The following is a work of fiction. It contains sensitive content. Viewer discretion is advised.

National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

The first time I tried to kill myself I did so by jumping off a bridge. Or rather, I tried to jump off a bridge but, well, it was an overpass and they had one of those kinds of high chain-link fence things that kinda curve towards the road... it's to stop idiots like me from impeding the afternoon rush-hour traffic. I was trying to figure out how exactly I could get over the fence when... Someone called the cops on me, you see, it was midnight on... I think a Monday, and I was barefoot and wearing a black hoodie and apparently in my small town that warranted a call to the police. They had been informed of a suspicious figure on the overpass and so they picked me up and drove me the three-minute walk home. Later that week my parents checked me into an asylum.

They don't like using the word “asylum” in asylums, by the way. They prefer to call it “in-patient care” or “mental hospital” if you really want to get technical, but the doors were locked, the windows didn't open, and they had 15-minute bed checks at night, so I'm pretty sure that counts as an asylum.

The second time I tried to kill myself was about four weeks after the first. That's because the longest you can stay in the asylum I was in was three weeks. And the outpatient “transitional” program that they have is another week. And the day before my last day in the outpatient program I decided to slit my wrists because nothing I’d been through had helped.

It didn't work, obviously, so I had to go to the program the next day in a sweatshirt and hope no one saw... but the woman running things noticed, so I was taken from there in an ambulance to a different asylum.

You see, they have to take you by ambulance, because if they don't they could be liable, so I couldn't even go home and pick up a change of clothes or a toothbrush. My parents couldn't even drive me because if I had jumped out of the car or had a moment alone and swallowed a bunch of pills my parents could've sued the hospital or something. So instead I got to be strapped down to a gurney, wheeled into an ambulance, wheeled out of that ambulance and into another building while it rains, and then I got to go up an elevator and wait around in a lobby, flat on my back, with people standing over me and telling me “welcome to whatever the hell asylum in New England”. I feel like a kid on the first day of school being dropped off by their parents in a shitty minivan with too many bumper stickers and having a mom beep the horn and loudly yell “have a good day sweetie!” It sucked.

Funnily enough, I actually knew two people there. One of them I had met in the previous asylum, and one of them I knew just... coincidentally. it's weird to meet someone at a Halloween party, sneak out and smoke weed with them in someone’s little sister's treehouse, then go back inside to eat candy and flirt with them all night, and then find them in an asylum, two doors down from yours, the scars on your wrists lining up when you shake hands. Life's funny like that. Coincidences, I guess, or maybe fate, depending on what your affiliation is.

I might've been too quick to call the last place an asylum. They let me keep my shoelaces. In this one we couldn't even wear shoes or belts or have pants or sweatshirts with drawstrings and we had to sing in the shower count so that they would know we were still alive. I spent a week there well I spent a week before they decided to transfer me to another place.

This one wasn’t an asylum. It was a CBAT. I forget what that stands for, but it was nicer than the others. We didn’t have doors, but we did have curtains, and there wasn’t 15 minute bed checks. I even had a window in my room, though most of it was frosted glass, so I couldn’t see through it. One little bit at the top was clear, though. Just enough to see the stars. When I couldn’t sleep, and that was often, I’d lay on my back, on the floor, my head pressed against the wall so I could see the most sky I could, and just gaze out the window.

One night, I decided to paint it.

I borrowed ink from my veins, the wall was my canvas, my fingers my brushes, and when I was done, I slept before the dawn could touch me.

No one else, ever again, can touch me.