Collarbones

9 - Back

My back should be as strong as the steel pillars that support the bridges that stretch across the expanse of ocean. It should be able to continue standing no matter how many times I am run over, how many cracks appear in the concrete that has been poured over my structure. There should be no question as to whether or not I can bear the weight of endless traffic, collisions, and near-misses.

It has come frighteningly apparent that I am not able to handle this.

There is something new in my future, though.

Road work will become my best friend. They will strip me down to the center core  where the strength of my steel lies. In an attempt to boost it up, they will take me apart piece by piece and slowly transform me from the rusted damage I am to something new. I will be shiny, parts of me replaced in order to keep the rest of me standing.

I do not know if it will be worth it.

I’ll admit that I am scared of the things that will happen during this transformation. I am terrified that they will once again tear me away from the things that I have tried so hard to achieve and leave me at the point where I do not like myself again.

They all think that this time, I’ll be better.

“Was it on purpose, Ainsley?” The woman across from me is cold, unnerving, and seems to have no compassion for me. Her lips stay in a straight line throughout the talk and when we come to this question, her eyebrows narrow at my silence. She taps her pen against the top of her clipboard, causing me to fidget even more in my seat.

After a while, I swallow and in a whisper that seems far louder than an explosion, “Yes.”

She stares at me for a moment, her eyes absorbing mine and I stray off to wonder if maybe she sees how broken I am on the inside. She pulls me back with her next question, “How long would you say you have suffered from bulimia?”

“Seven months,” I say, fidgeting with the white plastic bracelet around my wrist. My fingers smear the clear coating over my name and I look up, waiting for the next question.

“I see you were admitted to out-patient therapy only two months ago.” She says to me. “Did it not help?”

I suddenly find myself wanting to scream at her. I want to scream so that my pain fills this room and swallows both of us whole. I want her to realize that she can be as sterile and dead as she wants, but her lack of compassion is like blades digging into my skin. I want to see her take a battle with the monster that lives within my head.

Whereas I have learned to live with it and come out scraped, she wouldn’t ever return.

I keep my temper in check and instead draw my feet up onto the plastic chair. My toes curl around the chair and I wrap my arms around my legs. “No.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, just gives a sharp nod of her head. When her eyes meet mine once again, she asks her final question, “Do you still want to die, Ainsley?”

If death were an easy feat, then I would have succeeded already. I do not understand why I am still breathing, why I am able to see the world around me. I really do not want to be here anymore, for my life’s goal was to be perfect. I managed to achieve everything I want and I still want to disappear.

I want to throw a smoke bomb in front of me and watch as the world turns cloudy. Except, when the smoke comes back down, I do not just want to have performed a magic trick. I want to have displaced myself from the world leaving no evidence behind.

Before I answer her question, I recall the few days in the hospital after my suicide attempt. I think of the way that my mother reacted when I woke up. The first thing she did was hit me, slapping me so hard across the face that she left a handprint. Then she broke down, right there on the white tile floor of the hospital, screaming her pain so loudly that they had to take her away.

I think of the way my dad sat beside my bed and repeatedly apologized for the way my mother reacted. He talked to me about things that didn’t really matter and brought my sketchbook to me. He tried to make me feel as if I wasn’t in a hospital recovering from the side-effects of my attempted overdose and occupying a bed in the ward spcifically for the mentally unstable.

It wasn’t until the day before he told me that it had been my mother who had found me that day. She had just happened to be passing the bathroom in route to collect dirty laundry from our rooms when she called my name. I didn’t answer and she panicked.

I think of the lack of flowers in my room, the lack of anything that makes me feel like I would have been missed. I take into consideration the fact that my brother has not visited me once.

I know that they all want me to say no, to say that this time, things will be different.

But because I know that is not true and I have sunken too low to even consider hurting myself again, I whisper, “Yes.”

The word slices the room around us and the woman’s mask crumbles. She frowns slightly as she writes on her clipboard. After a moment, she looks up at me. I know she wants to say something to encourage me to take ahold of the bait they are giving me.

This world is full of people who are unable to handle their feelings. They lose control in a blink of an eye, flying off the handle in anger or sinking beneath the sea waters. There are many who hide away in their rooms, who sit behind computer screens, and cower beneath the masks of someone who appears to be fine. They do not speak their pain, but sew their lips shut.

And everyday, one after one, they give up. They take the gun in their shaking fingers and stare down the barrel before they raise it up beneath their chins. They stand on a chair in the middle of a room, numb as they slide the noose around their neck. They count the pills in the plastic bottles that sit along the counter, ignoring the name that is not theirs that is printed upon the sticker. They sit in a bathtub, their hands shaking as the knife, already rusted with the demons they’ve destroyed, glints in the light. They watch the traffic as it comes hurtling past and take a deep breath as a tractor-trailer with headlights burning holes into the cars in front of it draws closer.

Then they make the attempt, the door flinging open just as the gun goes off. The chair toppling backwards as they hang from the center before the ceiling fan suddenly gives way and comes crashing to the floor. The fingers of a loved one makes their way into their throat, trying to reach the pills before they disappear. The knife does not go deep enough in the final cut, slipping from tired clumsy hands and clattering to the floor. The truck swerves at the last moment, strange hands reaching to pull them back to the sidewalk.

Fate keeps them around, whether to make them suffer from the pain they’ve almost inflicted on their loved ones or to make them see that there’s something beautiful waiting for them.

I do not know why I didn’t die in that bathroom. I want so badly to be taken away, but once again, I have been kept here. I understand why my mother is so angry. The first time was an accident, a beautiful mistake that I made. The second time, it was intentional.

Miracles should happen to those who deserve it. Children with life-threatening diseases. Adults waiting for organ transplants. Victims of rape. Families involved in shootings, murder, domestic violence. Miracles should be given to those who need it far more than I do.

Because I am okay with the darkness of my thoughts, the way that everything feels warped. I am okay with the way that world seems to rain black down upon me, little droplets filled with the ghosts and demons of my past and present pelting down on me. I am okay with shoving my finger down my throat and coaxing myself into becoming perfect.

I do not seem very strong. I do know what I want. And I did all that I could to reach it.

What really matters, though, is that death does not scare me. Not even in the slightest.

In fact, when I took those pills, I was welcoming death with open arms.

Waiting in bliss for the end.

For the world to shatter.

And so it did.

Just not in the way I expected.