It's less talking and more consoling. Reasoning out everything that went wrong. Every now and again, I feel my heart start to race and that ever familiar pit starts to swell in my stomach. Instinct tells me to reach for my phone, but looking at it now does more harm than good. Just a list of declined invitations and months old texts. I toss the phone aside and crawl into my bed, even though it's 95 out. I'll close my eyes, toss and turn, trying to fill agonizing silence. I don't even remember what a concerned voice sounds like. I'm becoming more and more familiar with that detached monotone drawl that finally calms me down. All he has to do is ask:

"Are you okay?" 

After a quick pause, I'll respond, "Alright. You?"

There is a subreddit for everything. Need a book to read? /r/book or /r/booklist if you want to bypass the discussions. /r/f1 has helped me follow the season. /r/houseofcards has helped me keep track of what the hell's going on. /r/gifrecipes (with advice from /r/askculinary) gives me dinner every night. There isn't a single question I won't ask Reddit first. 

But I won't ask /r/depression if I have depression. The answer seems obvious. Right? Read the posts, of course I don't have depression. Those poor bastards are depressed. Capital 'D' depressed. I haven't been diagnosed, why would I waste a professional's time? Saying I'm depressed is an insult to legitimately depressed people. 

That's usually my conclusion after I close my browser. The realization lasts about 15 minutes. But then slowly whatever made me open that page comes creeping back in. What if I am? I start to feel a small ball of. Something. Start to knot up inside my stomach. I want to vomit but I haven't eaten anything yet. I reach for a book and make it two lines in before I get distracted thinking about those posts. 

"No" I want to shout it at myself "you're not depressed. Those people have no hobbies or friends. One guy can barely remember the last time he's laughed. You remember. You're not depressed. You just spoke to your friend whose actually depressed. She talked about her depression naps. How when you have clinical depression you feel sleepy all the time. Fuck you, she's depressed you're wide awake. You pulled an all nightier last night watching Mad Men. Insult. You are insulting depressed people by even thinking this. Get back to your book." 

I refuse to believe I'm depressed because nothing I've been through gives me the right to be depressed. I'm not a self diagnosing millennial. I'm just lazy. Just like Mom says. 

If I told anyone that I thought I was depressed they wouldn't believe me. If I asked Reddit what they thought they'd say I was just in a bit of a slump.  They'd say that if I were really depressed, I wouldn't be seeking validation like this. I'd know it when I felt it. Well goddammit I wish I'd know it already. 

"I like to see movies alone." Zero part of me wants to admit how much I hate sitting in a theater by myself. I don't want to admit that I have no friends left to watch movies with. I don't want to think about how my room feels like a padded cell. How the scuffed walls only bring back bad memories along with feeling of dread that this is where you will spend the rest of your life. I arrive 20 minutes early, partially so I can get a good seat, mostly because where else can you sit in a dark, foreign, air conditioned room alone. I lean back, legs spilling over the armrest into the second seat, wishing there was a warm body there instead. "At least no one will distract me." Except, frankly, I don't give two shits about this movie. I've seen it twice and this time will be no different. I will stare at the walls, the ceiling, the water stain next to the air vent. I will turn off my brain for two hours in the last place where it's okay to do so. 

My phone finally broke. After the glass cracked, I started treating it worse and worse- the last few weeks I had spent neurotically picking at the glass like a scab. But now after a relatively inconsequential fall of the bed, it finally gave up on me. It was about time for that thing to go and with it, every message I'd made a point of saving. It was probably for the best. I haven't gone back to look at them in a while, but from what I remember, most of them were either one of two things: terse exchanges of facts, addresses, and times or a pathetic shit-show. I'm deeply embarrassed by the latter. The petty arguments and desperate pleadings from my end. Like I said, it's probably for the best those get buried. But still, part of me will miss them. I'd saved them for a reason. Because one day I planned to scroll back. I'd look at the pictures, the long winded good mornings and good nights, the finger drawings, and I wouldn't feel bad. I'd smile at all the effort I put in to a text bubble and I could finally say I've moved on. I'm worried now that day will never come, but maybe, now that those memories are just a corrupted stream of data, I can finally move forward. 

Yeah right. 

I should have died on then and there, on the leg of that oblivious traveler. I saw it coming. The warm embrace of a fingertip. The spiral seal marking my failure. But no. Instead I was placed on a leaf, far from the beaten path, two legs crushed, able to cling for dear life, but unable to crawl out of this Sisyphean hell.  

I have never understood the appeal of self-destruction until now. Unable to suck the life out of those around me, all I can do is wait. Like Ophelia clinging to the branch, I, Lord of the Tall Grass, King of Loose Children and Unprotected Dogs, wait for a strong breeze or heavy rain to deliver me from my suffering. 

The only thing stopping me from killing myself right now is my inability to write a good suicide note. 

I haven't lived particularly long and haven't made anything particularly impressive or important and I certainly can't say I've impacted anybody's life for the better. If I killed myself right now, people would know me as a mediocre artist, a terrible friend, an even worse lover, and a poor writer of suicide notes.

What happens to me after I die is between me and God. But here's the thing: He isn't going to tell anyone jack shit about who I really was, let alone what he did with me. 

Once I either a) make something worth remembering or b) learn to write a decent note, then I'll come back to the idea of offing myself. Hopefully I'll have some cleanlier methods by then.

You have to wonder if James Marsden kept a notebook too. It's a better story, and if I were him, I would most certainly write it down. It would be all about a war hero who came back in a full body cast, only to miraculously recover. Who fell in love with a girl, showing her a world better than her ex ever did. But this girl runs away months before the wedding to cheat with said ex. And poor James knew all he could do was let her go. I would read the hell out of that notebook. I don't know about y'all, but I respect James Marsden more than Ryan Gosling. A man who cuts his losses and leaves, triumphantly not writing to his ex everyday afterwards. I need so desperately to be James Marsden after I've been Ryan Gosling for far too long. 

Time stops. Sound fades out. My guard is down and I see him winding up. He sees what every fighter wants to see but no fighter wants to give. That bleary look of resignation. My tired eyes meeting the cold calculated stare of a soon to be champ. I don't say a thing, but he sees my final words, written plainly across my face. "Fuck it".

I was destined to lose the second he stepped in the ring. The crowd saw it too. Maybe not immediately, but six rounds later they see me for what I am. The featherweight who got lucky. I hear their jeers behind me. They're waiting for the same thing. That final blow, my blood on the mat. The one that will hurt more than every other. But the faster I fall the sooner I'll be free. He will get what he deserves and so will I. 

Time resumes and sound returns. I see it coming now. Soon everything will be over and the world will fade to black.