Annie’s song

I sat in the bathtub, playing the same songs over and over but I wasn’t really listening.

It wont hurt. Someone told me you just get confused. Then it’s over.

I held my breath and dove under the soapy water. It was the first time I had done something like this. I had always wanted to die, but I had never tried to do it. Today was different.

It was a strange feeling. I had been under water plenty of times, I practically grew up at the local swimming pool, but today I wasn’t pretending to be a mermaid or trying to improve my backstroke: Today I was trying to kill myself. I opened my eyes while I was under water, just because I didn’t want my last image to be my feet touching the dirty faucet of our bathtub. It was darker than usual. After a good amount of time, I decided I needed to breathe. Not remembering that I was underwater, I took a breath in. The feeling of water up my nose made me want to jump above water.

Just a few more seconds, in a few more seconds you’ll black out and everything will be alright.

But I didn’t black out. Instead, song lyrics flashed through my mind.

I never thought I’d die alone, I laughed the loudest who’ve known….

I know that the song was Blink 182, but I couldn’t help but think about Gerard Way. He was my idol. He’s been sober for I couldn’t remember how long. He created music that made me cry, the earlier stuff, not the last two albums. I remembered this picture I saw of him once.

I am living proof that no matter how bad life gets, it gets better. I am Gerard Way, and I survived

I wanted to see him. I wanted to thank him for being so much more than I could ever be. I wanted to hug him and cry in his arms, telling him that I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to see it get better. Out of all of this, I felt sorry for him. I didn’t think about my family or friends, I didn’t think about how they would react. All I could think about was the girl who did this all to me, and how much I wanted to say sorry to Gerard Way.

I never conqured, rarely came. Sixteen just held such better days. Days when I still felt alive….

I hadn’t even made it to 16 yet. I didn’t even have my drivers permit. I wonder what it would be like if instead, I got in a car crash. At least then people wouldn’t call it suicide. They wouldn’t speak as badly of it. My own grandmother gave me a lecture on how people who kill themselves are selfish. I closed my eyes really tight. I knew that if I were above water I would be crying. I didn’t want to cry, I cry all the time, it was a sign of weakness. Now was not a time to be weak, just suck it up and just die already!

remember the time I spilled the cup of apple juice in the hall, please tell mom this is not her fault

“could you imagine if someone killed themselves, how badly their mom would feel?” It was my best friend talking. We were in eighth grade on a camping retreat with the rest of my class. She had shown me the song for the first time. When I first heard it, I didn’t understand how someone could even try to kill themselves, and now here I was, living it.

“The only thing that kept me from diving in after him was you.” My mom told me after her fiancee died. I wasn’t at the funeral, I had school that day. Months later, while she was crying over having to spend christmas without him she told me that. I was the only good thing she had in her life, and that’s why she didn’t try to join him six feet under ground.

I can’t do it. It’s true, I couldn’t do it. I thought about my mother, she would surly go through with suicide if I died, she had tried it once already, if I was dead it was all the more reason. I tried to picture my dad crying, something I had never seen at that point. I thought about my best friend, getting a call early in the morning. Then, finally, I thought about her. The girl that had taken my good as gold perspective and turned it into a death wish in under three months.

I rose out of the water, my body gasping for air against the cold tile. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill myself. I had saved my mom and dad the grief, I saved my shadow, that would most likely be taunted for being weak. But that didn’t seem to matter as much as the feeling I got when I thought about the girl I loathe. I had shown her. I am a survivor, no matter what she says or makes me feel.

I am living proof that no matter how hard life gets, it will get better. I am Annie, and I survived.