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Maybe I’m just weird, but… I’ve noticed that most people who post on the suicide project use proper grammar. I also noticed while I was walking outside today how nice it was. It’s been brutally cold, and I haven’t had heat all winter. Today, I had to turn my air on. As I was going to check my mail, since I’ve been forgetting to check it for several days at a time, I saw a little kid riding on a tricycle with his parents running along at his side. It really was a beautiful sight. I notice things like I’m watching them from a movie. Remember that sitcom you always wanted to be your life? I wanted to be a part of the Conner family. “Living” for me has become nothing but watching a movie or some stupid television show. I might be a camera person, at best, just taking mental note of everything just so I could post it on a suicide forum later.

Back in July, and then well before that, I had a reason to be miserable. I really did. I became a single mom in high school, but I still went back and finished. I couldn’t name the father… Not because I slept around or anything, but even if people believed me when I said his name, they really wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t want it. I love my son, but he’s a beautiful product of something horrible. I’m just afraid he’s going to have a bad life because I wasn’t prepared to be a mom and I didn’t stand up to my family when I knew in my heart that adoption would be best.

I’m in one of the top public universities in the country. Again, no reason to be miserable there. Except, I hate it here. I pissed away last semester, taking only one of my twelve credit hours. One professor let me waste my entire semester going to a class that she never intended to let me pass to begin with. I transferred into the class late, was told that the three classes I missed wouldn’t count against me, but the professor decided in the end that they should. That was a lot of money and time I wasted on babysitters. Thanks, Doc… Oh yeah, and she doesn’t even have her doctorate degree, yet she’s head of the department. How did that happen…?

I’ve wanted to teach music since I was twelve. I had the greatest band director in high school. I don’t mean one of those that you laugh and make jokes with, but one of those that they should make a movie about, like The Ron Clark Stork or Freedom Writers. He was absolutely amazing, and he changed my life. When the time came for me to graduate, I felt ready. It was like he had given me the ticket to get away from my arguing family, to get my son out of such a toxic environment, and to finally make it on my own. That ticket was my music. Then, the band director in college decided that he couldn’t have a single mom on his team when she might have to skip practices when the baby was sick or a sitter bailed at the last minute. He obviously doesn’t have children… But overnight, my music was stolen. That card my high school band director gave to me, I threw it out the window before I ever got to play it. I don’t know how to do anything else, nor do I want to do anything else. I want my music.

Not long after that, I found out that a drug dealer lives something like five apartments down from me. I found that out when he hit on me and asked if I wanted to buy something from him. I was disgusted… Before that though, my apartment was broken into and my flute, among other things, was stolen. I only got it all back by the grace of the man’s parents who brought it back after finding out he stole it for drug money. The more I found out about this drug-infested neighborhood and its crime rate, the less I wanted to be here. I still don’t want to be here. I stopped going to math and French when I couldn’t find sitters or afford them anymore. I gave up on English when I found out that I was an idiot and didn’t know how to use the online course, so I had failed miserably two months into my efforts to pass the class. I got so angry, snapping at everyone, even my son. In October, I called my dad to come get him. I didn’t want him to see me like that, and I just thought that with a few days of a break, I would be okay again. Things had just caught up with me was all… I wished.

I kept making excuses for my dad not to bring him back. I didn’t want to think that I might kill myself and then no one be there to take my son. I could have laid there for days, weeks, and then where would he be? I never told my dad this. He found out, though, when I tried to kill myself and ended up in a crisis unit. It supposedly wasn’t a hospital, as the doctor tried to avoid a real one, but it certainly felt like it. I stayed there for five days, finally demanding to be released when the doctor asked me about when I “lied” about something really, really horrible that I finally got up the nerve to tell the doctor. I didn’t lie, and I’d never lie about something so terrible. But it didn’t even matter. They finally discharged me, and my dad was so disappointed. He never showed it, but his face did. When he came to pick me up from the hospital, he looked like he suddenly got twenty years older.

When I got back, my friends didn’t even ask me how I was. Not once, and they still haven’t, just asked me, “Jessie, how are you?” That’s all I want. Call me selfish, but I happen to think that it’s an unfair trade as it is. I do everything I can to make their lives for convenient. They all live in the dorms, so if they want a home cooked meal, I cook for them. If they want a place to stay over Christmas break, I give up my bed. I don’t go anywhere without inviting them with me or asking if they need anything. One of my friends, knowing that I hadn’t had my son since October and wanted him to come stay over Christmas break, invited her boyfriend the next day and didn’t tell me until an hour before he got there that he was going to stay the night for a few nights. There wasn’t any room for my son after that. On New Year’s Eve, she went out drinking with friends and left me alone, even when she knew that I was feeling really, really bad. I cut up my arms at random intervals the whole night she was gone. She said she would be back before midnight, and then she finally called at 2:30 in the morning to let me know she was on her way. I slept on the couch for a week while she and her boyfriend shacked up in my bed. Just yesterday, I found a trash bag full of dirty tissues and condom wrappers that they didn’t even have the courtesy to throw away. I felt like I owed my friends, but I don’t know anymore if I do or not. I don’t know how to make them happy without driving myself insane.

It’s not a question of whether or not I’m going to die, because I’ve already decided that I am. It’s only a matter of when. And I’ve pretty much decided on now.