Breathe

storyteller.

November 23.

It had been one year.

One year since Nick and George left the house for meetings, only to return to Clay's broken body in the bathtub.

One year since Clay sat in that bathtub, holding a knife to his wrists, praying for the end to take him away.

It had been one year since Clay didn't remember.

He hadn't wanted to remember.

And now he did.

It was a sleeting Saturday morning. Clay sat at the front window, clutching a mug of coffee to his chest as he watched the ice pour from the sky. His breath condensated on the window in front of him. He stared, feeling the weight of this anniversary sink into his bones and belonging. 

He should be dead.

But he wasn't.

Remember when you tried to kill yourself ?

He did. He remembered it like it was yesterday.

In all honesty, Clay didn't remember very much. He remembered the physical motion of it, the act of placing the pills in his mouth and the downward tugging as the knife dragged through his skin. He remembered waking up in the hospital and seeing George's tear-stained face and Nick's messy hair. But he didn't remember the ache or the sting that came with waking up and seeing his friends in agony. He didn't remember the empty pit in his stomach that he felt right as he slipped into unconsciousness. He didn't remember the guilt and the shame that came with walking upstairs to the psych ward on November 30. 

He did remember the physical motion of it. He remembered every tiny detail that laced the scars on his wrists. He just couldn't remember the way it felt.

Quite honestly, it was probably better that way.

Sighing, Clay arched his back in a futile attempt to stretch. He was leaning against the wall facing the window, his knees brought up to his chest and his mug of coffee balancing on them. He let the steam and the warmth from the drink float up to his face where it lingered in condensation and memory.

When his attempt to stretch didn't work, he set his coffee on the ground and stood up, letting the blood flow back into his feet and relaxing as feeling slowly came back into them. He grabbed his coffee and headed back into the kitchen. Neither of his friends were up yet, as it was only 6 in the morning. Clay couldn't sleep. He had tossed and turned all night before he finally gave up trying around 4. Now he was awake, with the looming anniversary of his attempt.

If he thought about it, Clay could kind of see his attempted suicide as another chance at life, but that wasn't the way he viewed it. In Clay's perspective, his attempted suicide was, for lack of better words, a lapse in judgement. He couldn't see clearly enough to realize that there was more than one way out of his situation. He couldn't look past the fog in his mind to realize that suicide kills more people than one. So yeah, maybe he was "gifted" another chance, but the reality of it was that Clay had never lost his chance in the first place. 

He was still working on it. 

In terms of his YouTube career, he really had no way of saving it. Clay didn't upload another video until September, and though the video got millions and millions of views, he had lost too many subscribers over his break to justify the success of his video. He had been in other videos, such as ones on George's or Nick's channels, but he never streamed, and he never uploaded. He had only tapered down to 9 million subscribers, but that was still a 1.5 million subscriber loss. It was not that bad, all things considered, but to Clay, it was demotivating.