Sophie.

“The asshole is stalling out sending the alimony checks, can you believe that shit?”

“Sounds ridiculous.”

“I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do, I'm going to be late for rent again.”

“...you could get a job.” There was awkward silence between Sophie and her friend.

“I might have to, but raising this child is hard.” It wasn't. Sophie did not raise her child so there was nothing hard about it. It was also more poignant that Sophie's friend had five and still worked.

“...I guess.” her friend said over the phone.

“That fucking asshole is just making my life harder because he can.” she took a drink out of a can Keystone sitting on the kitchen table, one of several dozen. From today. “He's not content being out of my life yet so he still wants to ruin it for me and the kid.”

“Well you knew he was an asshole for years, we all did.”

“Just a violent son-of-a-bitch never content with anything in his life.” Sophie wasn't wrong. Her ex-husband was a violent son of a bitch who was never content with his life. She just omitted the fact that several of the violent confrontations between her and her ex-husband were often instigated or started by her.

Like when one night while drinking she was watching 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' and her child watched her awkwardly stumble up and into the kitchen, grabbed a wooden spoon and went into the bedroom to beat the hell out of her ex-husband in his sleep. She could not remember why she was upset at him, but the devil avoided the details and she was running on feelings and liquor and she was certain that she must've been brooding on the couch and upset at him for a pretty good reason. And that was a common thread in most of the confrontations with her emotionally demeaning husband who rightfully observed she was a loser despite very much being a loser himself. They were both loser parents who sought to blame each other for their own shortcomings which led to them in fact aggravating each other's shortcomings further. Nobody else existed in the world except each other to pin all the evils and hate in the world on. Except her child. The child sort of existed probably. The child was at least useful for leverage against the opposing parent. The likelihood of them growing up to be a loser just like Sophie and her ex-husband was high, because that's what institutionalized poverty and an abusive household did to a child. The odds of getting out and making something of one's self was low, because even if given the opportunity to get out, their upbringing would not give them the ability to recognize it and their upbringing would not grace them with the work ethic and tenacity to work through it. The child was to be embittered by the world at this point, and lapse back to the present and a slew of batterings later, Sophie was at home drunk at 11am, wondering where it all went wrong.

“I just don't know where it all went wrong.” she said on the phone. Sophie did but was in denial. Her pride and inability to blame herself for anything gave her a myopic view on her circumstances. Her ex-husband was clearly to blame for her lack of money, not her inability to hold down a job. Her and her child going hungry was because of the lack of money, not her unwillingness to leave the house and go shopping unless it was to the liquor store down the street for more cheap beer. The animosity between her and her child was because her ex-husband was clearly manipulating them against her, not because of the horrible circumstances her child was put into watching their mother become increasingly more apathetic and self-destructive. Sophie was not the ideal role model for her child and she was certainly not a good mother, but she convinced herself that everything she pretended she was doing was for her child probably sort of.

“I have to go to work, so I'll talk to you later, Sophie.” her friend said.

“Okay.” And with that, Sophie hung up. She slowly slouched into her chair at the kitchen table, consciousness coming and going as it pleased. She didn't know whether or not she wanted it to stay, so she drank more to find out. Her grip was surprisingly steady, as it needed to be because there were so many cans on the table that knocking one over would lead to them spilling onto the floor again. Of course it didn't matter if they were on the floor anyway, unless there was still beer in any of them that she hadn't finished yet.

She had hoped that drinking her problems away would work. It didn't. She had also hoped that lying and manipulating the situation around her and skewing the information she relayed to her family would make her problems go away. It also didn't. Sophie wanted to leave all her problems behind or drive them off, but problems were frequently as stubborn as the people they followed, and Sophie was stubborn. She was stubborn enough not to die despite ingesting enough cheap alcohol day in and day out that it would have a man twice her size setting the air ablaze if he tried to light a cigarette. Her alcoholism could not kill her, she was driven by a sobering hatred and an unyielding liver that she was more abusive to than her child.

It was a lot of hatred too. It was more intoxicating than the alcohol, and arguably was doing a better job of killing her than the alcohol as well. At this point in the divorce she seldom knew love or how it looked anymore, the hate drowned it. Hate was all she needed to drive her will to live. She was malnourished and frail, and yet the hate kept her alive and gave her strength. She had the strength to throw a potted plant across the room as if it was made of foam and almost beaned her child with it for asking why she didn't make dinner again. She hated her ex-husband for doing all of this to her. She hated being poor again after maxing out her ex-husband's credit cards. She hated whenever the child came home and couldn't look at her before quickly rushing upstairs out of shame. She hated waking up to an empty bed every afternoon despite having an asshole of an ex-husband, because being dependent on an asshole was the only way she knew how to live her life. But most importantly of all, she hated herself. She pretended she didn't, but she hated herself more than anything else. She hated herself because beyond the impenetrable wall of pride, the elaborate facade she's constructed for herself in front of her friends and family that were manipulated into knowing nothing was her fault, she knew everything was all her fault. But she still lied and manipulated people anyway because she had an idiot's pride. And it took all her concentration to keep her horrible self-esteem about being a loser in check by repressing and denying any fault she committed. It was a lot of energy, but hate gives a lot back. Everything she saw in her apartment reminded her of her ex-husband, which would make sense considering he bought mostly everything in it. The futon in the living room reminded her of whenever she kicked him out of the bedroom and he had to wake up at 12:30 in the morning to leave for work at 3am six days a week and hated him for always being tired. The table she was drinking at reminded her of all the times she didn't cook dinner and hated him for chewing her out for being so fucking lazy that she couldn't even do something as simple as preparing a meal for several hours for four very picky eaters. The lights that were on in the kitchen reminded her of the electricity bill he was still paying and she hated him for it because he knew as well as she did that she wasn't reliable enough to pay for it herself, and she wore sunglasses indoors in the afternoon out of spite but also to have something to hide herself behind. And even her child reminded her of her ex-husband as the lynchpin, the only reason she stayed married to the angry son-of-a-bitch. And occasionally she hated the child for what she felt was forced to endure.

Sophie's hateful reverie must've lasted hours before it ended when the garage door started opening. She hated that too because it was generally a sign that her ex-husband was home and ready to start a fight and it put her on edge, but she knew at this point that after she snapped back to reality several hours later, all these signs of hate in the real world more or less meant ultimately nothing but the weight she tied to them. The child came in through the door from the garage. They must've gotten off school. Remilia was behind the child pressing them into talking.

“Oh come on, Lucas. Tell me what happened. Please.” The child was ultimately unresponsive. Sophie had her sunglasses she wore indoors at 3 in the afternoon to hide behind, but she saw the child, arms bruised and face reddened. They were thin, malnourished almost as much as her.

“Tell me you're seeing this.” Remilia looked over at Sophie. She said nothing as the child avoided eye contact with both of them and stormed upstairs. “What no, don't be like this. We're worried.” Sophie said nothing and watched the child leave. The hiss of a beer can pierced the silence as she started to drink again.

“You ARE worried, right?” she asked Sophie, who continued to drink and said nothing. “You saw that child, they had the daylights beaten out of them again. Would it kill you to ask? To at least act like you're worried?” It sure felt like it would. Any expression of emotion would probably snap Sophie in half at this point. Remilia stood in the living room angled towards the stairs, but looking back at Sophie while her expression was a combination of being disheartened and frustrated.

“You can talk to everybody else but Lucas, huh? Is that because your own child knows too much already, that you can't lie your way through that conversation anymore and that they see right through that facade of being a good mom?” Sophie sighed and continued to drink. “Or is it because Lucas knows you can't be relied on for anything and won't even bother asking for help, even though that child desperately needs it? God knows you can't feed your child, let alone emotionally support them.” The alcohol was going dry as Remilia talked. “That child is going to be broken and it's going to be your fault from this point on. Does any of that matter to you at all?” It did, but not enough to do anything about it. “Do you really think you can keep this going? That you can wait it out and things will eventually fix themselves and go back to normal.” Sophie genuinely did. Is was an over-earnest, terrifyingly genuine belief that if she looked away long enough, everything would just sort itself out eventually. That she could get to a point where she could be happy. That despite her ex-husband being gone for good, he would come back and remain a convenient sticking point for all her problems.

“You won't ever be happy.” Remilia coldly interjected into her thoughts. “Your life may be Hell, but it's all you know. You won't do anything to try and make yourself happy because you don't know if you'll succeed. And you'd rather be miserable if it means blaming somebody else for it other than yourself.” Sophie stifled a whimper as she continued to drink. “I'm going to go talk to your child since they have nobody else. It won't work, but I'm at least gonna try.”

Sophie ran out of beer. As she attempted to sit up her knee clipped the table and the cans spilled onto the ground. She stumbled to the garage door and pulled her car keys off the key rack. When she went into the garage, she attempted to get the car key into the lock. She failed a few times before she got it in and twisted. She got into her car before realizing she forgot she left the key in the door lock, huffed and got back out of the car to retrieve it. As the automatic garage door opened, she turned on her headlights. The sun had set, it was past 7pm. She was still wearing her sunglasses. She began pulling her car out, strangely steady despite her clear intoxication. She was a better driver drunk than most people were sober. The liquor store was only three blocks away across the train tracks, but she was able to buy a 24-pack without a word and leave as quickly as she showed up. When she got home she almost slipped and fell in the kitchen. The lights were turned off when she left. She sneered and her anger surged for a bit before the apathy quelled it. She was too tired to drink at this point, it was 1am after all. She went upstairs and looked at her child's door. The light was off underneath the crack of the door and silence settled in the apartment. When she opened her door and crawled into her King-sized bed alone, it was 2am. Sophie wanted to call her friend or her mom to talk, but she figured she would do it when she woke up.

Trans in 2018.

Man it's a strange thing to try to come out as transgender in 2018 with this political climate. It's difficult articulating what kind of happens when one tries to come out of this particular closet because I think a lot of people imagine what trans people are like while never actually meeting one or being aware that they've met one in their entire lives. To a lot of people who hear about transgender people, it's just a bunch of made-up bullshit. At its worst, they think trans people are perverts and predators masquerading as the other gender to rape somebody in a bathroom, which despite a rousing marketing campaign a lot of idiot republicans decided to run with, has yet to be met with any documented case of that happening in the US, let alone 10 or however many need to occur to make an argument that otherwise doesn't actually exist. Although there are plenty of cases where trans people have been assaulted for what they are, a Republican doesn't really actually care about predatory behavior considering they voted a bloated molesting husk into office while endorsing candidates that participated in sexual abuse, the more notorious recently being Roy Moore, a child predator and religious zealot so cartoonishly evil and anti-LGBT that he's convinced that me wanting to be a woman or get fucked in the ass angered God and caused 9/11, which I'm not even paraphrasing. Which could you imagine the kind of power I'd wield if that was true? If my ass was the Death Note and dicks were writing utensils, I'd be running the ink out of every pen possible just to see if I could give God carpal tunnel. Roy Moore I'd rationalize is on a personal level one of the most vile and outright evil men voted into office if the Zodiac Killer wasn't already a senator.

The strawman/woman/trans/thing that people invented always kind of scared me because of how flippant they are in really understanding or respecting what trans people. As somebody who knows a lot of trans people, I have never met a single one that insinuated that somebody “assumed their gender”. Like y'all know no rational trans person actually says that shit, right? In fact most trans people are terrified to even speak up and ask to be referred to by proper pronouns because we're terrified of the repercussions of people getting aggravated and mocking us or treating us like shit more. Because God-forbid out of the hundreds or thousands of words people can speak over the course of a day, that they'd have to change just one or two. The notion of a militant hyperdefensive trans person using made-up genders to identify as is either deep in the bowels of Tumblr where not even other LGBT people like them, or are concoctions fabricated by merciless incels and misanthropes somewhere in /r9k/, among the same people who thought it'd be funny to call in bomb threats to Twitch streamers while talking about how entitled they are to women fucking them. Like why would you want to make jokes about a group of people that most people at best are utterly indifferent towards their struggles and at worst vehemently hate them for a plethora of arbitrary reasons? When Ricky Gervais got defensive over making jokes about trans people equating them to monkeys, he wasn't being edgy. A middle-aged entitled white man with a lot of money and an enormous influential voice heard by millions making transphobic jokes doesn't make him fringe or confrontational or edgy, it makes him our president. And boring. The tired boring that's more expected than it is surprising.

I've seen some try to compare it to coming out as gay. Coming out as gay can't be really compared outside of “HELP CONSERVATIVES ARE OPPRESSING ME”. It's not like your actual appearance changes. You can hide being gay from your family (note: you shouldn't and it sucks that you'd have to, but you can). In my family it wasn't even okay to be gay. My dad told me if I had any gay thoughts at all, the fag scarabs would come out at night while I'm in bed and start feasting on my flesh and consuming my penis to rob me of my masculinity and I'll start craving the dick of tougher men out of envy. God forbid if any thoughts of being a woman crept in, it would've meant after the fag scarabs ate my penis they'd start tunneling up into my body creating some unsanctified vagina from carved-out flesh that actually functioned as a portal to Hell so Satan could send his unholy children into the world. None of this is actually true and to clarify my dad never actually said any of this explicitly, although if I could function as a catalyst between reality and the underworld that would be metal as fuck. Instead it's just hormones run rampant and make me dissociative at random intervals and I get emotionally volatile while despising the filthpit vessel that my soul is forsaken to be entombed in, which is far less metal and just kind of fuck.

My dad would sort of pretend to be supportive and say “if people want to be gay it's none of my business” but would go into flippant denial if I even hinted that I was anything that wasn't his manly son who should be giving him grandchildren and not looking at penises. And I liked looking at penises a lot, penises are pretty fucking sweet. My dad wouldn't want to believe that I might be gay or pan or just not wanting to fuck women instead, so what hope would I have that normal people would be accepting of it if my own flesh and blood wasn't? But my dad didn't even grant me the courtesy of thinking I might have PTSD after being raped in High School, so maybe he's just a shitty person. But trans people put up with a lot of shitty people, so most people would be surprised and kind of horrified at how common my circumstances are to a lot of them.

Probably the most unsettling thing I've dealt with in all irony has been the LGBT community itself, or in many cases just the LG community with the “bt” in lower case letters, frequently and crassly lobbed off much like they'd probably think I would want to do to my penis. Regardless of how “progressive” or “pro-social justice” people frame themselves as, it's vaguely amusing that these so-called inclusive groups are still human. They'll still look for a reason to look down on people, who they view as lesser or impure. I have met gay people who feel threatened by trans people, threatened by our desire to transition muddying up what it means to be gay to them. Where if I transitioned, I would not be a trans woman, I would still be a closeted gay man in denial. Because instead of just wanting to fuck who they want, they decide to make their label the central focus of their identity, and we can't be having any of that shit. Them cis-white motherfuckers are trying their best to be understanding and progressive, we can't go changing the game on them after they finally just started getting used to dudes wanting to fuck dudes being gay. If we start talking about pansexuals or asexuals or transgender people, they'll get in a huff and need to lie down before we get a chance to tell them that gender identity has existed as a construct to tell people what society expects of them based on the all-important factor of what's between their legs and hanging off their chests. And I haven't even talked about TERFs yet either.

TERFs are a strange bunch, who are typically withering relics of 70s militant feminism that are the same aging white moms who also probably think women of color have it easier than them because they can play the race card. While varying in age, the older, more unyielding and decrepit feminists generally are the ones to carry the bigotted flag, which I find ironic because they say I can't be a woman because I can't bear children, which my response is generally “give it a decade and I guess you'll stop being one too when menopause hits.” You would think a lot of feminists would be inclusive as Hell when it comes to trans women considering they're people who despise toxic masculinity and society's expectations associated with gender, two things that have just really fucked up that whole “feminism” thing that's been going on for about... ever.

Toxic masculinity is a poison, and just because it doesn't affect me in the same way it affects a woman doesn't mean it doesn't affect me at all. Just because I was born a man doesn't mean people get to handwave whatever problems I had with that good ol' chestnut “Well it could've been worse! At least I had male privilege!” Which is bollocks because I didn't want male privilege. I just wanted to be myself, I just wanted to feel like I could act a certain way or look a certain way that I'd be happy with without people wanting to kill me. And while saying they wanted to kill me is an over-exaggeration, let's talk about what being a man has done for me. I've never been bulky, I've always been skinny and even called dainty by a few people when I was younger, and girls and women certainly let me know that. I cried a lot and wanted to talk about how I felt when people treated me like shit, something I apparently could not do because I'm expected to save face AND MAN UP. For being quiet and delicate and timid but a boy I was bullied growing up to the point that I did not want to be alive anymore, and have attempted to not be alive on a handful of occasions, which much like everything else in life I've failed at doing. Just simple things like liking pinks or wanting to write romances or baking got me branded a faggot in High School. Being judicious and non-aggressive got me branded effeminate. My dad flying into denial every time I bring up the possibility of being gay despite him never seeing me date or talk about women in his presence would make me question how open I was allowed to be about what I really wanted to be in face of a bunch of stupid expectations a dick's placed on me.

I feel like it's a trend when people talk about what it takes to be a real man or a real woman it's generally the really shitty, terrible things about being those genders. Who the fuck would want to be a real man, where you're expected to be some cold unfeeling sociopath who shouldn't show weakness or emotional vulnerability and women are seen as objectives or people who need to be taken care of because you don't respect them enough to be equals or self-sufficient? Why would I want to be a real woman, where I'm just expected to have to deal with being objectified and disadvantaged in society my entire life, and having a bleeding hole that tries to kill me every month while worrying about an 18-year long mistake ruining my life? On a physical or societal level of expectations, if I don't experience these things why does it make me less of a man or woman? Why are these arbitrary barriers of entry I have to go through to define my identity? “You must be this oppressed/fucked by society to join.” Like fuck y'all, I'll take installing a pussy that comes without the menstrual cramps and capabilities to birth a child, it sounds buying a brand new computer without all the garbage firmware and junk installed that nobody likes or wants.

Talking to a lot of folks about transgender people has left me equal parts amused, scared, and baffled. As if they haven't been talking to one the whole time and they think they can get away with some of the naive or ignorant shit they say. It's like them assuming you aren't gay and after looking around to make sure all the SJWs are gone decide to go into a tangent saying “MAN SO HOW ABOUT THOSE FAGS AND MARRIAGE, AM I RIGHT?” I just... find it strange that so many have opinions about people whose lives do not affect you in the slightest, or at best mildly inconvenience you because courtesy is hard. Because you see me and go “Fuck, that person has enormous man-hands. Are they one of them trannies? I can't say 'tranny' anymore, shit. Fuck I gotta call that dude a she? A they? An it? FUCK, WHY ARE WORDS SO HAAAAAAAAAAARD?” And after nearly having a stroke attempting to unlearn your entire vernacular, you express begrudging acceptance of this weird amalgamation of shapes that doesn't fall under the easy readability of human gender you've been accustomed to your entire life and settle on accidentally misgendering them and then in an incredibly sarcastic and passive-aggressive tone say “Oh I'm sorry, I meant she,” which is like rolling your eyes at a trans person in audible form, like you had to imagine them saying “EXCUSE ME, DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER?” to feel slightly validated in your tone.

What I'm saying is, these observations coming out of the closet as some weird non-binary genderfuck is the most I'm willing to make a fuss about this. I don't actually vent this to normal or cis people in person. All this grandstanding has to be done in the privacy of online or people I could very easily cut out of my life because stakes are lower here. I can't be bothered in person. I—much like a lot of trans people—don't have that fight left in me. I don't want to deal with the repercussions of standing up for myself and I shouldn't be expected to when people could just not really be assholes about it. We live in a society where we still jump or even outright kill people for what they are, I can't risk that shit when I see the blood on the walls. I'm too tired of passive-aggressive surrender passed off as tolerance and acceptance, because we all know the moment it feels like we're encroaching on you to accommodate us so your behavior doesn't make us feel like garbage, y'all ain't having any of that shit. Unless you're getting paid to, because in most cases you sure as Hell aren't going to use words like 'faggot' around your boss.

I'd want nothing more than to be normal than to be a victim, I didn't want any of this garbage that comes with having an identity crisis about what I am. People who refuse to understand and choose to perceive trans people having victim complexes either never had a hard day in their entire life, or think that since they “got theirs” and overcame something that they're entitled to be an apathetic sociopath. Which you'd think that living a shitty life would develop empathy for struggling with finding one's self in the world, but I don't know. I'm a raving concoction of unstable hormones trapped in a sack of meat I don't like, what do I know about being mentally stable?

And the day goes on.

The living room was cluttered with boxes from storage, none of which have found their homes sorted throughout the house. It was also cluttered with boxes from the house, none of which have found their new homes to the Good Will. Most of the window was blocked out by the open cabinet and the shades were closed, a few traces of light coming through and casting an orange haze over the couch. The author sat in the only empty spot available on the couch, the rest of it covered by unfolded laundry. The brandy had run dry and sobriety was setting back in as sunlight began to crawl its way out. The last week had not happened. He remembered none of it, he had spent his time off work visiting the years before and getting lost. He had just woken up and walked into the living room to take in the emptiness. He never opened direct deposit at his work because he knew that he'd never have reason nor motivation to leave his house less than he already did, and today was the day he got paid. After five days off work his skin was rough, slicked in oil that occasionally irritated his eyes. His hair clung to itself. He didn't smell terrible given the circumstances, but mostly because he's been dehydrated enough that he couldn't sweat. When he walked into the bathroom, he weighed himself. He dropped 12 pounds since he weighed himself last week. He turned on the shower and turned it up to a boiling purge and sat down in the tub for several minutes.

He probably should've taken his clothes off first.

His body began to regenerate. His hair dried out and frayed, his skin softened while the redness left, at least on his face. His body was covered in all manner of bumps and ingrown hairs and random bleeding holes from degradation, but clothes hid that at least. His toothbrush was stiff and rigid from disuse, and when he put toothpaste on it and put it into his mouth, an intense burning occurred. Every brush sent tremors through his teeth, upset his gums. He was spitting up more blood than foam as he brushed, his gums bright, angry and irritated. As he reassembled himself, he had a few clean articles of clothing left, made easier by wearing the same clothes for several days so he didn't have to do laundry frequently. He breathed in, and then out as he made his way to the door. He begrudgingly re-entered the world of the living as he stepped outside his apartment, vaguely presentable and letting nobody in to see what happened as he was in there. His isolated headphones hid himself from any social interaction while he was out, giving him an accessible exit from talking to anybody. He walked past vaguely familiar faces he couldn't bother to remember or speak to, and made his way to the office at his work, for a brief moment removing himself from his bubble in public.

“Hi.” the author said.
“Hello, Lucas.” his manager said. “How are you doing?”

“Yes.” His obtuse response was seen as playful. He just didn't want to talk. He grabbed his check and then excused himself.

“See you next week.” his manager said.

“Alright.” he responded. Every time he said that he didn't know if he was lying or not. He usually wasn't. There were days where he wish he was. He did his best to make it back home quickly, as nothing made him feel nearly as alone as being out in public. The dark was unrelenting and began to close in again. The time absent from work didn't feel long enough to fight it off; it never usually did. When he returned back home, the world came to a standstill again. Time was still lodged in an earlier day when he entered. He navigated through the empty living room filled with garbage back into his room and the stillness began to deafen him again. He was stuck in the awkward limbo of being hungry but too weak to make food, so he crawled into bed. He didn't know what time it was but the sun was still up. The dark began to settle in and the only thing that was going to wake him up was work. Work was good because he could leave the apartment and time moved outside it, and nothing in the apartment mattered to anybody else but him. So he decided to forget the weekend, too.

Interference.

It's really hard to write anything right now without it coming across as a suicide note. Suicide is a running theme in my life, even if I have no intentions of actually doing it. It's not a feeling of wanting to die, it's a feeling of not wanting to live. Let's casually mention on an internet blog that when I'm downtown, it's near the river. It's a bustling little area of town and there's enough restaurants that the air is delicious to breathe in there. It's a good place to sit on the bridge over the river, contemplating to jump and end my life. I decided against it because the fall probably wouldn't kill me or even knock me unconscious, and at most would seriously injure me internally and then I would probably drown while in disorientating pain. At its worst I considered using my knife to dig the femoral artery out of my leg, but that sounded painful too. I have violent imagery of ending my life semi-frequently when I'm like this, and there's always phantom pain or wincing and grasping areas of perceived harm that dissuade me from considering it. A true sign of a hopeless coward is that they don't want to kill themselves if it's unpleasant or requires effort.

There have been many near-attempts at suicide in my life, but the only time tried to commit it, it was an attempt to overdose on vicodin and alcohol after I turned 16. My family got divorced and my mother was a psychotic alcoholic who blasted music all night and didn't do anything except desert us for the weekend and have random emotional outbursts that kept me in fear constantly, especially if the boogeyman of my father considered breaking back into the house to kidnap us again. My brother had to work 50 hours a week biking several miles to work early in the morning, we had to walk several blocks with our arms tethered with grocery bags from the supermarket, and yet were always hungry. My girlfriend and one of my few friends at the time grew increasingly distrustful of me because I didn't want to tell her that I got held down and teased by two girls while the third raped me behind a classroom. She grew more annoyed when I started talking to another girl after school who I felt more comfortable confiding in at the time because her personality was a bit more amicable and earnest and didn't judge me for looking like a goblin with face-deforming acne, much unlike virtually everybody else did at the time. Where touching my face firmly at a wrong angle would have blood and puss dripping down it at any given moment.

I was so lost in my own thoughts that the only friend I was confiding in with my problems committed suicide with me noticing a week later, and then my girlfriend got upset at me because she found out I was talking to said person instead of her, unaware of the fact that she took her own life. I snapped and got upset. She told me I was selfish and never asked her about her problems that often. I told her she did the same and that I desperately just wanted somebody to confide in and that she either needs to be that person or that we can't continue on like this. She couldn't because her own life was garbage, so I walked her to her house and we both said “see you tomorrow” and then nothing happened. I was failing out of school, people either bullied me and hated or me or wasn't even aware that I existed and needed help. Everybody important to me was too busy to care, too strained to help, or they were gone entirely. I was 95 pounds at 5'8” and was lucky to eat twice a day. A few days after mostly everyone forgot my birthday and my relationship ended, I tried to commit suicide by shoving handfuls of vicodin into my mouth like I was eating chalk and washed it down with cans of warm beer my mother left out. I threw it up a few minutes later after getting it down, and lied on the bathroom floor shivering for a few hours. When I got up, I was entirely numb, and most of those things that happened were shoved somewhere because I couldn't bear to confront it or acknowledge that it existed for most of the rest of my life.

Some of the only ways to motivate myself to stay alive nowadays aren't particularly positive emotions. One is hatred. I had a conversation with Mono the other day and she bluntly told me “You know the only reason you're still alive is because you hate your father so much.” And for a long time I've done my best to repress or convert the hatred and bitterness I've held onto my entire life. Anger is an ugly personality trait. It disgusts me. It makes me afraid to be around people. My father has never not been angry or bitter, and how he reflected this on his children has made me more and more resentful as time went on. I went from understanding my father's frustration with his life and inability to help things, to resenting him for it. It's like I'm going backwards for what's healthy personal growth. I have never been able to voice my own frustrations and self-loathing inadequacies in my personal life, now I feel that anger and toxicity has sunken in, corrupted the foundation. While I've been frustrated with my own weak piece-of-shit self, I was greatly frustrated with how people have always overlooked it, or how I had to put on a strong face and pretend that things were okay. I became angry at the fact that I couldn't help myself, that I was even denied the privilege to ask for it. That my father's boorish and frightening personality made him incapable of understanding the problems he was creating or made him unable to fix them, which led to his frustration bleeding out onto his children.

He has made me feel inadequate, like I never was trying hard enough even though I tried so much it hurt sometimes. He made me feel weak because I couldn't manage my mental and emotional problems like a healthy individual who goes through abusive relationships, drives away his children, and is thoroughly unsatisfied with his life. He has called me a loser who should kill himself on more than one occasion, usually provoked by something as utterly trivial as not mowing the lawn. I won't forget it either. Because in my fucked-up headcanon I win either way. I want to live to prove him wrong and I can live to see him die, or I can kill myself with a part of me knowing that I'll ruin the twilight years of his life. And that is a capacity for spite and hatred that he has instilled in me. That's what I won't forgive him for. A lot of things in my life are my own fault, but the anger is a product of what he's done. He turned a happy child who wanted to try his hardest to please people he cares about into somebody who's willing to commit suicide just to spite him. And it scares me that I have the capacity to hate somebody that much.

There was something else I was living for, and I don't even know why. It's water under the bridge now though. I think one of the things I'm never allowed in life is closure, especially on my failed relationships with people. It blows up and they leave, I drive them off, or they die. I will never get catharsis or closure on them. It can never be amicable, they just want to get out or they're taken from me. Everybody is gone in one way or the other eventually. Sometimes there's someone who you don't even know why you're so obsessive over wanting their empathy when it's been made abundantly clear that they either don't have it, or they're unwilling to part with it. I suppose that's a part of it, it's a one-sided friendship or unrequited love where you value somebody tremendously to the point that it hurts, but you'll never have those same feelings mutually reciprocated even though you desperately want them. Where you care about somebody even though you're fully aware that there's probably nothing on the other side for you.

Maybe there is. Maybe they're just as fucked-up and scared and cautious as you are and no amount of prying will work. Or maybe they look at me and see how severe my abandonment issues are that I need constant empathy and reassurance, and how volatile I get and how quickly to lash out I can be because my mind runs itself into the ground contemplating why they don't care about me, even though deep down I know they're probably just scared. Maybe they just leave because I guilt them and make them feel like shit constantly and they start thinking that they're the problem and they're not good enough to help me, even though I just want something as simple as hearing them say that they care. Maybe they just don't have the time or energy for all of it and they have to take care of themselves. I can't begrudge them for it because I understand it, but it's still allowed to hurt like Hell. Or maybe it's just observers guilt rather than actual personal concern. Maybe they don't actually care because all they've wanted was a superficial relationship and they've been looking for a way out, and they always thought I was some psychotic fucking loser to begin with and they were putting up too much of front to ever tell me. Because if somebody's known me for so long without ever really acting concerned, and they're so quick to just up and get out without saying anything with all intentions of not coming back, they probably never cared to begin with. I can't say, because I won't ever know, because I can't get closure. So thoughts like this will pull my head apart until I want to kill myself because microaggressions when I'm horribly depressed will drive me there and people are aware of that so they want to get out as quickly as they can.

And it really fucking hurts. I'm allowed to be. It hurts like Hell to feel to feel this way about people you care so much about, that you've known for such a long time and were some of the only company you had during a dark period in your life. To utterly resent somebody you love and cherish and worry about as a person, whether they want to be that person to others or not. Who you once cared about so much that you'd be willing to remove that person from your life just so they wouldn't have to put up with your bullshit anymore, even if it meant being unhappy yourself. Where you harbor these feelings of anger and abandonment even though in the back of your head you can't blame at all for it. Most of my close interpersonal relationships inevitably end like this. I've driven away so many people in my life because they couldn't keep up, because I get burned out on pleading with them and begging them to stay, to constantly remind me that I'm not fucking garbage, and then I start insisting that they leave because I become convinced that I'm not worth it. I'm not good enough. I guess it becomes reverse psychology, because it would nice if they told me I was wrong and stuck around and that they aren't going to give up on me. But most of them leave. Most of them give up.

And it's not even like I know what I want anymore, either. Most of my ability to feel it has gone cold save a few delicate exceptions. An obsession over a few chosen people's empathy you'll never get makes you oblivious to others who could possibly help. There's a sense of frustration that there's something wrong with me because maybe a normal person would be more receptive, and a slight sense of anger towards others that they were too late to help. There are people who want to help but are on the opposite side of the spectrum of the people who aren't receptive enough. It's hard to appreciate the thought if they don't have the tact, they don't have the constitution or the prudence to make their effort feel like it's worth anything to you. Who are tone-deaf or too headstrong for their own good to realize that they're attempting to rationalize with irrational people, or they take drastic and blunt actions to get timid, distrustful, or easily hurt people to open up, not really aware that they might be a part of the problem. People like that remind me of my father; people with by-all-means honest intentions but are too far up themselves to notice that their obnoxious asshole personalities impede their abilities to empathize with others. Their frustration is understandable, but they should possess the awareness that they're ill-suited to help people with delicate constitutions. It's bizarre that some people I desperately crave their empathy because it means something important to me, and some people who are actually empathetic I can feel abhorred or turned off at their assertive tone-deaf attempts to connect. Beggars can still be choosers, I guess.

At this point I've felt like that the only reason I socialize is because it's expected of me. Because I have to. Because it's the right thing to do. Because they're superficial distractions from my problems. There are a minuscule amount of people who mean enough to me that I want to go out of my way to talk to. That I desire and appreciate their empathy from. Maybe they understand the significance of it, maybe they don't. Or they merely don't care. Mostly everyone else is just that; a superficial distraction. They hold little to no value to me otherwise. It's easy to drop or forget about them entirely if I don't desire using them to occupy time anymore. I wish they meant more to me than that, but I wish a lot of things meant more to me too. I've reached a point where I don't feel bad just dropping people out of my life, to sort of just stop “being around”. I think about it a lot.

My thoughts have a tendency to run themselves into the ground, overthinking situations and analyzing every personal interaction with people for every nuance, every trend, every weakness people could use to possibly hurt me or to run away and abandon me. I get lost in time obsessing over every single conversation I have with people who are important to me, in a perpetual state of anxiety when I'm depressed because all the conclusions I draw are the worst ones. I have entire strings of possible deviations in discussions I could have with people saved in doc files for conversations that I never even had a chance to have and are years old. Every conversation I have is watching a network of conversation topics blossoming in any given direction, and I'm the neurotic Batman prepared for virtually every possible outcome, except I don't have the added benefit of being rich or my parents being dead.

And when enough awful things are happening in my life at once, the entire system crashes and I can't take it slow anymore, I have to repress and outrun and forget everything. If I don't go catatonic and detach myself, it will drive me to very drastic solutions for my problems. There's so much noise occurring in my head when this happens that it's deafening. Just voices reminding me that there's nothing for me in life, that I'm alone with them for good because the real people left. Arguments with people I play out in my head that I haven't even had with them and I get upset for reasons I'm literally making up. There are sounds of nauseating, distorted guitar feedback and the nonsensical static chatter of indistinguishable voices. It's a mental tinnitus, and I can't stop it. I want it to stop, I know that some of these conversations I will never have, that I will never get closure on, but my head refuses to stop. It keeps going, it's still going. I'm still developing conversation strings for relationships with people that have long since gone cold and it's emotionally exhausting to play out every outcome possible because you start longing for the fictional happy ending that you're never going to get and hating yourself for it, or you're driving yourself to suicide over the self-inflicted malice that you believe people have for you.

I need people to disprove them. I don't care what people say anymore, I don't want them to give a shit about my feelings. You can say “I care and I'm worried” or you can say “you're fucking garbage, stop bothering me with this”, as long as they say something, anything so it can stop. The contemplating can cease, and the noise can be pacified for a brief instance. Because the longer the noise goes on, the more it starts to deafen me and have trouble hearing anybody at all through it. This is what's going to kill me. It's not a matter of “will it,”, it's a matter of “when”. That is the gamble people take making friends with those possessing mental deficiencies. It's managing a terminal illness. Every single day it's a fight to hold it off, I could commit suicide this year or when I'm 65, but it is what's going to overtake me eventually. Eventually I will stop caring about the noise and the attempts at empathy and it won't be able to be pacified anymore, and I will do anything to finally get the quiet that I desperately want.

I just want to stop thinking so much.

People.

“Hah, so that's what this is about. You want to finally die, don't you? And letting the most important people leave is going to make it easier, isn't it?”

“Everybody leaves eventually. Tired of waiting.”

“It's easy to tell yourself that when somebody important leaves.”

“...I don't blame them. It's a lot to ask of someone to help a person with mental illness. It's exhausting, it's stressful. I... just can't convince myself to tell people that I'm worth it anymore.”

“But you wish you were.”

“Yes.”

“This is very similar to the last time, huh? It's all gone to Hell, everything's getting worse, she kills herself, you get dumped. All of this happening at once was enough to make you try the first time.”

“...I'm aware.”

“I wonder what she would think of you now, doing this.”

“Stop it.”

“You couldn't even say anything before, you were just content leaving. You want to die just like her.”

“Stop talking.”

“One of your close friends is dead. You saw her depressed. You saw her attempt to open up to you. You KNEW she wanted help. But you said nothing. You didn't want to upset her. You changed the subject. You overlooked what she was saying. She committed suicide, and then what? What were you going to tell her now that she was gone? That it was because she was unapproachable? Because you didn't know what to say to her? Because it was awkward? You can tell yourself that there was nothing you could've done, because you wanted to be a coward. You fucking failed and she killed herself.”

“I said stop talking.”

“And that's the ultimatum you want people to take. Try harder, or disassociate altogether. You would rather have them leave so there's less guilt for you, so it'll sting them less when you finally work up the effort to kill yourself. Because otherwise, with how things are going, you know that they're going to end up failing, just like you did.”

“Just stop, please.”

“All that person was to you was somebody to project your own guilt and failure onto, and now that they've given up on you, it just validates what you let happen to her.”

“They didn't give up, I told them to leave. What happened to Alice wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault.”

“Why are you still fooling yourself over that? They gave up on you. Just like everybody else does and eventually will. Everybody you care about leaves because dealing with you is too stressful, and the ones who don't are taken away because they're more fucked-up than you.”

“I don't want to have this conversation anymore.”

“Let's be real here; you aren't worth it. You aren't worth the effort of putting up with. You don't offer anything good enough to be worth sticking around for.”

“Sometimes it's just... not meant to be. There doesn't have to be anything wrong with me or the other person.”

“But there's still something wrong with you, and you know it.”

“...I don't know what's going to happen now.”

“And it won't matter. If you don't kill yourself, the depression is going to erase you regardless. It's going to rob you of your passion, your interests, your sense of purpose. Your friends won't have that person around anymore even if the body is still warm. It's just going to be an empty automaton devoid of any personality or sense of self.”

“That's... probably true.”

“You can feel yourself slipping. And when you do, whether you're alive or dead, you'll still be nobody. Nothing is going to be there anymore.”

“I. I just want help.”

“Thaaaaat's not gonna happen. What, you're going to take off work to go to the hospital? You can barely make rent. You won't be able to after spending time there, and you don't have health insurance either. When you come out, nothing will change except a cloud of debt hanging over your head and missed hours to make up time.”

“...I know.”

“And the longer this goes on, the more you become crippled by anxiety. It's not like you can stay out in public and work anything longer than 20 hours a week, let alone with people. Eventually you'll be working less and making less while it tears you apart inside even more.”

“I know.”

“And even if all those are taken care of, what's going to happen next? You can't afford to go back to school either. You can't advance your life while this owns you. Any appreciable skills you once possessed have atrophied. There's nothing you can do to improve things if this starts getting fixed regardless.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“That's why you're so attached to people. Because at least they're free. But you can't even feel validated by them anymore. Their empathy doesn't do a thing for you. There was the one, but that's dead and gone so now what? You're going to find somebody else who can make you feel validated? Who wants that job? That's how we ended up here in the first place. What do you have to offer now?”

“...nothing.”

“What the Hell are you?”

“Nobody important.”

“Your dedication to people finally died with your failure. One of the few remaining admirable things about you is finally gone, the only thing left is all of the garbage nobody wants to put up with. You're fucking empty. You really are nothing, nobody of significance.”

“Please. Just stop now, I get it.”

“No wonder you want to die. There's no way out for you anymore, is there?”

“I want there to be, but there probably isn't.”

“That's why we're having this conversation. This is best you can do before you lose your head again and then this conversation won't matter anymore. So there's some residue left in the bleak little corner of the world that we're inhabiting, so you can pretend to yourself and say you tried.”

“But not enough people will see this probably.”

“Certainly not the ones that should.”
“So what now?”
“You're going to sleep. And when you wake up, nothing will change, and you'll continue grinding away your pointless, unimportant life until something finally gives.”

“...and a few sentimental platitudes might be said, but nothing will change.”

“This has all happened before. Nothing has changed. The only change will be if you're dead at the end of it.”

“...I don't have the answer to that.”

“I don't either. We might find out soon. But what's the answer you actually want?”

“...I don't know anymore.”

“Neither do I. So go to bed. I'm tired of this too.”

Alice.

“So.” Remilia's tone was subdued. “You seem ready to talk about this now, huh?”

“...to this day, I still can't remember a thing.”

The author was in his room, sitting in his computer chair and fixated on his monitor while Remilia sat on his bed, leaning against the wall. Her eyes weren't fixed on anything, they lurked about the room contemplatively.

“This is something even I haven't really wanted to ask about.” she said, her glances avoiding the author. “I don't know much about it. Or when it started or how it happened.”

“I still don't, even now.” he muttered in a resigned tone. Denial was his shield, his protection to avoid having to peer through the gas-lit haze that dwelled over his head every November and December. He managed to avoid bringing this weight directly back into his life for well over a decade, but Remilia's subtle and meddlesome prodding was unearthing it.

“Okay, to be fair, it wasn't just me.” she interjected into the narration. “I think you had a few things go wrong to lead up to this.”

“Mmm.”

“Like worker girl setting you off.”

“I forgot she even did that.”

“I remember it because it made you paranoid and crazy again.” a bit of mischief made its way back into her voice. “A good set-up to what was sure to come after~.”

“I wouldn't use 'good' in that context.”

“And what happened with her.” she emphasized. The author didn't like the emphasis.

“...it always comes back to her, doesn't it.”

“Eventually, yes~.” The banter ceased and a silence settled back into the conversation. There was a steadiness to the anxiety that permeated throughout the room. The air couldn't be stirred without using words he didn't want to utter in a particular cadence. The author knew the moment he did, he couldn't pretend it didn't happen anymore.

“I lost an important friend a very long time ago.”

The tension eased a bit. And then it intensified for a moment before dispersing altogether. There was an unpleasant catharsis that came out of his chest as he spoke. The anxiety was gone, but it was replaced by grief. Remilia always knew, at least on a vague level. She loosely knew that the author held onto something he couldn't forgive himself for, that he couldn't let go. But the dark places in the author's head that even she couldn't get to kept it buried.

“You still think about it, don't you?” she asked timidly. “About her?”

“Always.” he answered. “I think about her more than almost everyone else from back then.” Remilia was careful about how to approach the author. Any missteps could drag the memory back into the dark, possibly further than it had been before.

“Even if there's nothing to really remember?”

“Always.” he sighed. The author couldn't remember much at all from that time in his life. It was a patchwork of incoherent thoughts and random emotions tangentially related to particular situations. The concreteness of it all was undefined. Any events he almost recalled he could only do so because of loose associations with how it made him feel at that given time. Nothing was certain; everything didn't quite feel fictitious but wasn't entirely settled in reality either. Whenever he expressed his thoughts and wrote, it always vaguely felt like a scenario constructed around his sporadic and unpredictable feelings in order to anchor them, to give them a justification. Subconsciously he knew they were still real, and committing it to writing forced him to own it. But he didn't want to own this. Even as he sat in that room with Remilia, he still wanted to flee. He knew Remilia wouldn't let him, though. She was already eased in, she wasn't going to let this opportunity leave.

“...I'm right here, Pa. I know what you're saying.” She slumped over onto her side and looked up to see the back of the author's chair. He rocked back and forth in it a bit. It needed WD-40. The creaking was in sync with every other tic on his analog clock.

“What was her name?” Remilia asked. The author hesitated. It was the only thing of her's that he kept, that he remembered.

“...Alice.”

“That's a good name.”

“She was a good girl.”

“Yeah?”

“I talked with her about a lot of things.” he said. “A lot of things I couldn't talk about with my girlfriend at the time.”

“Like what?”

“Well, my deteriorating relationship with her, for one. And the thing that happened to me that I didn't want to tell my girlfriend about, either.”

“Why'd you find it easy to talk to her about that?” she asked.

“Don't know, really. I felt comfortable around her.” The author leaned back in his chair. “Girls that age treated me like shit a lot. I didn't trust most of them. Especially after the rape business.” Remilia rolled onto her stomach with a cautious yet curious look on her face.

“What made her different?”

“Can't really remember. She had no reason to be nice to me. She was just mutual friends with people who lived in my apartment complex. I bumped into her on my way home and she ran her mouth and managed to get me to actually talk a bit. Initially I was uncomfortable as Hell but I felt like she was lonely. She would sit on the curb with me and she'd just talk about things and I would listen.”

“I can't imagine you doing that with anybody at that age, to be frank.” Remilia said. She was a bit perplexed.

“She also brought me pizza one day while we sat there.”

“Okay now I'm no longer confused~.”

“She was just a nice, chipper girl. She had that disposition that my girlfriend had where she could notice what my mood really was, but she was a bit more headstrong and curious to ask about it. Eventually I just told her that one of the reasons I stayed outside with her was because I didn't want to go into the house with my mother, and then things just sort of went from there.”

“I figured you would be deterred by people from that.”

“I know, right?” the author agreed. “But, I guess, my girlfriend was always that detached person who never said much. I knew she cared, but she never really went out of her way to express it. And after what was happening, I guess I eventually just wanted to talk to somebody who acted like they cared. And she had ideas about it too, she always seemed depressed herself. There was just some comfort there that I wasn't used to having. It was nice to have somebody who was invested and tried their best to empathize.” There was a bit of silence after he said that. The author knew what Remilia was going to ask. Remilia didn't want to ask the question. It was a question that she dreaded the answer to, because she knew how everything fell into place afterwards.

“...what happened to her?”

“She committed suicide.”

“...oh.”

“Yeah.”

The tension came back into the room. The author's voice strained itself answering the question, the matter-of-fact tone undermined the stress. Remilia didn't know how to continue the conversation. The girl who normally had such a good read on the author was at a loss for what to say.

“I mentioned she was also clearly depressed.” the author stated.

“Right.”

“She never really outright talked about it. You could tell, though. In her mannerisms during her conversations, making vague allusions and references, almost as if to provoke a question of concern. I never asked, though. I couldn't.”

“Why's that, Pa?”

“Was being a stupid teenager wrapped up in my own problems. There was that thought of being selfish, or that thought of not knowing how to approach her without fucking it up. I didn't know how to talk to people back then.”

“You still don't, Pa. That's why we're here.”

“Fair.” He let out a deep breath. “And it's not like. It's not like I even found out or saw her do it or anything. I just didn't see her around for a week or so and I saw my neighbors she used to hang out with and I asked her where she's been. And they had to awkwardly tell me and that was it. She was just gone. That part was done. It was left there after all it happened. Didn't talk to her friends anymore after they told me and I gave a few condolences to them.” The author stopped rocking in his chair. Words became difficult. “I was numb from everything. Everything in my life was imploding at that time, it all just blended together into a cacophony of nonsense I've tried my best to stop thinking about.” But the author didn't. He never stopped thinking about Alice. That was the name he associated with her because it was the only thing even vaguely familiar to him. He couldn't remember anything but the name he clung desperately to, still unsure if it was actually hers at all while he was drowned by the mire of thoughts during the winter. It was a name that pulled down everything, tied to baggage of immeasurable weight that couldn't be discarded or forgotten. Before he noticed, Remilia was leaning against the chair behind him.

“You always said that you associate feelings more with what happened rather than the situation.” she said.

“I did.”

“What feeling is associated with this?”

“Guilt.”

“And why's that?” The question made the author let out another sigh. His breath trembled this time.

“I feel guilt that I don't remember anything about this person. Even now, I can't honestly believe for sure that it happened, if that was even her name.”

“But it's her name to you, that's what matters.” she reassured.

“And I feel guilt because I saw something wrong and I wanted to help. But I didn't for whatever reason.”

“You were young and going through a lot, you can't expect that from yourself.” she argued.

“And I feel that guilt again every time I see one of my friends or anybody going through a crisis, and am too paralyzed with fear to say anything or ask because I'm taken back there whenever it happens.” There was a somber bitterness to his voice. No tears, just exhaustion. “There is always that guilt that I wanted to do more, but I didn't. Or I couldn't, because my capacity to help others is admittedly low. Everything you say is correct, Remilia. And logically, I know all of that, but—”

“But the feeling won't leave regardless.” she resigned. “I know, Pa.” The author knew everything she was going to say during the conversation, he rehearsed it in his head, with the darkness enough that—despite talking about it—it still had a firm grip on his conscience. It was resilient, and normal words wouldn't loosen the guilt either.

“Lucas.” Her voice made the author's shoulders curl.

“I told you not to use that name. It makes this shit real.”

“You know what I'm going to say.” She wrapped her dainty arms around the author from behind and rested her chin on his head. “You gotta let this go.”

“Don't know if I can. Feel like I'd lose something important if I did.”

“You'll never know if your intervention would've changed anything regardless. That's the thing about depression, and that's the risk anybody takes when helping a depressed person. That it still might not mean anything. You know this, your friends know this.”

“I know I do.”

“But—”

“But I didn't even try.” he choked out. Remilia felt faint drops onto her arms while she was embracing the author.

“What would you say to her if you had the chance?” she asked. “If she was here?”

“...that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being a bad friend. I'm sorry for never talking to you about your problems when I knew you always had them. I'm sorry that I always came across as indifferent to them when I was just scared to inquire. I'm sorry for how oblivious I was to how much you cared about me. I'm sorry for trying so long to pretend none of this ever happened. I'm sorry that I can't remember how any of this ever happened. I'm sorry for wondering where you might be if you had somebody help you. I'm sorry that I haven't forgiven myself for it. I'm sorry that I probably won't. You were a good friend and a good person nobody could reach in time. I love you, alright? I'm sorry.” Remilia let him breathe for a bit. She tightened her arms around him.

“Do you really think you can never forgive yourself?” she asked.

“Can't say. I probably won't.” There was a cease in the conversation while the author attempted to stifle himself. There was still a lot to unpack for Remilia. Her associations with the author, her relationship with him being so closely tied to this girl she'll never meet, that she probably won't hear any more stories about. But at least, now it happened, and the girl she would never meet had existed at some point, and it gave Remilia a bit of reassurance. She let out a bit of a smile.

“Nah,” her endearing voice reverberated on the back of his head. “I think you will eventually. Not now.”

“God no, not now.”

“But I would think she would want you to, if she was any good of a friend.” The author scoffed at her remark.

“She was a great friend,” His tone was adamant. “Much better than you.”

“Oof. Brutal~.” Remilia let out a coy smile. “So... did you sleep with her~?”

“NO. JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU.”

“What, WHAT? I was curious~! Was she cute~?”

“Oh for the love of God, we were having a moment and you fucked it all up.” He broke her embrace and stood out of his chair, muttering expletives to himself. Remilia grabbed his hand and turned him towards her.

“It's going to get better now, right~?” She had a cheeky smile on her face. “It's out there, and there's nothing to say about it further for now. You won't get better now, and you won't get better quickly, but you probably will. Right?”

“I'm still probably going to feel like shit about it.”

“I don't expect you to forgive yourself soon, Pa. Lord no, not you of all people. But eventually.”

“Eventually.”

Turkey and rice soup.

“So here's a fascinating thing about death I hadn't really thought about~!”

“Okay.”

“I don't think most people can really think about it.”

“...well that was quick conversation. I'm going to go back to making dinner.”

“Wait wait, there's more to this!” Remilia attempted to keep his attention. “People in reality can't really imagine death.”

“How so?”

“I mean, as people by nature are pretty selfish, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“We are sentient of our own existence. We can't stop thinking about us, alive and being here in the moment. We can't separate ourselves from it. So death is just us ceasing to exist.”

“Unless you believe in some sort of afterlife.” the author said.

“That's a load of hooey.” she sneered. “I grew up in a Christian community, I was FED this garbage.” She refocused on the discussion. “What do we imagine death as? Black? Nothingness? The pearly gates? All of this stuff is flawed, it's still something to imagine. We as humans... can't really imagine what it's like not to exist because by design we're always conscious of existing. We can't really cease all thought and VROOM, that's what death is like. We can't really think about what happens when death occurs because it just stops for us, and that is a level of nothing that we can't comprehend.”

“...this sounds like a discussion you'd see on Reddit.” The author sounded exasperated as he spoke.

“And this brings us to where we're at today!”

“Which is?”

“Why is the thought of not existing so enticing to you when you can't even imagine it?”

“Because existing hasn't worked out.”

“I mean it's had its perks, right? You've met some good people, played some good games, had some good food~.”

“Got laid.”

“Let's not talk about that, Pa.” Remilia reconstituted herself. “But the fact of the matter remains... you've been thinking about this a lot lately, haven't you.”

“The thought of suicide is always hovering around, let's be honest. I don't think it's going to go away.” he said.
“...so this is where we're at, huh.” She sounded tired.

“Don't give me that. You've been around long enough to know that it's never really left.”

“...I know, Pa.” The author was in the kitchen preparing dinner while Remilia laid on the couch, her feet kicking up in the air while she stared at him upside-down.

“Pa there's a bullet hole in the couch.” She was looking at the corner of the middle cushion.

“I'm aware.”

“You can't own guns for another year.”

“I'm aware.”

“Why is there a bullet hole in the couch?”

“It was there when we bought it.”

“You aren't lying, are you?”

“I'm not. It was there when we bought it.”

“Hmm.” She didn't know what to say. The monster was in the room again, its grip on the author tightening and she couldn't get it to let go.

“...you okay today?” she asked.

“No.”

“...okay.” Rhythmic knocks against the cutting board filled the room. “There's nothing anybody can do right now, I guess.”

“Pretty much.” She sighed at the response. She stared at the ceiling a bit while silence enveloped the room. Brief glances of sunlight made their way through the clouds in the sky and the closed blinds in the living room.

“...it's nobody's fault.” she said.

“I know.” he responded.

“You told them it was their fault.”

“I know.”

“You want to burn bridges, don't you?”

“Probably.” His brevity wasn't giving her an opening. Remilia sighed and turned onto her stomach and continued to watch the author's back in the kitchen.

“The less people around, the less people to guilt you into not doing it, huh?” The author said nothing. “I mean I get it, it's not like they were doing you any good right now. That's why we're talking.”

“...everybody has their own problems.” he responded.

“It's a good excuse not to ask for help.”

“Mmm.”

“But as we said though, it's not like you get anything from the help nowadays anyway.” She slung her scrawny limbs over the couch's armrest and let them dangle. “I know how it is. It's what I went through too, Pa. When the depression gets bad enough and you want to--”

“Commit suicide.” He said it so she didn't have to.

“Yeah, that.” She was a bit shaken. “I know one of the things I did was guilt myself into being alive regardless of how unhappy I was, because I couldn't bear the thought of disappointing everybody who cared about me. Who loved me. I didn't want to hurt them that bad.” The sound of a knife grinding on a cutting board was the only noise in the apartment. Neither said anything for a bit until Remilia broke the silence again. “But that sort of backfired eventually. All it did was eventually desensitize myself to the thought of it. I sorta stopped caring about hurting them altogether, ya know?”

“Can't say that I do.”

“You're lying again~.” Her patronizing tone struck a nerve with the author, as if she had the nerve to be patronizing in the first place. He didn't have the energy to snap at her though, and she noticed he didn't, either.

“I'm right, you know.” she continued. “And so are you. We went over this earlier, while the other things happened.”

“I'm aware.”

“If you were, I wouldn't be here reminding you, now would I?” Her tone was becoming increasingly assertive as she continued talking. “You don't know what you want anymore out of these people, do you?”

“Correct.”

“Talking about your problems isn't helping anymore. Either people don't say anything and you feel that horrible vindication that you were right in believing nobody cared. Or they extend their hand and you realize that you can't bring yourself to grab it anymore. You wanted them to do something while it still mattered, right?” Remilia stopped talking for a bit while the author turned on the water in the sink. He was filling up a pot.

“What are you making?” she asked.

“Turkey and rice soup.” he said.

“I don't like turkey that much though.”

“You can't eat anything.”

“Pfft.” The author finished filling up the pot. He set it on the stove top to begin simmering. He pulled the leftover turkey from the other night out of the fridge and set it on the counter. Remilia stared at his back while he was in the kitchen.

“There's a lot of things going on. We have your friends, who seem like good people bu—”

“Except the one.” he interjected.

“Right, except the one. She seems to bother you a bit.” She let out a sigh. “But people are trying to help, and now, well... it's too late huh?”

“...” The author had nothing to say.

“Even I know in the back of your head that you don't want the answer to that question to be a 'yes'. But you know it is, at least it is right now.” She flipped back over onto her back and sighed. “While I'll at least say a very real part of you doesn't want to be alive anymore, it's probably being made worse by the fact that you don't know what can help anymore either.” The author stopped working and stood there in the kitchen.

“...I'm just feeling tired. And empty.”

“And nothing can fill that. People saying they love you and that they care about you, your own feelings of self-guilt about taking their concerns for granted, your anger to blame somebody for any of it. Nothing's filling that emptiness to justify whatever it is you're doing or feeling now.”

“...yeah.”

“And regardless of that... there's nonetheless probably some real resentment that nobody takes it as seriously as they should until you're ready to give up.”

“......yeah.”

“I mean,” Remilia sat up straight as she continued to speak. “Nobody wants to be told not to jump when they're already at the edge of the building. Like, we could've avoided going into the building and up to the rooftop in the first place. They could've been told that it's a bad idea before they got that far.”

“Means a longer walk down the building to convince myself that jumping really wasn't a good idea.”

“Right~o.” She looked around the room a bit before she continued. “Those feelings of resentment are still there amidst the other thoughts, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And those thoughts of resentment are why this is easier to convince yourself to give up.”

“Probably.”

“And it's not like those people reaching out to you will help, huh?”

“Will probably make it worse.” he remarked. Remilia's eyes had a bit of a dullness to them. She was tired, too.

“So what's the plan then?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Could avoid everybody until you hopefully feel better.”

“Whenever that will be.”

“Do you still care about your friends and what will happen to them if you're gone?”

“Not really.”

“Do you think you eventually will again?”
“Don't know anymore.”

“Well, I mean, you're gonna have to talk to them eventually, Pa. You can't talk to me forever about this.”

“'Forever' is a relative term.” She grimaced a bit and stood up. She walked over to him and turned him to look at the door and the window.

“Listen Pa, out there, there are millions of people. Millions of people who eat and poop and have things they shouldn't have, like responsibilities or opinions.”

“Like Trump voters.”

“Exactly.” she nodded triumphantly. “Eventually you're going to have to stop talking to me and talk to all the gay weirdo minority creeps that are your friends and—”

“Except the one.”

“Yeah except that one—and at least give them peace of mind.”

“Peace of mind from what?” The author was baffled.

“That they know what they've gotten themselves into and that they're idiots for putting their hopes in crazy people like us.”

“You're starting to sound as cynical as I am.” the author remarked.

“Look, I'm just sayin'.” she patted him on the back while she spoke. “They got to understand that you've hit a point where something's broke. What you want from people isn't working anymore and you don't know what you want. What these friends think they can offer isn't what you need and it wouldn't be enough regardless. But it's nobody's fault.”

“Okay but important question.”

“Shoot.”

“Does this mean I can't kill myself then?” he asked.

“I can't stop you, but I don't think you will yet.”

“Can I still guilt-trip people to feel better about myself in a hateful and cynical way?”

“Pa you're going to do that regardless of what I tell you.”

“True.” They stood there a bit in silence.

“Feeling better at least?” she asked.

“A bit.”

“Good, good~.” She paused a bit while she mulled over her words more. “I'm fishing the turkey out of that soup if I'm eating it.”

“You can't eat it.” he muttered. She groaned.

“Oh why you gotta be like this? This is child abuse.”

“You don't need food.” She slumped and walked towards the author's bedroom.

“Well fine. I'm gonna go to sleep. This is exhausting, you know?”

“Alright, good night.” the author said as he stood over the stove.

“You should go to bed soon too. You know your not-getting-enough-sleep is probably not helping this either.”

“I don't want to hear that from you with your sleeping habits.”
“Touché. Good night~!” As she went into the room to sleep, the author stood in the kitchen. His left hand was on the cutting board while he held the knife with his right. He stood there for ten minutes in silence, hesitating. Every day he still hesitated, but it's gotten a few seconds longer each day he has.