The delicate pattering of the rain on my bedside window stirred me from my troubled slumber. A lingering feeling of anxiety integrated itself with the bitter air of my bedroom. The familiar sensation of comfort and relief that accompanied my mother’s announcement of Friday happened to be no longer there. An emptiness had taken place in my life and made it difficult to display or perceive any other emotion besides depression and distress. The once cheerful, bubbly brunette girl with the sparkling blue-gray eyes had been replaced with an angry, depressed being, shrieking and craving to be put out of her seemingly infinite misery. I was exhausted, but not the type of exhausted that a quick nap could fix. I was completely drained--mentally and emotionally.

“Come on, sweetie,” my mom asserted from the hallway. As she opened the door to my bedroom, the chemical-laced aroma of her hairspray and perfume burst into my room, reviving my senses. “You’re going to school today.”

I don’t want to.

I had already missed three days of school that week. A few days earlier, there had been a falling-out with my dad which had completely bruised and crushed my will to continue on. It wasn’t the usual argument between a father and a daughter, but rather an argument that would have dire consequences. Today’s the day.

I withdrew myself from the warmth of my soft, white fleece blanket and tensed as my bare feet joined with the cold, hard wooden floor of my bedroom that the knitted cardinal rug failed to cover. After eventually compelling myself to stand, I teetered out of my room and croaked to my mother that I was going downstairs to use the restroom since she was currently occupying the main bathroom. However, deep down, I knew that I wasn’t going to the bathroom to use it. On my way through the kitchen, I paused by the cutlery drawer and snagged a heavy, serrated steak knife. I figured that the jagged edge would cause more damage. As my shaking fingers enclosed around the handle, a massive curtain of anxiety effectively covered me. My heart hammered in my chest, and my ears pulsated from the severity of it. The quivering of my hands only evolved into something stronger--something that threatened to shake the knife from my hand and strike the floor.

A voice embedded itself into my conscious: Keep the door open. Just in case you don’t go through with it. I allowed the door to remain open as I relaxed on the white lid of the toilet. The cold plastic of the oval lid soon warmed under the distress-fueled warmth of my thighs. I peered at the coffee-colored corner cabinet that we kept in the downstairs bathroom because there was no room for it amongst the other furniture. In the blackness of the bathroom with the peculiarly soothing air engulfing my entire existence, I allowed my breathing to gradually slow and waited for the moment when my heart would cease its hurried rhythm and return to normal.
Do it. Do it now. The chilling jagged blade of the knife ripped my skin and allowed the warm crimson blood to stream from the wound. A single crystal tear broke from my eye, and I soon arrived at the realization that death wasn’t what I desired. I just wanted the pain to go away. I wanted to feel something other than despair and grief. Escaping upstairs to my mother, I stumbled into her comforting arms in a weeping mess. My heart grew heavy with a mixture of guilt and grief, overwhelming me after I came to the conclusion of how much pain and suffering I would have put my mother through had I gone through with my initial plan.

“I’m sorry,” I wept into her chest. “I’m so sorry.” No matter how many times I echoed the words, I had the impression that not even an infinite, perpetual sequence of apologies could help to disentangle my mother from the ropes of anguish and misery that I had so selfishly tied around her.

She murmured no words of warmth or relaxation to me as she scrutinized my wound with her enervated mocha-painted eyes, and after an excruciating, unbearable moment of silence, I blindly adhered to my mother’s decree of changing my attire as she would be transporting me to the emergency room of our local hospital.

Later that night, after I had been transferred to a psychiatric ward in the closest neighboring metropolitan area, I relaxed onto the immaculate, unblemished sheets of the hospital bed and absentmindedly gazed up at the customarily white ceiling that had been stained cerulean by the glistening moonlight that illuminated the bleak hospital room.

My exasperated gaze migrated to the generous glass window with an expanse dappled with numerous raindrops all fluctuating in size. The delicate pattering of the rain against my bedside window relayed me back to that morning. It seemed like an eternity away.

As I descended into the first gratifying slumber that I had experienced in days, a single crystal tear escaped from my eye and plummeted to the sheets below.