Up The Down Escalator

Chapter 5

But life just continued. I think I grew up more in those few months afterward than I had ever had in, well, my whole life. I basically dealt by trying not to think about anything. But the second I let my guard down, the second I started thinking at all, that was when all the monsters came out.
Little kids say they have "monsters" a lot. Then adults give them the usual "there's no such thing as monsters" and I believed that for a long time. I think it was those few months that taught me otherwise.
It didn't help that my, now widowed, Aunt Diane's grandmother died shortly after her husband's death.
My monsters were my thoughts. Whenever I started thinking about anything, my family, school, tests, death, they came out and tried to eat me alive. The thoughts just kept going on a rotation, almost too fast to even follow. They kept escalating and with each thought, it just got worse, and I just got more upset.  All the sadness just fed off of all the other sadness. There were so many days where I would just lie on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking about how good it would feel to just die. I didn't cry though. I never cried about it, not once. It was to the point where I would literally do anything to just stop feeling it all.
I won't go into all the details about what I did in that time afterwords. Suffice to say that every single day, all I prayed for was that I would have the courage to commit suicide that day. I tried so many times but I could never go through with it. I guess I was just too scared to.
During that time, everything became a symbolism of death; razors, knives, matches, scissors, lightning. If I had gotten a quarter for every time I wrote "help" on a tissue with my own blood, I would probably be a millionaire.
Even saying "don't die" every day to the Waydes suddenly had a different meaning. But I kept saying it anyways. It's weird, but I think that somehow, it sort of made me feel better. Like I actually had a purpose, even though it was a strange one. That was my rope keeping me from going totally crazy.
I kept everything bottled inside. Never took it out on anything or anyone. In retrospect, that was probably a really terrible idea but I had no idea about all that back then.
But life just went on and before I knew it, it was the end of the school year.