Please, Stay.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled back the lace curtains in her room. Mom's car wasn't in the drive way, dad was out on a business trip in California and wouldn't be back for another day, and my little brother was out at his Soccer game. Letting the curtain fall back into place, a shaky breath escapes my lips.

There's no easy decision. But this is the one I know I have to make.

Over the past few months, a lot of thinking has taken place. Who will miss me, how will they go on, will I be remembered? But most importantly, will I succeed? I can't pinpoint the exact place I started hating myself. Maybe it was when the other girls mocked me in gym class for my weight, or when I had to wear hand-me-downs from my older cousin in the seventh grade. And I can't remember a time when I looked in the mirror and thought 'I love myself.' But I know that at one point in the last three years, something in me broke, and I felt numb ever since.

Things hadn't gotten better with time. People lie about that bullshit, but I've kept my pain silent and to myself. Nobody likes a whiner.

I exited my room and decided that I would take a final look around the house. Our house isn't huge. A normal, three bedroom house, two bathrooms with a big back yard for Chase to run around in. My body felt numb, running my finger tips over the textured walls. It reminded me of when I was five and drew my family on the wall. Mom didn't get mad, she was an artist herself and laughed, saying that we needed hair and drew the curly mops on the red stick figures that were supposed to be us.

In the living room, we had a mantel that was covered in baby photos of me and my brother. Family pictures and Christmas cards of us in tacky sweaters. I pick up the jade colored frame, looking at us. We all look so happy, but I know that I'm the only one faking. My ugly reindeer print sweater staring back at me, and I recall that the sleeves on it weren't long enough, and I had to constantly keep tugging it down to hide the pink scars and red cuts that had made my skin their home.

I imagine what it is going to be like in future cards when I am no longer in them.

My hands shake when I set it back down.

My feet shuffled me around the house a little more. Opening Chase's bedroom, the space themed much like the abyss of space. Entering, I turned off the light and the room was set aglow by the glo-dark paint Mom had used to create the planets and stars, as well as stickers stuck above his bed and a matching bedspread (that surprisingly didn't match.)

Entering, I sat on his bed. I felt like I was violating the innocence room, that he would know I was in here before I committed my foul deed that was going to happen in the next ten minutes. It seemed like just yesterday, I was in here reading him bedtime stories and telling him there were no monsters under his bed. I was eleven and he was six. Now we're seventeen and twelve, and I learned that the monster's weren't in Chase's closet. They were at school, out of school, and worst of all, my head.

Getting back up, I left and wandered back to my room and retrieved the letter I had prepared, got a piece of tape and stuck it to the door in a envelope that read Family. Chase's Soccer game didn't get over until seven, and it was just 4:30 PM.

More than enough time.

But as I mechanically walked back to my room to do what I planned, the bare tips of my fingers brushed against the frame that connected the kitchen to the hallway, and I have to stop.