Boy in a Girl's Body

Chapter 20

Getting up that morning, my anger had cooled and frozen over; I felt distanced from everyone else. Apathetic is the best way to describe my mood, I don’t bother to shower, I just throw on my binder, a shirt, hoodie and jeans and stomp out to the kitchen and sip coffee as I stare out the window. If anyone speaks to me, I can’t hear it, Ashley stares at me the entire time I drive her to school.

Moving my lips my face to show emotion was more than I could handle, just thinking of it made me tired. The idea of facing school, Wendy, and all the other shit made me even more exhausted, so, after dropping Ashley off at school, I turned around and drove straight back home. My timing was perfect, and I was able to get back home right after both of my parents had left for work for the day. They’d never know I played hookie, besides; they had more important things to worry about than my attendance. Ashley was slowly deviating back to her normal, trampy dress and Mom was having a hell of a time getting her into something decent before school.

With my mother busy trying to keep her daughter from leaving the house looking like a tweeny hooker and my father lost inside his newspaper, no one but Ashley noticed my funk. Ashley, bless her heart, was too self-involved to really press the issue beyond starring and I was free to wallow in my depression for the morning.

After letting myself back into the house, and locking up after myself, I did nothing dramatic that day I skipped school, I didn’t do anything even interesting, all I did was go back to bed and lay there. I laid there under my blankets and closed my eyes.

I closed my eyes tightly, and thought to myself, Your breathing is slowing down, you need less air, less air, you are dead. You are dead, you do not need to breathe. The dead do not need to breathe. Your heart is slowing down, slower, slower, slower. Now it’s stopped beating, and you are free.

I swear, for a moment I think my heart did stop, if only the mind were so powerful as to stop the heart out or peer whim. I, however am not that lucky.

My heart, despite it’s damaged and apathetic state, continued to trudge onward, supplying blood to my unwilling organs and tissue. Frustrating thing, the human body, despite the fact that we do not want to keep living, our bodies always find reasons, survival instinct. That’s all it is.

The animal in us refuses to die, and no matter how much we may be suffering, nothing is so unbearable. It’s scary to think about how far a person has to be pushed to want to take their own lives, never mind actually go through with it.

And, honestly, up until this day, I had never given suicide much thought. But right now, in this moment of false death, suicide seems like the perfect escape.

But I’m far too stubborn to stop fighting, normally that’s a good thing, but today, I hate it.