the first time i really explained why i did it, was two months ago. i was admitted to the psych ward after a month of letting my bed swallow me whole. it wasn’t the first time things got that bad, but it was the first time someone cared enough to do something about it. not that she should have had to, nobody is obligated to save me from myself. still, it was nice to be seen.

i’ve always felt this rot inside of me, some kind of decay gnawing at everything i am or could have been. when i was little it was already there. i think i was born with it. like i escaped my mothers womb cold and crying, but more so, infected. it hasfestered from the moment i took my first breath, swirling in my stomach and shooting through my limbs.

my mother had it before me and her mother too. my father was no better, though he’s lucky enough to forget the damage he caused. that’s the part that kills me. he got to ruin my life and walk away untouched. there isn’t a day where i don’t think about what they did to me. my father, my mother, her sick fiancé. all of them carved something ugly into me and left me to grow around it.

my mother is dead, my father remembers nothing, and that demented fuck is still out there preying on women with children. how does that happen? how are some people allowed to destroy lives and continue on like nothing happened?

mental hospitals are awful. everybody knows that already, i think. i miss it. i miss cigarettes every two hours and the strange relief of no longer pretending to be normal. nobody expected normal from you there. everyone already knew why you had come. drugs, alcohol, suicide, wounds that keep bleeding through bandages.

every fifteen minutes, without fail, a nurse is standing too close, whether it’s three in the afternoon or three in the morning. the bathrooms had no privacy. the showers pelt boiling water at you from a small ball on the wall, harsh enough to welt my skin. every twenty seconds the water would turn off, and every time you pressed the button to turn it back on, it came back hotter.

my roommate was sweet, but overbearing in the way some lonely people are. she talked too much, and to her, being sick was a competition.

i couldn’t stop crying my first night there. i sat by the phone for hours calling the same person over and over, like he might start loving me again. i left him so many voicemails that a nurse had to come yell at me to stop crying so loud. typically i would listen and take it, but i was angry and uncomfortable and when i asked for a pencil, they gave me a green fucking highlighter. i was pissed. when i finally got in my room, i stayed there until loneliness outweighed embarrassment.

then i met landon.

i was too honest with him from the beginning. but why lie? i was never supposed to see him again.

my first night there he wanted to play cards but i was more interested in hearing everyone’s stories, open and raw. four teenagers in an asylum filled mostly with people old enough to be our parents… or grandparents. landon told his story first, then noah, then harley, and finally me. poor pitiful ivy.

the first day he met me i could tell he wanted me. not quietly either. he was bold about it. in a way i wasn’t used to. he sat too close. brushed his pinky against mine. pulled my attention back to him anytime it wandered somewhere else. if i wasn’t out of my room when he wanted me to be, he’d knock on my door, muttering through the crack on the floor.

i started to like him way more than i should have and every night without fail, him and i would stay up later than everyone else. we’d walk the halls and sit on the floor eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tell each other secrets while he made fun of me for taking the crust off my bread. we’d stay there until nurses would shoo us into our rooms and tell us three am was late enough. not that we knew the time, clocks were obsolete.

we are so different, but he likes to say that at baseline, we’re just the same. he taught me how to throw a football and in exchange, i taught him how to memorize my phone number.

sometimes you meet people you can’t stay strangers with.

he called me beautiful, which felt ridiculous considering where we were. fluorescent lights, ugly clothes, and unimaginable eyebags. i have never been anything near beautiful, and especially not in that hospital.

but god he would look at me like i was some saving grace.

that maybe god put him in that hospital for a reason. that maybe his girlfriend was supposed to leave him. maybe he was supposed to drive somewhere empty with a bottle of pills in the passenger seat. maybe he was supposed to survive it. maybe he was supposed to meet me.

he looked at me like he knew he was supposed to.

it kills me now.

i’ve been out of the hospital for two months. landon and i became inseparable before i had to leave for summer break. we’ve been dating for a month now and i still dont know if meeting him saved me or ruined me further.

he got discharged two days before i did. my training paid off. when i finally got back, there was already a text waiting for me. i knew it was a bad idea to respond.

i answered anyway.

sometimes i think i love him. sometimes i think all our feelings belonged to that hospital and we were stupid enough to drag them back into the real world with us.

last summer i tried to kill myself because it was the first time in years that i felt like things were okay.

i was still sad, i will always be sad. the doctors talk about it like it’s chronic. terminal, even. something you don’t cure, only manage until it finally manages you instead.

the first times i attempted suicide were because the suffering became unbearable. but last summer was different. i learned then that if i died suffering, it would have been the last thing i felt. i wasn’t happy last summer, but i think i was the closest i had ever been. and i knew it wouldn’t last.

i knew i’d be leaving for college soon. leaving my friends. i knew that happiness is fleeting, and i couldn’t stand the idea of surviving long enough to lose it again. i knew that it was the last thing i wanted to feel and i knew that it could be years until i felt it again.

so i took as many pills as i could.

i remember dirty fingers shoved down my throat. water in my face. in my hair. i remember how i was propped in her arms with the shower running over us. i remember waking up in my adoptive parents bed. she spoke to me softly, too softly, like volume alone might kill me.

nothing could undo what i had done.

and the worst part is that i don’t regret it. the only thing i regret is not being successful.

if i died then, my life would have ended in a way that i was content with. i would have died as happy as i could ever be.

instead i survived.

and survival is much less romantic in real life.

angela promised me that brian wouldn’t read my notes, it became very clear that she lied. first when i was back home in october, brian came home in the middle of the night, drunk and slurring. quoting the things i had written, not only did he read them — he memorized them. then, again in april after the psych ward and too many phone calls from my parents. i realized that they will never look at me the same.

now i am a risk before i am a person.

a sad teenage girl with too many problems. scars that wont fade any time soon. maybe ever. i don’t know how to exist unless somebody wants me badly enough to make me feel real.

i am a mess. exhausting. difficult.

and i will always be miserable; doctor’s orders.