“So Frank,” Abby says at the end of our second session which was basically just me staring at a wall and her trying to get me to talk, “Since you don’t want to talk to me I’m going to give you this journal to write your thoughts in and I’ll look it over at our next session.”

I just nod and grab the journal from her and go to the desk taking the card for my next appointment and go into the waiting room to meet Gerard.

He looks up and smiles, “Did it go okay?”

I shrug and walk outside with him and make small talk with him on the drive home. Basically the next few days are pretty mundane. Get up, eat, make small talk, eat, hang out or watch a movie, sleep, repeat. And I know it seems stupid but I’m actually writing in that journal. Not big things just little things that I notice. Like ranking my mood on a scale of one to ten. A random sentence or two trying and failing to convey what I’m feeling. So far the only things consistent about writing in the journal has been me dating every entry even if it’s one word.

Gerard and I were originally going to be going on a double date with Mikey to a new horror movie that came out tonight but I feign sick and tell Gerard to go by himself. Truth is I just want some alone time. So Gerard leaves rather reluctantly after I tell him at least five times that I’ll be fine.
I lay back on Gerard and I’s bed and just shut my eyes for a few moments embracing the darkness until I open them again. I’ve always liked the dark I guess because I’ve lived in it my whole life. Even when I was a little kid I only really went outside at school because I had to hide or take care of my mom at home. I’m pretty sure in all the time I lived at my mom’s house not once did we open the curtains and shutters. It was always dark. Sure some light slipped in through the cracks but she always kept them closed.

I remember at night time when I was younger I would creep out of my bed and over to the window in my room and peek through the cracks and watch the cars, people, and animals pass by on the street and sidewalk below.

I guess since I lived in darkness my whole life I never really knew it. I mean if you never see the light how are you supposed to know what you’re living in is wrong. I think that’s why I thought why most of the things that happened to me such as, my mom abusing me, having anxiety, and depression, were normal. I never understand that happiness was something you could feel all the time.

I’m not saying I never experienced happiness, I did, but only really moments of it. My happiness was like getting a snow day off it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does you try to everything you can and enjoy it to the fullest. My first moment of happiness I can remember is when I first started playing guitar around when I was ten years old. It was a small ray of light in a dark world.

I run my hand through my hair and sit up. I haven’t played guitar in about a year, my mom broke my last one. I would always play guitar to try and block out my mom yelling or having sex with some guy she picked up at the bar. That’s what I did most nights. I would run my fingers up and down the frets, making chords, hitting notes, and just in general messing around, trying to untangle the wires in my tangle of a brain.

I stand up and go into the bathroom and stare at the mirror blankly. I hate mirrors. Well that’s not right, I don’t hate mirrors, I hate what they show me. All my flaws and imperfections on display for anyone who walks by. Sometimes I feel like everyone I’ve ever known is actually staring at me from behind the mirror judging my every move.

I turn on the faucet and stare down at the water flowing from the faucet. I plug up the drain and watch the water fill the sink up to almost the brim and then I shut off the faucet. It looks so still and smooth and I reach out, touching it, and send ripples across the whole surface. Someone told me once drowning is an easy way to go, all you have to do is breathe out.

I look down at my clothes and see I’m in pajamas, I don’t want to be found in this. I go to the closet quickly and pull out my favorite pair of skinny jeans and my favorite shirt. Now I’m ready. I guess I seem pretty irrational getting all dressed up to die, but hell that’s what people do every day. We’re all going to die and we don’t have any idea when or how unless we choose for ourselves. So technically every day we’re alive we’re just dressing up to die.

I’m back in the bathroom now and my hands grip the counter making my knuckles go white at the strength of my grip. I slowly breathe in and out, counting to ten and then back, just focusing on relaxing one muscle in my body at a time till all the tension’s gone. This takes several minutes but it gives me time to think and accept what I’m about to do. I understand.

I take a deep breath and lean my head over the sink an inch from the water before back up again. The door should I leave it open? Should I close it? I’ll leave it open, they’ll find me quicker.

I repeat what I did just moments earlier and then after a moment of hesitation, I submerge my head. I open my eyes under the water and let out the air in my lungs and wait there. At around thirty seconds my lungs are screaming for air and I take my head out of the water.

“No, fuck,” I say to myself, “You can’t even kill yourself correctly, you fuck up. Come on man up and do it.”

Following my advice I dunk my head yet again and manage to stay under for longer before having to pull up my head once again. At this point I’m just feeling numb and I’m surprised I’m not crying. I try one more time, again unsuccessful.

I look at myself in the mirror once again, my hair dripping water onto my shoulders, and my eyes looking cold and dead. I grab a towel and dry off my hair and unplug the drain, erasing the evidence for a crime I didn’t commit.

I go over to my bag and get the journal out of it and begin to write.

‘Life is a very difficult thing to get through when you don’t understand how it works. There is light and dark in this world and it is said that you can’t have one without the other, but I don’t think that’s true. You see the definition of dark is the absence of light, so there is not possible way you can have dark if you have light also. I feel like my whole life is an endless void, a black hole if you will, that brings myself, and those around me, down into the abyss. I feel like the only way to stop destroying everyone is to explode, supernova myself into a million pieces and particles and scatter myself across space. Then maybe after I supernova those particles of myself will be able to help create something beautiful for once, rather than suck the life out of planets and stars. But we all know that’s not possible because no matter how bad a black hole wants to go supernova and stop destroying it can’t.’

Notes

This chapter is very personal to me because it's mainly what I'm feeling right now (the last speech) and the suicide attempt was actually something I did and yeah like I said next few chapters are based off of me...sorry

Chapter Title: All Our Bruised Bodies and the Whole Heart Shrinks by La Dispute