"I'm Not Crazy"

XI.

I tried to drown myself when I was 11. It wasn't like an intense attempt, and I don't think I could conceptualize it fully when I was that age. I wasn't exactly aware of what it would mean to drown. I have had to remind myself of that a lot over the years; that children don't understand death. I couldn't have known what forever would mean. 11 year olds don't know how to act with forever in mind. It's more abstract than that.

My stepbrother had already been shot in the face at this point. The crisis bit had seemingly passed, for the most part. Things were moving forward into an inexplicable new normal, and I was expected to move on too. I was supposed to start sleeping through the night again. I was supposed to stop screaming.

That's just a big expectation for a child, isn't it? How do you go forward from seeing something like that? They couldn't possibly expect me to be normal after feeling the splash of warm blood on my cheeks. It was just an unreachable goal.

One night, I was in the bathtub, and my mother left me alone. I was left alone often at this point. My mother was preoccupied, and so I was to fend for myself just a little bit. I was to be responsible for washing and dressing myself, and that meant that I was atleast given free reign over what I wore. I was relishing in that after the previous few years I'd had. It also meant I was left unsupervised in the bath.

I was old enough for that. I should have been able to manage it.

On this particular night though, curiosity was running rampant. I wanted to feel what it was like to stop breathing. I truly wanted it, just for a moment.

I laid back in the bath and let the water rush over my face. My lips submerged first, and my nose followed My eyes were closed initially, but then I opened them and let the burn in. I stared through the haze up to the ceiling and I felt the warmth of the water all over. It was quiet, and comforting. My chest wouldn't start hurting for a few more seconds. My throat wouldn't start aching in the back of my nasal cavity.

I remember thinking while I was down there, that it wasn't so bad. I could recall clearly the way Mathew had looked when he had choked on his blood, how his demolished face had bled down his own throat. I'd heard a terrible gurgling sound. It had seemed loud and scary and violent, but the hot water going down my throat didn't feel that way. I felt bad for him, because his drowning had clearly hurt more than mine did. I felt guilty.

He maybe hadn't truly deserved what happened to him. He'd had his better moments. I hadn't ever actually wanted him to go through something so painful.

It was while immersed in these thoughts that my shoulders were grabbed roughly, and I was yanked out from under the water. Maybe I'd gasped in motion, or maybe I'd been numb to the truth until then, but I began choking when I found myself pulled to the surface like that. I coughed and gagged on the water in my mouth, and my mom kneeled there holding me upright and screaming. I don't even know what she was saying, I just know that I was suddenly terrified. So many of my thoughts during this time were too deeply enmeshed in terror.

And I was cold. Being out of the water was colder than before. Suddenly I missed Matthew in a form he'd never be able to reach again. I remembered how it felt when he wasn't angry, when he laughed, and when he called me Charles for fun, and I called him Matty. It's times like that, where I would recall that we were kids. Kids were mostly powerless. Kids did not make the choices. We just both lived with the ones our parents made.

"Charlotte?"

I pinched myself hard on the opposite wrist, twisting the skin until I had no choice but to flinch under the pain. The action brought my senses back online. I was awake. I was alive. I was supposed to be speaking.