#7

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"How was the break?"

"It was long."

"Yes, I'd expect summer break to last long. Are you excited for the senior year?"

The girl shrugged.

"I met someone."

"Tell me about them?"

"I don't have the words."

"Did they make you happy?"

"For some time, he did."

"What happened?"

"I left."

"Why?"

"Have you ever been so sad that it became the only thing you ever knew?"

"No."

"It's odd. You become so used to the sadness that alway lingers beneath your occasional happiness that when it's gone...even for a moment, you feel empty, lost."

"Did the boy make you feel that way?"

Silence.

"You were afraid. You were confused. After so long, your sadness became a companion. It was always there, always with you. And then, suddenly when it was gone, you were afraid because you didn't know what to feel anymore. You didn't know if you could feel anymore."

Another crack.

Silence.

Anne-Marie felt elated by the fact that the girl was on her journey to recovery. She only worried that there would be no one help her when she fell. And she would fall, because the road to recovery wasn't a straight and easy road. No, there would be many setbacks and downfalls, but in the end it would all be worth it. Some of her patients couldn't hold on so long. Anne-Marie hoped that the girl wasn't one of them.

"Do you think I'm suicidal?"

"I think that you're far too wise and rational for such a young girl. But suicide is rarely, if ever, a thing of logic, and any one of us can feel suicidal at our worst."

"I've thought about ending my life many times. Never too seriously. Sometimes, I'd see a knife and wonder what it would feel like if I were to slit my throat or my wrists. Sometimes I wonder whether it would be more painful a death to bleed out from my wrists or to overdose on pills."

"Why didn't you ever try to kill yourself, when you thought of it so often?"

"Death is a curious thing, is it not? It awaits us all, we are all dying from the moment that we are born. It's odd how we envision the right time to die is when we are old and frail. Wouldn't it be better to die once you've hit your peak, and so avoid seeing your downfall into weakness? I never really felt like it was the right time to die just yet, so I kept living."

"Do you think the right time to die is when you're young?"

Silence.

Anne-Marie had come to learn that silence either meant a reluctant agreement, or uncertainty.

"Sometimes."

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