We Shall Heal

Monday July 25th.

Dear Zoe,

There's a march prepared in your honor and the honor of every other teenager like you who committed suicide next week. I'll be discharged tomorrow so I'll participate I promise. But I'm so excited to actually do something and be a part of something again. It's been so long. I've been thinking about visiting your grave but I don't have the money so I've been thinking about getting a job. What do you think? A little saving and maybe by Christmas I'll have enough for bus fare. And I'll finally see you.

I'm at the hospital again. How jolly! This time I didn't attempt suicide. I'm down with pneumonia. I visited my dad's grave a couple weeks ago for the first time since he was buried. And it was raining it was pretty stupid of me to be there in the rain for hours, but I didn't care. I was happy and at peace. I was with my dad. I'm doing good Zoe, you'd be so proud of me now. I'm eating a little bit more, though I hate it. I'm getting better because you wanted me to. Your the reason I'm still alive and breathing and trying. You saved a life Zoe. You saved mine. I read your goodbye letter frequently and I smile at myself when I remember your brilliant smile. They used a picture of you pre-anorexia with your amazing smile in the obituary. I cut it up and pasted it in my journal. Just at the center. Like my heart.

My new roommate is a ray of sunshine or better yet a cloud of suffocating depression. He's so grumpy and pessimistic. I miss your wit and awful puns. He's called Ibrahim. He's cute but he never smiles which kinda makes me angry. He says no one cares about us. You. Me. Him. We are all disposable. Maybe it's true. But if we don't matter to everyone else, shouldn't we matter to ourselves? Shouldn't we be happy and prosperous just because we are different? Don't you think different is pretty? The same thing can get quite boring, different is interesting. Don't you agree?

I just found my motto. When I was talking to Ibrahim I recalled something I wrote once, 'We are above all that. We are conquerors. We are renegades.'

You and me, Zoe we are above all that.