PERFECT PLACES

Jonathan (11)

[WARNING: This chapter depicts suicidal thoughts and describes plans to attempt suicide. Please only read if you feel comfortable]

I know what I'm doing today. I have a goal and it's a pretty simple one.

My goal isn't to go find someone on my floor to start talking to. My goal isn't to go find Jess and tell her that I will always love her and that I hope to find her again when I get better soon. My goal isn't to call that therapy number back and set up an appointment. My goal isn't to call one of the campus help hotlines and start spewing out my problems on the line. My goal isn't to write here all day about my feelings. My goal isn't to try to write an amazing section of my book and revise it and get it perfect so that it's ready to be published.

My goal is to write a letter.

I've been really depressed for a few weeks in a row now. I haven't had dreams about the future or theories about society or feelings about wanting to suspend myself above everyone and be original and pure. I haven't formulated ideas about how to create my own bubble above everyone else and I haven't walked outside to appreciate nature and feel something real.

I haven't been outside of my residence in seventeen days. It's been really hard to go down the hall ever since that group of people saw me stumbling around drunk the day that I was going to go out to the clubs. I now refuse to go to the washroom if there is any indication that I might see someone in the hallways, or in the bathroom. I now only go to the washroom three times each day. Once early in the morning, before anyone is awake (5:30 AM). Once in the middle of the day when most people are in class (2:00 PM). And once at night (12:00 AM), which is when I'm most likely to see other people so sometimes I have just skipped this entirely and forced myself to wait until the morning.

I have been drinking only a small amount of water at a time so that I don't have to pee really badly throughout the day. I no longer chug a glass of cold water when I wake up. Of course I don't actually stay up for the day after waking up at 5:30 AM to go down the hall, because I usually end up falling asleep around 3:00 AM and so really I only permanently get up before I have to pee for a second time at 2:00 PM. And this schedule is particularly stressful because I now have to set two sets of two alarms each night: two for 5:25 AM and 5:30 AM and two for 1:55 PM and 2:00 PM. So this checking process has gotten much longer and because I really don't feel well late at night when I'm setting them it probably takes me thirty to forty minutes to get through the alarms.

When I do end up quickly walking down the hall at one of these three times of day, I have very specific steps that I have to go through each time. Just as I check my alarms intensely every night and just as I check the burners on the stove and just as I used to check Jess's texts every minute, I now check my path down the hall to the bathroom.

The first thing I do is crack open my door. I very slowly turn the knob all the way to the right, making sure that it doesn't make any noise, then I slowly release the tension on the knob from my hand so that it goes back to its resting position. Once the door is cracked open and my hand has quietly released from the door knob, I use one finger and slowly open the door about two inches. This is just large enough of an opening that I can place the side of my face against the wall nearest to the opening and I can peek out and see if Miranda, the person across the hall from me, has their door open or closed. If her door is open then the entire process stops because she is very likely to see me leave my room and so I have to wait exactly fifteen minutes to try over the process again from the beginning. I set a timer on my phone for fifteen minutes to make sure that exactly that much time has passed before I try again. If her door is not open then I have to act quickly to try to get through the other parts of the process as quickly as possible and not have to restart. The next step in the process is to casually open my door (unless someone did suddenly come around the corner and see me, I had to act normal) and stand in my doorway, ready at any moment to start walking normally if someone sees me, and listen to see if I can hear any talking or footsteps on the entire floor. If I think I even remotely hear something then I have to restart the entire process from the beginning again. I have to close my door and wait exactly fifteen minutes before my hand touches the doorknob again. If instead I'm almost certain that I don't hear anything at all, then I need exactly thirty seconds of silence to be sure of myself. I use my phone stopwatch to time exactly thirty seconds and I listen for silence. Again, if I hear anything at all then the whole process must restart: I have to open the door and go back inside and try again. If instead I absolutely don't hear anything for thirty seconds, then I know this is my best chance and there is no time to waste. My heart starts pounding but I quickly take two steps out of the door and turn around and lock the door. This is because I am terrified that someone will come into my room when I am in the washroom and snoop around in my stuff and maybe steal something or likely just be disgusted by how messy the room is. As always, I turn the knob all the way to the left and all the way to the right and push hard on the door. Once I am confident I have locked the door, I turn and walk VERY quickly down the hall. I try to walk down the two hallways to the bathroom in under twenty-five seconds, if possible. I have timed this speed walking twelve times and my average speed to get to the washroom door is twenty-two seconds. Once I am at the washroom door, I am terrified that someone is about to turn the corner and come down the hallway and see me. I am even more terrified that there might be someone in the washroom who will see me come in and then I will have to act casually. I will have to be in the same room as them for way too long and it will be one of the most stressful things I have ever had to go through. Or if they are in the shower or in one of the stalls then I will not be able to calm myself down enough to go to the urinal and I definitely won't be calm enough to use one of the stalls beside them. So if there is someone else in the washroom and they don't notice me I simply walk VERY fast back to my room and wait fifteen more minutes to try again. So it's more important that no one is in the washroom than it is that no one is in the hallway. To check if anyone is in the washroom I stand outside of the door for about five seconds and listen for any chatter. Then I will open the door casually and go in and just pray that no one is inside who I couldn't hear from outside the door. Once I'm in the washroom I have to leave as quickly as possible. If someone were to enter the washroom while I was at the urinal, then it would be stressful but I would be able to quickly wash my hands and leave. If someone were to enter the washroom while I was in a stall, then I would probably freak out. I would probably try to leave as quickly as possible because there is no way that I could finish in the stall with someone else in the stall right next to me. If they went into one of the stalls I would just leave right away, as quickly as I could.