my own. I guess it was just as well because the next minute my body went heavy and paralyzed and meaningless; and the minute after that my mind turned to a tiny black space behind my eyes barely capable of coherent thought.

I fell slowly to the floor and lay there for maybe hours or only minutes. Time seemed like a repugnant and alien concept to me, so it was impossible to tell. All I could think was how much I wanted to sink into the ground like a lead anchor plunging and burying itself in the blackest depths of the sea. I imagined being dead, dirt piling on top of me, but not even that was enough. Dirt was essentially dust and even a slight wind could lift dust away. I envied Victorian horror stories of children abducted and thrown into the bottoms of wells.

Soon, a loathing began to rise in me, toward the light and my breathing. I crawled inside my closet and that more or less solved the light problem, but I couldn't do anything about my breathing. What I wanted was to be perfectly motionless, and the needy, endless lift and fall of my chest maddened me.

I could never be called rational during these times, but that wasn't what I was thinking of. I saw my scarf hanging on the knob of my closet door, and the next thing I knew I was standing on a chair in the living room, taking down a potted plant that hung on a hook from the ceiling. Then a view of my hands - they didn't seem like my own at all - tying the scarf around my neck and hooking one end on the plant hook.

I hated my breathing, I hated it so much.

My mother was sleeping in, like she did every Sunday. I wasn't thinking of her, she was light-years away. Softly, I kicked over the chair onto the carpeted floor. I hung in midair for a moment that flashed too fast almost for memory to catch, then the scarf ripped and I fell to the ground.

In my ears I could hear my breath coming quick and loud - I was still breathing after all. My legs felt like an octopus', funny and wiggly and spread out all around me. Everything seemed like a bad dream. The tear in my scarf screamed to me of my failure and blind desperation.

Dazed, I put the plant back on its hook, returned the chair to the corner of the room, and took off the scarf. In my room again, I stuffed it in the back of my closet, jumped into bed, and hid under the covers. I wanted - needed to fall back asleep and deceive myself that it'd all been a nightmare.

My body shook all over; I didn't want to die but living seemed impossibly hard, too nuanced and exhausting.

I called him, there was nothing left to do.

"Alex, if I told you I just stood on a chair in my living room, tied a scarf around my neck, put one end on a plant hook, and kicked the chair over, would that be deep and horrible enough for you to tell me what you said you were ashamed of?"

He made a choking noise. "Dani, stop it! Oh my God, stop doing these things! If I'm going to compel you to do these things, maybe we shouldn't be together. I would move to the other side of the earth if it kept you from doing things like this."

"No, no, no, no, don't!" I wailed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I won't ask about it again if you don't want to tell me. Never again, Alex. It was terrible of me to keep pushing it like that. Please, don't go. Don't go."

"Dani, don't apologize," he said, his voice audibly bruised. "You never did anything wrong, nothing! I should be the one apologizing, and I'm so sorry, Dani. I was horrible to you last night, and I was horrible when I answered the phone - and after you tried to - God, I can't even say the words. Don't try that again, ever. That's the worst thing you could do to me. I'll tell you anything you want, Dani. I'll tell you everything."

"No, you don't have to..."

"I will." A resolve surfaced in his voice that I could neither bend or break. "I'll come over and tell you. I need to see you."

Soon, a car pulled up to the curb and Alex got out of it. His hair was messy, the buttons on his shirt misbuttoned, and he hadn't shaved. I opened the door for him and he kissed me gently on the lips. "Hi," I whispered. He said, "Did you know you're beautiful?" His effort to make the world more bearable brought tears to my eyes. I tried to smile. It was hard because the depression was still there, though not as much as it had been.

"So. Shall I begin?" he asked, then motioned to the couch. "May I sit?" I nodded, then sat down next to him.

"Okay. So...my mom was always kind of kooky, you could say. She was sweet about it, though. Charming, even, you could say. (Wow, I just said 'you could say' twice.) Well, anyway, I loved her for it when I was little. I loved how she would sit with me for hours, the two of us making up stories with my stuffed animals and action figures. How she said it was great to have imaginary friends because she did too and she talked to them a lot. How she'd do stuff like try to eat flowers sometimes or take a bath and stay there half the day, pretending to be a mermaid.

"Like I said, I loved her dearly when I was a little kid, but not so much when I was starting to grow up. I realized how she could be really embarrassing sometimes, especially in public places. Eventually she made me ashamed and angry with her. I was 13 when I wanted to go see a movie with some friends. But she wouldn't me - she started saying things about dragons and spirits roaming the streets that day and she was pulling me by the hand; and this in itself was really bad. But what made it exponentially worse was that my friends were waiting in the driveway, and the door was open, and my mom's voice was loud - so they heard everything. These were new friends, too. And let me repeat, we were 13.

"I was beyond mortified. My friends (which were by now former friends) were snickering and giving each other looks, and I wanted to die on the spot. I screamed at her to let me go and shut up. I was barely thinking. I ran to the upstairs phone and dialed 9-1-1 and said, 'My mother is insane, please - ' "

He made a sound between a choke and a hiccup. I put my head on his shoulder and found his hand with mine. "You're doing amazing, Alex. You can do it." He took a breath. " 'Please take me away from her.' They thought I was just some pissy teenager mad because my video games got taken away, but I begged them to listen and I told them everything about my mother. Exactly what life was like with her. So they sent over a cop and a social worker, who asked my mom some questions. (My friends left a while ago. They didn't talk to me again and instead spread shit about me and my family, which, I'm ashamed to say, still held a few tiny fragments of truth.)

"Well, soon, a psychiatric worker arrived and there was more questioning of the both of us, and then he took my mom away. And the court ordained that I was to live at my aunt and uncle's house until my mother became a fit mother again. Which was great by me. Everything got way better when I moved schools and started going to one nearer my aunt and uncle's house. I got a new start, I was happy. I was happy for six whole fucking months, and then finally I started feeling guilty. And I did this - "

He lifted the sleeve of his shirt, showing me the burn scars. "You said you accidentally leaned back on a hot stove once," I said faintly. "I would do that sometimes, yes," he admitted. " 'Practice for Hell', I called it. Oh, to be 14. I also fell in with this crowd of druggie art students who'd have a party scarfing down random pills, then paint, so I had to feign interest in painting. I actually liked it after a while, but I doubt I can ever do it again. And all this was completely behind my aunt and uncle's back.

"I really could've spiralled downward and fucked myself up, and even died, but then I realized I didn't want to be my mother. The novelty of self-destruction was starting to wear off. I still felt guilty but now I just wanted to get over it, to move as far away from it as possible. So I took all my paintings and burned them. I wanted to be new. I tried to move on. I took honors classes and did a bunch of extracurricular activities so I wouldn't have time to think of the past. Delia and I met - she was my first girlfriend, and I had all the butterflies. I never once went to visit my mom at the home, and I'm afraid to now. I'm scared of dredging up the past and I'm scared she'll hate me. A while ago I swore I'd never tell anyone about this part of my life. But that was before I met you."

I was speechless. So I hugged him, so hard he couldn't breathe and then I kissed him vibrantly, my eyes welling with tears that said everything. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Alex, my heart is breaking. You're so brave, you're amazing. Thank you for telling me. I love you. I love you.

We lazed and sank deeper into the kiss, the catharsis. I lay on the sofa with him on top of me. My hands roamed his chest and stomach, his were absorbed in my hair but his lips strayed to my neck. Soon, his hand pulled my shirt from my shoulder and kissed me there. I'll never forget the feel of his lips cool and sashaying over my skin, it was beautiful.

Too soon, I heard my mother stirring upstairs. "Better go. I don't think I'll be able to explain this," I whispered. One last kiss, then he grabbed his keys and quietly left. But not before gazing at me so intensely I almost wanted to look away, and saying, "I'll see you again today. You need to tell me way you did it, Dani." And he left. I still can't get his eyes out of my head, chestnut brown and so vivid they practically left an afterimage.

Since then, things have slowly been freezing back into their previous nightmarish sense of alien-ness. I'm trying not to go totally under but I know soon my mind won't be able to stop re-playing the scene over and over. And then I'll have the nightmares. I need him, so much. I wish he never left, I wish I'd never have to see his back moving away from me again.