The house always wins.

I have a different journal for posts like this one but for some reason I feel the need to place these words, at this time, right here. I leave them with a disclaimer, they aren't happy, if you love me or are even just a little find of me they may worry you, but just deal with that, trust that I am still alive and move on. Do not comment that you are praying for me, if you are then go ahead and just do it, don't call the looney bin, all a straight jacket will do for me is dislocate my shoulders, and if you see me don't say anything, if you must say something go with "I read the post and I am here if you need me" and I can just say "I know" and we can avoid all of the awkward in between. Cool? Cool.

I was trying to figure out how to start this while on my way home from Battle Creek, that is when I decided to transcribe all of this after all. I thought that I would start from the beginning, from the morning Jess died, just free write it out and see what happens. I am still going to free write, I say that so you will forgive any and all grammatical and spelling errors, but this story doesn't start in any specific place, I feel the way I do right this second for so many reasons that it would be narrow minded to point the metaphorical finger at a mere one. So I guess, in short, be prepared to skip all the hell around because I can't stick to one straight line, I am not a straight line, I am as crooked as they come.

I was born different but nobody knew. Growing up I think I sort of did but I was just looked at as needy, moody or attention seeking. In truth I was broken but back then, even if someone had known why I was different from my friends, my parents, my sisters, why I thought and felt differently, why one tiny event would make me scream and kick and cry for no reason... even if anyone had known that I wasn't just acting out, that I was broken, they wouldn't have had any clue as to how to fix me. Professionals still don't, hell when handed Jessie, another broken child, they mishandled her case, didn't take her personality into consideration, prescribed her drugs that weren't yet approved for her age group and, in short, hurried her suicide along. Maybe it's for the best that no one looked at me, tried to fix me, until then? Then again if they had, if I had been the one who was pushed to the limit with no real knowledge of what my death would leave behind, perhaps I would not be here and she would, perhaps that is the way that it should have been. It should be me in that tiny urn, in the ground, not her. I was supposed to be the lesson to be learned, the warning, I am the big sister, that was my job.

I have been cutting myself on and off since I was 14, I suppose that little habit was one Jess and I shared. I was just more slick about it, I always was the best at acting, playing the part. I started with my finger tips, no one looks there and if they do you can say it is nothing more than a paper cut. They don't generally notice that more than one is sliced open. Plus I have found that the finger tips are extremely sensitive, making the pain very acute, which makes a smaller, shallower cut do the trick. So I started with those, but soon I found that I couldn't perform everyday tasks because my fingertips were always healing. That is when I started cutting my upper arm. Over and over, even before the last cut had healed, I would cut right over it until there was and inch-wide bunch of slashes, like a bundle of bloody sticks. Some girls I knew in middle school asked me how I could do that because it must hurt so much and I thought 'isn't that the point?' There are those who do it because they feel like it, then there are those who do it because there is something inside clawing to get out through whatever means necessary. Then I started on my ankle, it was even easier to hide than my arm and the skin there felt even more sensitive so less cuts were necessary. This went on for over a year, there would be an event, a stressor, a fight or test or trip, you name it, and I would gain control of the situation for those few seconds that I watched myself make myself bleed.

Then Ericka saw, my best friend. She was not happy. She was, is, also a lot smarter than you would think. She knew that there was only one way to stop me. I didn't care what happened to me, obviously, but I loved her, much more than I loved myself. So she surveyed the cuts on my upper arm and grabbed a pair of scissors and raked them across her arm. I watched her wince and yelp and complain that it hurt but she swore that she would cut herself every time that I did. I stopped. I knew that every time I cut myself I was essentially cutting her. Told you she was smart didn't I?

Over the years there have been relapses, times when I needed it, I can't explain it but in my mind it had to be done in order to go on. I relapsed again, this would be where the disclaimer comes into play. I don't have to tell you this, hell I have no idea why I am but I am so just... do with that what you will. The past two or so weeks have been harder than any I can remember. I can't blame it on one thing, I could say it was the fact that we changed my meds from Paxil to Prozac, maybe that was it, but I know better than to blame just one thing, perhaps it set off a series but wither way, I spiraled. Whereas before every day was just another day I had to live through, now every day was another one that I had to survive through. I had to fight the urge to kill myself daily, I saw myself slitting my wrists, I saw myself overdosing on pills, I saw myself drive into the guard rail or into a ditch... all with nothing short of yearning. But I couldn't do it, Jessie was sitting there holding me back, tying my hands behind my back, immobilizing me completely. I wanted so badly to die, to be done, more than I have wanted anything in so long, but I couldn't do it and I sort of hate her for that. So I cut, coincidentally, no that isn't the word... ironically enough I found that the tattoo of her name on my wrist was the best place to hide the cuts. So I made small controlled strokes with a razor blade, followed the sweep of the J and the slant of the Es, so no one would see. It helped, got did it help, I sat there in the shower, watching the blood wash down the drain and I breathed deep and sort of smiled and felt in control for just a second.

We changed my meds again in hopes that this would all go away and it sure isn't as bad as it was but it is still here. I think it is less the meds and more just me. I am no longer suicidal but I would still rather be dead than alive. Tonight I went out and had a great time at a bar with one of my best friends and then saw my ex with his arms around his new girlfriend and everything cracked and shattered and made me bleed. I decided then that I would either slice a piece of me open or follow another hobby and drive to the casino. I drove to the casino, I figured that most of the people I care for would rather I give up $50 than a chunk of flesh. I was too afraid to deal with people, nothing new there, so I played blackjack on a machine, I chain smoked half a pack of cigarettes and lost $80. Another form of self mutilation in and of itself I suppose.

On the way home I watched the tip of my cigarette burn red against the red of the car lights ahead of me on the highway and I thought that I still wanted to cut. I knew where I razor was waiting and I planned to pull it slowly across my shoulder, tearing the flesh. Then I decided that I would write first and see what happened after that. The razor remains on the nightstand beside me but there it will stay. I am still bleeding but the wound is here for you all to see. I am not hiding this gash, this pain, under a bracelet or a long sleeved shirt, I am showing you that I am gaping, sliced open and bleeding. Why? I don't know, maybe to show you how strong I am, maybe I am strong, I guess I would have to be to continue to fight this mental war for as long as I have and still remain alive. Stronger than Jessie. Or perhaps it isn't strength so much as guilt, obligation keeping me alive, because of what Jessie did. She did it and now I trapped here on this plane, stuck suffering until fate does me a favor and wipes me off the face of the earth.

Maybe I am writing it because I am hoping something beautiful will come through here, I have read work that I have done when I wasn't on meds and I was and still am dumbfounded and how poetic and profound it all sounds, written by a 17 year old no less. On meds I can't do that so much. But here I am, on meds but still so sad, so I try to recreate the magic. I slash my proverbial wrist open and bleed into cyberspace, hoping something magical comes of it.

I was thinking that I would start talking about the morning Jess died. I told you that. A teacher I had told me to trash my entire novel and start from scratch, maybe I was going to give his theory a shot, maybe I still will, but it is nearly 5 am and I have had too many drinks and too many cigarettes to keep my eyes open much longer. Age.

In order to sell this house, the one in which I grew up, in which my sister died, in which we tore down her room and made the upstairs into a loft of sorts, my father is putting it all back together. I walked upstairs the other day and my knees gave out. The walls were back, standing where they had until my father tore them down a week after Jessie's death. It was all the same, there was her room, there was her closet, and I saw her there. Hanging. The entire time I have been in this house since she died I have seen her hanging there in the center of the second floor, alone, lifeless, gone, right in front of me. Having the walls back up makes it even easier, I can see the brown shag carpet of the hallway, the turquoise of her walls and black of my ceiling. The stars I painted above both of our heads. It is all back, I feel as though, as I sit here at the foot of the stairs, up there none of this has happened. I am 15 or 16 and Jessie and I are co-existing, arguing, joking, living without any knowledge of what is to come, what is going to tear us apart. There is an entire universe up there, a separate time and place and I just want to walk up there and be part of it, be oblivious, see her not as a ghost, an obligation, a curse, a memory, but as my little sister, my annoying, quiet little sister and nothing more. But I know that if I walk up those stairs all I will find are white half constructed walls, partly painted over murals, a skeleton and not even ours. It is a whole new place up there but in my mind it will always be the place in which she and I both lived and died.

So I don't give in to the urge to curl up on the floor of her closet with a blanket and sleep in hopes that when I wake she will be standing over me asking me what the hell I am doing in her room. I don't give in to that crazy piece of my mind, there are only so many pieces of my that I can allow to snap before all of me breaks completely, irreparably.

Perhaps I will right more tomorrow. It feels as though merely closing my eyes for a moment or so right now will be enough to let me sleep and that is so rare, especially in this place, that I cannot pass it up. We all know that I will be back, the only question is when.

Heed the disclaimer, please don't make me regret writing this, showing you this piece of me. Had Jessie shown me this part of her... I don't know but it could have and in my mind, forever, WOULD HAVE changed everything. Sometimes wounds should be left in the open to be seen and understood. I write this not asking for help or pity or some sort of cure. I write this because just doing so helps me and who knows, maybe someone somewhere in cyberspace will read this and it will help. Maybe. Just know that barring natural causes I will remain alive tomorrow and the next day and the next no matter what my mind tells me to do. Thank Jessie for that as I simultaneously curse her for tying me here.

To anyone who is actually still reading this, I bid you good night, or good morning I suppose. It is just another day, reading this changes nothing so you need not to a thing. I do not need saving, I need to write, I need to work it out, I need to survive. Survive is all I can really hope to do.

Lost.

is there some kind of rule stating that life has to be this hard? I'm suicidal. Right this second I can tell you that I am suicidal. I would much much rather be dead than alive right now. I can hate Jessie for being both the reason I have to stay alive and part of the reason I so badly want to die.

I so badly want to die.

All the time I feel all alone on this long, rocky road. I trip over cracks and broken asphalt and I scrape my knees and my hands are bleeding, the wind is frigid and my coat is thin, my lips are blue and the tears clinging to my lashes have long frozen. But I keep walking, I am cold and bleeding and tired and crying and alone but I keep walking on these mechanical legs because I don't have any choice. I don't have her way out. I just keep walking, I just keep freezing until it becomes too much and my knees give out and I fall and I lay on the uneven ground for minutes, hours, days, cold and bleeding and broken, until I realize that I won't get anywhere laying here in a heap on the frozen ground, maybe I'm not headed anywhere better, maybe it will all just keep on sucking, but a maybe is a maybe. Meaning that at some point things could get easier, could get better, maybe. Which is more than I can say for the knowing that right now I want nothing more than to die.

Emotionless.

I am going to cut myself tonight.

I need to feel something.

I need to be in control of something.

It is all I have.