Chapter One

Have you ever composed a suicide note in your head?  I mean have you really thought about what you would say to to the world on your way out?  Sometimes the sentences string together flawlessly in my mind. Of course the first thing somebody asks you when you tell them you feel like dying is “Why?”  Of course I ask myself this question all the time.  

Why? Why? Why? 

I don’t understand

You don’t understand.

That’s right I don’t understand.

What is it that you don’t understand?

Life, the universe, everything.  I just don’t know the right way. I don’t know the answer.

You’re telling me that you feel like dying because you don’t know the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything?

Well…it’s a bit more complicated than that.  The answer is 42.  It’s the question I’m stumped on.

At that point I make myself laugh.  Those that have read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will get my drift.  But there is so much truth in my sentance.

 I don’t understand.  I don’t understand what the point of life is in the face of so much personal tragedy.  I don’t understand why my father hates me, why my mother killed herself and why I can get straight A’s but can’t make enough money to pay my bills.  I don’t understand.  I don’t understand how people can become soulless and greedy.  I don’t understand humanity.  I don’t understand why my baby had to die. I am an unknown soul.  No one knows me.  They know bits and pieces but not all.  The stories are too deep, too vast, too dark.  The secrets are dangerous, the truth painful.

Maybe you need to tell them.

Tell who?

Tell the stories.

Oh, yeah.  Those. Where could I possibly start?

Start with one that scares you.  That you fear people will find out.  Other stories will come.  Don’t try to write them in order.  Just let it flow out of you.

16 years old. Standing in line at the convenience store I’m counting out change to the teller.  It feels so odd to be paying someone.  I haven’t counted out coins in years.  I haven’t paid for anything.  I was locked up.  I feel the anxiety rising up in me, unspeakable panic, unused to the real world.  I dump the change on the counter and look at her.  ”Can you just take what I owe you, please, actually - just keep all of it.”  I grab the coke and head out the door.  Walking towards the house, staring at the ground.  An empty chip bag catches the wind and bounces across the road.  I am like that chip bag. Hollowed out. Empty. Finished.

I had just come from His office.  The one that they want me to talk to.  The one who is supposed to “fix” me.  Leather chairs stick to your skin when you sweat and I remember peeling my leg off slowly, and laying it back down.  They can’t make me talk about it.  They can’t make me go back there. I can’t do it….I can’t…

But I did. I went back to the dark, to running away from home, back to the rapes, to the terror, back to when I lost my mind in the mountains of Northern Idaho.  I went there for a split second - and then my mind suddenly went blank.  I couldn’t remember anything.  I stared at the old man with the kind eyes and the glasses and said nothing.  I peeled my leg off the chair again.

“Why did you steal the car?” He had asked.

Because I had to get out of there. I had to DO something.  I needed to go somewhere else. Somewhere people wouldn’t call me names and tell me how useless I was. Somewhere with normal people, real family.  A place I could be wanted, loved, taught. A place I could control. Somewhere without lies, betrayls and hypocrisy.  Somewhere else…anywhere.

“How old were you?”

I was fourteen.