Collateral Damage| bnha

chapter twelve| if we make it through december

Trigger Warning:
This chapter includes mentions of suicide.

Please feel free to skip this chapter if it's too much 

I will be happy to add a short summary if necessary !

[ four years ago ]

I've tried to kill myself more times than I care to admit.

Part of me always assumed it had become a coping mechanism, sort of like what eating too much or smoking cigarettes is to some people. That was the only way I knew to explain it. Trying to kill myself had become my default, the plan B to all my plan A's, the automatic response and the predictable answer. Trying to kill myself was my only solution—- emphasis on trying.

I had done my research, on all the ways it could work and all the ways it couldn't. I've even gone through proper trial and error, and built upon my findings.

It sounds kind of cynical, I know. Talking about ending my own life as if it was some type of hypothesis and I was some sort of lab rat. But to me that's sort of how it felt like at times. Like a shallow decision, an insincere one.

I've heard multiple recounts of multiple people, and have talked to all the different kinds of patients, and doctors, and all those other kinds of people that are willing to be uncomfortable enough to listen and unfazed enough to talk. Strangely, I had not met one with a similar position as mine. Although I wasn't one for comparing how similar my "suicidal thoughts" were to those of my neighbor —- as I found it untasteful to even try and assume there were similarities to begin with— I still couldn't help but notice the striking differences either.

I've heard most things. Guilt, only resort, indescribable pain, everlasting need, ongoing hatred, and many more that detail the undefinable feeling of wanting to end your own life. But there is only one thing I could take away from everyone's motives.

Mine seemed unconvincing

Maybe I didn't want to kill myself.

Maybe I didn't know what it felt like to be at the bottom of the abyss.

Maybe I lacked the will, the power, the strength, the guts.

I wasn't sure of what it was, and I don't think I ever will.

But surely, the only reason I had not died yet wasn't lack of trying.

"How did you sleep last night, Sora?"

It's only been a month since I've been at the psych ward. A month that has felt like a week and a decade all at the same time. It was almost like life with the Sone's had just been a distant nightmare, but it was a nightmare that I lived through every day..

"Good this time" my answers were almost robotic

"Oh really?" the nurse announced his shock walking around my room, "And how many hours did you sleep?"

"Almost eight, I am sure"

"Sounds amazing, really great improvement, Sora"

"Thanks"

The nurse gently placed my tray with breakfast on the little table on the other side of my bed. The breakfast for today was composed of some mushy brown rice, what looked like a mixture of vegetables, perhaps eggs, two different colored pills, and a cup of jello. I always finished the latter. He gave one more small stroll around my colorless room and headed towards the door and without facing me, he added, "Next time maybe tell me a more plausible timeframe"