I Carry On

I tossed the crumpled up piece of paper on the floor where it joined the others. There must have been fifty of them. I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I knew that no matter how I wrote it, they wouldn't understand.

A shout came from downstairs, my younger brother calling everyone down for dinner. I ran my hands through my hair, and stared for a moment at the knife I'd bought earlier that day. I shoved it hurriedly under my bed and went downstairs.

"...could have shouted. I wanted you to go and get them," my mom was telling my brother. An unbidden smile tugged at the corners of my mouth; mom had said the exact same thing to me on a few occasions.

After dinner I went back to my room. The pain was still there, weighing down on my soul and threatening to consume me. Loneliness, despair, guilt, shame, hopelessness, all were vying for my attention while a little voice told me that I didn't have to feel those things anymore. All I had to do was get the knife from under the bed and...

But I couldn't. Because they wouldn't understand. My family didn't know what I felt, they didn't understand my pain. They would blame themselves, no matter what my note said.

I picked up the nearest piece of paper and uncrumpled it. I scoffed at the clumsy words that stubbornly refused to tell my family why I'd done what I'd done.

"You have to carry on," said something inside me. "You have to fight the pain."

"I can't, it's too much." I don't remember grabbing the knife, but it was in my hand; it's blade promised relief, an end to the pain.

"You can fight it."

"There's nothing left for me. No reason to go on."

"Then don't do it for you. Do it for them." And I thought about my dad, smiling through dinner. And about my mom, asking each of us how our day went. My youngest sister telling us about something exciting she learned in school, and my brother bragging about his first place science project.

And I knew they loved me, even when I didn't love myself. Maybe they didn't understand my pain, but they had their own pain. And I couldn't add to it by going away.

The little voice wasn't as insistent as the emotions, and it wasn't as loud as the voice that told me I deserved to die. But it was right: I had to carry on. For them.