Fluttery pangs of unease creeped from somewhere deep inside of me up to my throat, laborious and slow, steadily worsening the longer I waited. I hadn't expected to be so anxious, considering how hopeful I first felt after seeing Kim's message.
I didn't really want to kill myself. It felt overly dramatic, shameful, as if it was my final desperate act to bring attention to myself. I think one of the things that kept me alive was my fear of not succeeding. Sprawled out on the floor, bleeding out, likely unconscious (though I doubted I would get even that far), my roommate walking in to grab one of the various objects she was perpetually forgetting.
Her hands instinctively covering her face, red, contorted, grief-stricken, blaming herself, practically throwing herself to my side, asking me questions through an unintelligible blur of tears and shock. Of course the door would be left open, someone passing by would have heard her and dashed in because that's what people are like here. No-one staying in their own business, disgustingly friendly, saccharine, but oh God did I ever want one of them to care for me, any one of them. They knew and I knew exactly how I felt. A crowd would gather around me, the ambulance would be called. People who I'd barely spoken to would act deeply affected but inside, they'd think the same thing: She's doing this for attention.
They knew how pathetically lonely I was, how I'd try and fail to be anything more than a casual acquaintance with anyone. I had friends from before, but they didn't really care about me. How could they, when every time they tried to help me I would either refuse outright or ignore them? I didn't want to be helped - I knew that I would be able to help myself if I tried a little bit harder instead of wasting the time of other people. But I couldn't. I understood how irrational it was, but at the same time, I couldn't bring myself to accept help or even affection. I didn't deserve either of those from any of those people.
Even writing all this, I know it's stupid. I knew even then, some of the time. Every now and again, reason would rise above illness and I would understand how absolutely illogical my shame and unwillingness to accept help was. When I was in one of those states, I could recognize that it was something separate from me and not based on my intelligence