straight

{prologue}

Dear Arlo,

When you're twenty-three years old you will be admitted into a psychiatric ward for your attempted suicide. The ward will be exactly like the movies. It will be covered from ceiling to floor in the kind of white paint that makes one part of you want to cower in fear and the other part kill someone. There will be two types of doctors--the ones with the nice outsides and horrible insides, and the ones who are genuine through and through. You won't be capable of telling the difference between the two kinds until you have been in the ward long enough to know all the doctors, but by that point you will be so scared of them all that you won't speak. You won't eat, either, and you will need an IV attached to you at night. You will stop trying to live, but the doctors won't let you die. You will hate it.

You will not tell the doctors why you attempted to kill yourself for three months, and then when you finally tell them you won't feel any better. You will be in the ward for another six months before you are "healthy" enough to leave, and by that time you will be so afraid of the outside world that you'll beg to stay. They won't let you, of course, and so you'll leave that day with tears pouring from your eyes and nothing to call your home.

You will live with your parents for eight months. Four of these months will be spent laying on a couch watching reruns of Doctor Who, a mug of salty coffee in your hand because the tears seemed to find their way to the bitterness. Your parents will watch you from the sidelines and whisper to each other about how you need to get out, how you need to see your friends, but they won't talk to you directly. You will see your friends, Arlo, but it will be two months before any of them decide to show up because life is getting in the way.

At four months in your parents' house your parents will finally decide to confront you about your problem. They will do this by giving you hot cocoa (they've always done this, haven't they Arlo?) and sitting with you on the couch. Your father will look you in the eyes and tell you that what you're doing isn't helping, and you need to go try to live. You will tell him you don't want to live, and he will cry so hard you will be able to hear the sobs years after.

You will decide he is right after three days, and you will go to a coffee shop. You will still have a thing for coffee after seven years, Arlo, and you will always have it. By this time you will be twenty-four and everyone you know will be at the peak of their life, and you will be at your downfall. You will sit in that coffee shop with the computer your parents gave you for your eighteenth birthday and scroll the Facebook page you won't have looked at for thirteen months. You will see all the people who have grown up without you (it will feel like you've been gone a lot longer than you have) and you will sob. You will sob so loudly that the barista will come to check on you and you will sob even louder when you see that she's wearing a skirt (God, Arlo, you're so fucked).

You will decide then to actually go to the meetings with your psychologist, because you've been skipping them for a long time and maybe they might just work. The first day you go she will ask you a lot of questions until you finally decide you hate her and you hate her office and you hate your life. You won't attempt to kill yourself, though, because that went horribly the first time and you will need to plan it out before you try again. You will decide that you might as well visit her until you plan it out.

She will give you an assignment to write to the younger you, the one who was happy.

She is the reason I (or you, I guess) am writing to you.

Dear Arlo, we're kind of fucked up.

*

Dedicated to Leelah Alcorn, who was a queen.