I looked down at the water churning underneath the century old bridge.
Just like the town and its inhabitants the water was dim and dirty, holding so many bits of decay and ruin.

I'm not sure how long I've been standing out here for, an hour or two maybe?
Mum wasn't worried, she thought that I was staying the night at a friend's house, and my friends didn't care what I'd been doing out on the filthy streets of Blackford, destination nowhere.
The second my feet left the old porch that was long overdue for a paint job I came to the only place that I could find any alone time in a place where your business was everyone's business.

When I left home it wasn't with a particular agenda in mind, well there might have been some echo of a plan lingering at the back of my skull.
My mother hadn't asked me any questions when I hitched the large black duffle bag up on my shoulder and told her that I might be back at some point.

She loved me, only not enough to really care.
I got away with anything that I wanted and she never told me off or grounded me so I'd push my limits hoping that one day Mum would tell me that she was worried and that I'd gone too far.
I had a feeling that I'd be waiting for that moment until the day I died, and if things went the way I wanted them to that would be tonight.

The duffle bag had been filled with my clothes and any personal objects that I couldn't bear the thought of parting with.
It wasn't much stuff but it would be sufficient until I could hitchhike into a faraway city and find a place to work.
That had been my original semi-formed and unhatched plan, but now that I looked at the dark murky water moving at a rapid pace underneath the large bridge that the town built itself around, a new thought popped into my mind.

I could throw myself off the bridge and nobody would ever know, there is no doubt that I would either drown or die from the impact of missing and hitting a crop of rocks.
This is the kind of way I'd want to kill myself, I've always liked water so why not end everything through drowning.
It seemed like a nice way to go, I'd wanted to go diving for ages but have never had an opportunity so killing myself this way would allow me to do that before it go.

My friend Katelyn was going to be coming with my mother and I to the lake we'd holidayed in every summer and winter.
Lake Blackwater, the name didn't make the place sound that appealing to that's why Mum and I stayed there, people wouldn't come and annoy you.
The lake looked nothing like the name made it sound; it was crystal clear, beautiful and surrounded by miles of untouched wilderness with the exception of a few well-built log cabins.

I have to admit that I would love to see it one last time before I died, but there was no time for that now. I'm here and in the right mindset...that's if it's possible to have a way of thinking before you kill yourself.

Well, there is a way of thinking. It's called suicidal but I didn't like to think that I was committing suicide.
Suicide meant to kill oneself intentionally, and there was no doubt I was going to be doing that.
To most people it meant that you hated yourself, the world and everyone in it.
I did hate myself, but not necessarily the world and everyone else.

Some people could be really nice and kind, like the teacher I had for sixth grade, she'd helped me get through the bullying.
There were also people that were more than nice and kind; they were saviors like My Chemical Romance because on more than one occasion they had made me hate myself a little less and stopped me from ending everything.

I've always wanted to see them perform live, although the chances of them coming to this small hillbilly town was unlikely just like the possibly of Mum buying me tickets to one of their concerts in a city hours away from here.
With no hesitation I took a few shaky steps closer to the railing and pressed myself against it, and taking a long hard look at the last thing I'd see.
Despite how dark and filthy the river below me was it still had a special kind of gothic beauty to it.

With I sigh I pushed off the railing and started to search through my severely underfilled duffle bag and pulled out a thick notebook that I've been writing in for the past year.
The notebook was filled with drawings, sketches, poems, stories, some pressed flowers and my thoughts which wouldn't make sense to anyone because they probably seemed like the ramblings of an insane person.

I pulled out one of the ten blank pieces of paper left in the back and got a felt tip pen from my jeans pocket.
It would be a good idea for me to leave a note so anyone that would eventually come by here could see it and have some idea what happened to me.

'Dear reader of this note,
For you to find something like this in a place like this, then you probably have an idea what this means.
I ask that you take this to my mother so she'll know what I've done; she lives on 23 Oak Lane, Blackford. Please don't read further everything else is for her eyes only.

Hi Mum, it's your screw up daughter again. I know that you told me to never kill myself because there is always someone who will miss me.
That makes me feel better; it lets me know that my time here wasn't completely wasted.
I want you to know that I'm doing this with a sound state of mind and a good reason, it's beautiful out here.
I hope that you can forgive me one day, tell my friends that I'll be thinking of them from wherever it is that I end up. I love you.
So long and goodnight,
Misty, Fallyn'

I crossed out my much hated real name (Misty) and replaced it with Fallyn, the only name that I could think of.

I read over the note, this will have to do.
Carefully I rolled it up and placed it in my duffle bag, someone would find it.
Somehow the already dark and chilly night-time got even gloomier as I zipped up the bag and started taking my large black hoodie off.

I was going to dive in just underwear, less clothing meant that I would be less likely to float, so the chances of anyone finding my body would be significantly reduced.
The cold air seemed to curl its way around my body, it comforted me and for the first time in my life cold didn't actually mean cold.

Slowly I walked back to the railing and started to search for a foothold to pull myself up.
I managed to grip onto a piece of stone and with not too much effort involved got myself standing on the surprisingly wide railing.

I wonder if anyone else has ever thrown themselves off this bridge, then I thought of the town nickname for it.
The Widows Arch Bridge, the title was kind of self-explanatory.

Except I wasn't a widow, I was a teenager, a stereotyped emo and grieving friend, that was about it.

I'm terrified of heights so it was strange for me to be up here with no fear lingering around me like a restrictive cloak. I guess that the reason I was scared of heights was because I'd been afraid of falling and dying.

Now if I fell and died it would mean that I'd accomplished what I set out to do in the first place.
Man, I wish that I had the chance to listen to one last song before I do this, I thought calmly to myself.

Facing the fact that your life would end in the next five minutes was surprisingly easy for me, I was after all the kind of person who stuck to their decisions once they made up their mind.
Like mother, like daughter.

With a sigh I lent against a wood pylon and looked at the river which snaked its way off for a couple of miles before disappearing into a dense patch of wilderness.
I took the small packet of cigarettes that I'd taken from Mum out of their place which was tucked into my bra, then I took a cigarette and a lighter out, lit up my cancer stick and allowed myself to further relax against the aged wood.

Let's see this kill me, I smiled into the dark sky that was faintly illuminated by the red glow of my cigarette.
I never smoked before but when my friend went I started.

Mum had always told me that when it's your time to go, you go.
Whether it's by murder, lung cancer (like this cigarette would probably give me eventually) or through throwing yourself off a bridge like I was about to.

Another thing about life that I've picked up in my short sixteen years that wouldn't be getting any longer.
Life's a bitch, then you die and the afterlife's likely to be a bitch as well and if there was no afterlife and you just rotted in the ground...then that was life being a bitch.

I glanced at the road and checked to see if anyone was coming while I put out my now fully smoked cigarette. It was stupid for me to check for people out here, I'd spent an hour walking to this bridge specifically because the lack of people that visit it.

As old as the bridge was it could bare a lot of weight much unlike the smaller one closer to town that people would use to get into Blackford.
This old bridge also led into town but it would take you an extra half an hour to get there so only trucks and other heavy vehicles that couldn't use the smaller bridge used this one.
Not many trucks came into our town and when they did it was only occasional because we had a lot of farmers that lived really close to the central so we didn't rely on imports or stuff like that much.
We had everything a canning factory, a bakery and it was all run by rednecks.
I'm not saying that everyone in the town was a redneck, just most.

My friends weren't like that, they were smart, dignified and were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a town that produced nobody's like a cookie cutter.
Then there was my best friend Katelyn of four years.
She came to Blackford when we were both twelve; at first we didn't like each other even though we were cut from the same dark blood-spattered cloth.

I thought that she was a complete and utter poser, bitch, idiot and every other insulting thing that could come to mind, there was no doubt that at the time she thought the very same thing of me.
But one day I'd been sitting on a bench during lunch listening to Cubicles by My Chemical Romance on my iPod when I accidentally pulled the headphone jack out and the music continued to play loudly.

Katelyn had been nearby and when she heard My Chem she came over to investigate who was listening to it, when she saw me sitting there scrabbling to turn it down, off or anything else she instantly thought of me from a potential friend perspective instead of I hate you.
We both ended up talking about our love for the same kind of music and we became inseparable friends that very day and we stayed that way for the next four years.

She'd tell me about the concerts that she'd been to and how when we both turned eighteen we could get a lease together as roommates in a city on the other side of the word, far away from this podunk town and she'd take me to see a MCR concert.

On her fourteenth birthday I stayed over at her house and helped her pierce her nose and on my fifteenth birthday she helped me pierce my lip.
We were really close until the day three months ago when we were mucking about listening to the music channel and her shirt got ripped, revealing the countless cuts that she'd done on her arm, all of them fresh.

So to help her I showed her a page that I read about the butterfly project.
It's simple, if you feel the need to cut draw a butterfly on your wrist with a marker, you name it after someone that loves you and you let the drawing fade away naturally and if you cut the butterfly dies.
As I said, simple.

I drew a butterfly and a message on her wrist and she promised me that she would try to stop cutting and let the butterfly fade away and in the end that's what happened, it faded away.
When that worked she drew more whenever she felt the urge to cut and gradually the scabs on her wrist went away and all that was left were some faint scars that you had to look really closely to see.

Then one day her boyfriend cheated on her with the school slut which we commonly referred to as STD central.
Katelyn went back to her cutting and I went right back to square one with her, which meant more fading butterflies and more faint scars.
Finally she told me that she didn't need any more butterflies, and that she had stopped for good and wouldn't kill a butterfly again whether it was there or not and that made me happy because I'd helped my friend.

One week ago I went to her house to pick her up so Mum could take us to Lake Blackwater before the winter ended, like we had done every single year since we'd become friends.
Her parents had gone away for some trip which left her alone in the house for a whole day until Mum drove me to her house so I could get her and her stuff and we could make our way to the fire warmed log cabin and the beautiful frozen Lake Blackwater.
When I knocked on her door she didn't answer, but I knew that Katelyn could be a boulder level heavy sleeper so I got the spare key to her house and let myself in with the intention of sneaking into her bedroom and scaring her awake.

The second I opened her bedroom door I knew that I wouldn't be waking her.

Katelyn was laying on her bed with her eyes closed and red staining every inch of her pristine cotton sheets.
She'd lied to me and killed the fading butterfly that I'd drawn on her to show how proud I was.
I thought I'd helped my friend but I didn't, if I can't help my friend I can't help anyone, even myself.
That was the reason that I plan to kill myself.

Everyone's going to die at some point so why wait until I'm ninety or whatever age I am when a car decides to hit me.
Is all I'm doing is making the inevitable come faster, plus if I can't even save my friend what use would I be as a girlfriend or a mother?

God knows that I'm a horrible daughter, I swear, sneak out and I steal my mother's cigarettes.
I kicked the packet off the railing and watched it make a spiral in the air then slowly fall into the water and immediately disappear.
I hope that I'll disappear that easily, I'm sure I will.

Is all I have to do is look at the water to know that once my head is under I won't be coming up again, even if by some impossibility a rescue crew were to suddenly show and try to save me.
To warm myself up I started to stretch my arms and legs like an Olympic diver getting ready to take the predecided and rehearsed jump off a ten meter platform, the only difference was that I wouldn't be scored and that this bridge was much, much higher than ten meters.

So, was this the moment where I'm supposed to say 'goodbye cruel world' or something to that effect?

Meh, I wasn't the kind of person that would say anything that cheesy, would saying nothing be a better idea?
They really need to make a last words handbook, wait why should I care in the next two minutes I'm not going to need one.

I stood in what I imagine as the center of The Widows Arch Bridge, in my close fitting midnight blue bra and panties at what was according to my watch midnight.

"I guess that this is it then?" I said out loud to the sky, as if it had the ability to answer me.
I shuffled closer to the edge and felt my toes curl around the cold bricks; my stomach felt like it was full of all the butterflies that Katelyn didn't kill.

Before I jumped I took a couple of long deep breaths, after all I might as well enjoy oxygen while I have the chance, I won't be experiencing it for a while.
My mouth curled into a smile as I lifted my arms into the air above my head, it wouldn't be a bad idea to attempt a swan dive, it's not like there are critics watching.

I started to lower myself into an almost sitting position so I could get more power when pushing off and I'd get further away from the bridge.

My eyes closed automatically and I took one last breath.