Do you remember that time at that place with those people? How could I forget? Omg that was the best! I totally miss it! Remember that time that you were crying in the bathroom and I pretended I didn’t hear you? Oh yeah! And do you remember how you went two weeks without eating and I never said anything? Lol that was the best! I remember the first time I looked at myself in the mirror and said I hated myself. I was 12. I had allowed hatred from school and the abuse from home to poison my brain and as I gained weight and lost my voice, I became rather sickly to put the cherry on top. There was always some reason to visit the doctor or to hope it got better. Guess you could say I put the ill in “kill me”. I remember the first time I forced myself to throw up, I was 15. After spending days eating nothing but vegetables, by the time I threw up it looked like a pile of cud, a delicacy for bovines. I guess you could say I really put the bull in bulimia. The only woman I ever loved used to stop eating when someone called her fat, sometimes for days. As time moved on I watched her get thinner and sicker and less like herself, but she wouldn’t let me help her. I guess you could say that she put the ex in anorexia. Our school revolved around the athletes and those fortunate enough to have money while everyone else was forgotten in the chaos of it all. Principals preached sermons of inclusion and of human decency, but at the end of the day the bodies piled up like homework assignments we intended to do, but forgot. As the stack grew bigger and bigger they faded from our minds one after the other. Coaches spewed speeches like there is no I in team, to get people working together, but he must have forgotten that there is one in suicide and if self loathing is a sport then send me to the olympics. At one point I walked out of a class to go cry in the bathroom with no explanation, no hall pass, and no intention of returning. I skipped the next two classes alone on a second floor toilet, right down the hall from both of my next classes, but not a soul even noticed I was gone. I never once was asked where I went, I never once was asked to explain, and I was never once acknowledged. I’d like to think that I was a good kid in school too. Always did what I was told, rarely broke the rules, and general kept my mouth shut. However, at the end of the day I was just another number in their system and they allowed me to believe that no one would even notice if I was gone forever. This whole time I had my conscience whispering to me from both sides of my shoulders that I would be better off dead. Yet I was one of the lucky ones. I fought my battle and lived to tell the tale. I was one of the lucky ones who grew up, made new friends which became a new family, and I made new memories with new inside jokes. I got the chance to start over and forge my own new life in the fires of my past, but I was one of the lucky ones.