Dear Ericka.

Years of pain and unsaid words came pouring out of her eyes and streaking down her face that night on her apartment floor. The room itself seemed empty; the fresh vacancy of the boyfriend who had just left gave way for the two room flat to expose the ribs of her loneliness which, truth be told, he never hid anyway. The mundane sound of closing car doors, late night mumble and spastic excitement in the alley below was almost too much to bear; the sound of life going on despite your pain.

Her life felt to her like a Topping Tower game lately; trying to bury her problems with each day with the next while crossing her fingers and wishing her problems would go away. The betrayal of her (now ex) boyfriend and best friend had been the toppling piece and she didn't see why or how she could carry on. Maybe it was in an impulse that ran through her when Ericka looked in the mirror and saw how miserable her green, tear blurred eyes were and the state of her wild brunette hair that had the ruffles of her hands that had gone through it and pulled at it, that she concluded she didn't want to keep feeling this pain. She didn't want to hurt anymore. She would make herself cease existing...or in the words of her grandmother (who's voice she had purposely muted) "Let 'them' win".

The girl was now on the floor crying like no one was watching and no one cared; heaving heavily, breathing like she had almost drowned and was taking her first breathes, recovering from her severe crying while tears still flowed like streams that wander after the rain, her voice subdued from the storm into a drizzle, the storm within still ripping her, rocking than stopping and remembering then softly crying before doing it all again. She finally stood up with somber purpose and whipped her tears in the sleeve of her shirt, which she looked at with disgust as she remembered how she had bought it with her ex-best friend. She almost tore it off and with sudden fury and made way to her bathroom, taking from the cabinet an orange container with a white lid filled with pills. She accidentally made eye contact with herself in the mirror and let them stay there for a moment before walking with an invisible weight to her desk where she ripped off the cover of her exam pad and started writing.

She wrote with aggression at first which later faded into tears and apologies whispered to no one present as she expressed love to those who had loved her through the pen. There weren't many letters. She put the pen down and looked into the open space, the way emptied people do, and picked it up again to write to herself.

“Dear Ericka

If you make it out of this alive it means you’re more stubborn than you think. This means you’ll have to do everything you feel you can’t. Firstly, get help...whether it is a group or shrink. Forgive Amber and your ex…”

Abby wrote on and on before putting the pen down to glare at the white pills that starred up at her like bullets. They might as well have been. She swallowed them, and a blackness swallowed her.

She woke up in a white room. Blinking for vision, she heard the beeping sound that her eyes and ears traced to the machine next to her.

She was in a hospital.

Looking down, she realized the IV in her arm and a folded paper in her hand. She studied her surrounding, still in a daze, and saw no one but she heard moving feet and soft voices outside the door on her right. Unfolding the paper she read:

“Dear Ericka…”

***End of Introduction/Chapter One***