At Sea

Gabrielle Gillespie

ISSUE NO. 3 • GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

His father was lost at sea. Michael always heard of that sort of thing happening, but it had never happened to him.

His father had been on a tiny little dinghy, alone at night. His mother revealed he often did this when he couldn’t sleep and had as long as they’d been married. It was a wonder it had taken so long for these moonlight voyages to kill him, really. Michael wondered how he had never noticed the door creaking open and his father slipping out during so many nights of his boyhood.

He looked at Donegal anew after his father was lost. All of the guarantees of his home, he realized, were not those of the rest of the world. There were towns without beige soldiers’ mean looks in the streets. There were places where every roof didn’t leak. When he was hungry, he thought there was another future where he could never know what that felt like again. When he thought of that phantom fullness, he felt his sallow cheeks fattening, arms growing stronger, a layer of fat keeping him warm even though the wet wind was real and the fat was not.

One morning he sat in the rickety boat and for the first time, his legs wobbled and head swam at the worry of tumbling over. He had known to be afraid of the water during storms and when he stood on a cliff high above it, but this casual fright was new, or something maybe he had known once but had been taught to ignore as a child because his father needed help and it was a son’s lot to do so.

It was a foolish fear and a counterintuitive one. If any of his ancestors had let a fear of drowning consume them, they would have starved. Yet the next morning he laid in bed, claiming due to sick but really because he became stiff as a board at the mere thought of boarding that boat.  

“What will you do if you don’t fish?” his wife Claire asked.

“I didn’t have to be a fisherman,” he said.

“I suppose you could have been a priest,” she said, “But you’re a shit reader and you love me too much.”

“I could have been a cowboy,” he said.

“The McCallen’s have some pigs you could wrangle but there’s no cows for miles.”

“I’ll travel then,” he said, rolling over to face the wall. Claire laughed.

His heart used to lift every time he smelled his mother’s fresh bread or saw the morning sun hit dewy grass just right, but now the joy didn’t strike so deep. People always said these sorts of things you never get tired of but no one ever pointed out that sometimes you do.

Yet his boredom excited him, in a way that he felt completely ready for something to happen at any moment. He had no idea what exactly, but he felt this Event watching him, waiting for the moment to introduce itself like a shy girl standing on the edge of a dance floor.

He wanted new people, new places, new problems. He wanted to be impressed about something for the first time, grow used to it, then throw it away.

He walked by the docks and thought about boarding ships. One day, he did. For some reason this boat did not scare him. Probably because he told himself it would be the last one. He wouldn’t be a fisherman in the next life. He would find one place on dry land that was his. Or he would travel on horseback across prairies.

He felt sorry for his wife and his brother. Would they bury him in an empty coffin like they did his father? But he was dying here anyway, growing in too small a skin that would strangle him if he didn’t tear it. And if it didn’t tear now, something worse would happen. When he took off the glasses of a native son’s love, he had seen a misery he thought was just a part of him. Now was time to amputate.  

As the ship sailed out, people discussed their destinations but he stayed silent. He didn’t know it yet. He only knew anywhere was better than here.

Scattered Ashes

Asad Hussain Jung

ISSUE NO. 3 • GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

We took her on ship, the rocky Arabian Sea our road

We protected her tightly, gripping her cold metal against

Our sun-browned skin. We looked suspicious as we looked

Into the murky water. Coloured by years of waste and litter,

Could this be her new home? The thought made us guilty.

The water began to clear, as we moved past the filth that the

Land and water was glued by. Old colonial buildings reminded

Us that this land was ours, then not. She loved nothing, but

Those that she created. Like a star blast, she feared no destruction.

To create was to love.

Now, with holy roses we scatter her

She, whose dust formed us

Whose love allowed the gravity necessary for existence.

Allah Hafiz

Things Left Unsaid

Jennifer Willis

ISSUE NO. 3 • GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

In this piece, I think about my college experience, and how it all has prepared me for my future. It’s addressed to the person who played a big role in the reason why my college experience was the way it was.

We both know that I’ve done it, but we’ve never spoken it out loud.

You realized it during my junior year in high school, after I told you that I threw up during basketball practice. When you jokingly asked if I was pregnant, instead of saying “ew, boys,” I defensively said “no, I’m on my period right now.” I realized that you’d realized it when you gave me hug after I blurted out that idiotic response.

The only other time we talked about it was more recently, two months before my wedding. You asked me if I was on any birth control. Being the poor immigrant women we are, we concurred that birth control was shady and family planning was best. Who knows what that kind of stuff really does to you anyway.

Another thing left unspoken was why I was leaving your home so early to make my own, barely my own person at 22. For people like us, 22 was early to fly the nest. We both knew why, though. We just didn’t want to think of that night, way back when.

It was time to put down a deposit for a college and you chose the school for me. By your lucky stars, your youngest child happened to be born on that very important day, and we were throwing a party for her. No one in the entire family understood why I was not there when we cut the cake. I was probably the biggest nuisance of the night. Maybe I’d bugged you too much about going to my dream school that was too far away while you were putting up decorations earlier in the day. During the party, I stayed upstairs sobbing; baby cousins popped in and out of the room, looking for somewhere to play and hoping I would stop soon. Maybe the idea of me being gone bugged you so much that you decided holding me hostage for another four years would be worth it. Four years of commuting to a majority resident university. Four years of sharing a room with a sister seven years my junior. Four years of a long-distance relationship I was only allowed to maintain on your terms. Four years of working to provide for myself because I felt bad asking you for help. Four years of working to provide for myself because I was determined to become independent from you. Four years of discomfort and bitterness. Four more years of being at home, with you.

Another thing left unspoken is the reason why I’ve forgiven you for that night and those years that followed. It took me a while to figure out why you did it. Years of reflection and navigating complex feelings. Feelings that make me want to have a mother-daughter dance at my wedding, not father-daughter. Feelings that make me want to walk myself down the aisle. Feelings that push me to forgive him, and hold him accountable at the same time.

The spring before I was to leave for college, his abuse got worse than it had been in years. We are best friends, you and I, and you didn’t want me to go. You were scared to be alone. Understandable, completely. And you are forgiven. After four years of feeling alienated, outcasted, pushed aside, worked to the bone, lonely – I have forgiven you, and you know I have. Because that’s what best friends do. We’re there for each other when the going gets tough. But you think it means that I can forgive him too, and I can’t yet. You two are alright now, and I want to forgive him because I know it’ll make you happy. But I still can’t bring myself to say hello to him when I walk through the door. I can’t lean in to his hugs. I can’t dispel the image of him in my mind, the one that made you scared enough to hold me back from my dreams.

After I failed my road test, you said I should let him teach me to drive. I have to pass the exam before the wedding, so you think I might finally be willing to take his help. He is a good driver, but I quietly refused. I’ll learn from someone else in time. My husband and I will road-trip to our new home as newlyweds; we’ll go halfway across the country, just like I wanted to four years ago, when you weren’t ready. But one thing will not be left unspoken – you are my mother, I am your daughter, and we are best friends.

Luna Park

Phil Thompson

ISSUE NO. 3 • GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

I’m saying goodbye to a part of my life and a place. I will probably have to say goodbye to other parts of my life and other places in the future but I really don’t want to.

I enjoyed shopping and sought out ways to prolong my time in the supermarket. I think it was the anonymity. And the purposefulness. I stalked through the dimly lit shelves of alcohol and selected a six-pack: something dark today, something called Luna Park from Byzantium Brewery in Anna Cortes, I’d never heard of it. The packaging depicted a stylized crescent moon between the tips of dark pine trees, faintly lit by a glowing lantern at the bottom of the case. That was first in the cart. Then several boules of sourdough, a jar of green olives, a block of gouda, spicy mustard, red peppers, Guinness-battered brats, coffee concentrate (I liked the shape of the bottle), a Jamaican rub, chicken breasts, pre-cooked garlic bread, eight ounces of tri-tip, pears, potatoes. And in the miscellaneous aisles, birthday candles. All for me. Except for the candles. But you never know.

As I was checking out, I noticed a woman in the line in front of me. Middle-aged, wearing athletic pants and a pastel yellow fleece sweater. She was really nice to the tired-looking man at the register. Judging by the amount in her cart, she was shopping for a family. A movie was playing on cable that night that I wanted to watch, but I didn’t have any other errands and I didn’t want to go home, because I knew I would succumb to one of those depressing early-evening naps, so I waited until she pulled out of the parking lot and followed her. I liked to see where the families lived.

She drove across the bridge into an upscale neighborhood where the street forked into two one-ways separated by a grassy, tree-lined esplanade. I used to know some people who lived in this area, but they had all moved away a long time ago. The light of the sun, dipping below the ridge which we’d driven up, sunk like arrows into the strong brown tree trunks. Its orange tinge turned gold against the drab brick houses of the block, and the windows with the closed curtains flashed like wet eyes. A sliver of frigid moon could be glimpsed between the treetops.

A kid ran in front of my car. I didn’t need to brake – he was far enough down the block, and ran back after retrieving his ball – but I felt a lump form in my throat and I pounded the top of the wheel with my hands and cursed into the roof. I curled around the first break in the median and rattled home. I got home, drank all the beer, and went to sleep before midnight, dreaming of a gigantic purple shape that crushed the city into powder. Woke up to no good news.

So Long

Pardo, C.

ISSUE NO. 3 • GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

to the tune of Helena by My Chemical Romance

“Goodnight stars

Goodnight air

Goodnight noises everywhere”

-Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon

Long ago

Can I take a step back? Before I say goodbye. Just allow me this last reverie.

Just like the hearse, you die to get in again

Death and birth. Stagnation and Growth. Growing up and getting older. It's all the same thing, isn’t it?

Changing is dying.

We are so far from you

We aren’t who we used to be. There are so many years between you and me the space is hazy with all the time that’s fermented. I’m barely recognizable.

You’re not here anymore and all I can tell is that I’m here instead.

Burning on

I-

Just like a match, you strike to incinerate

Is this what living is?

The lives of everyone you know

No wait

And what's the worst you take

No no this isn’t what I wanted

(Worst you take)

No wait, please

From every heart you break

I can’t take it, don’t do this to me

(Heart you break)

I’m not ready

And like a blade you stain

I don’t know how yet

(Blade you stain)

Please please I’m not ready

Well, I've been holding on tonight

I’m not ready to grow up.

What's the worst that I could say?

Let me be a kid again.

Things are better if I stay

What if I promised to be good? What if I had the cutest laugh and the brightest smile? And chubby little arms that were open wide as I could stretch them? That couldn’t wrap themselves all the way around my father’s chest but could hold all the love in the world.

I promise I wouldn’t be any trouble. I would always listen and put my toys away. I might not always remember but if you reminded me I would - I promise, I promise I would.

So long and goodnight

I guess it doesn’t matter.

So long and goodnight

There’s no use believing in childish fantasies anyway.

Came a time

I can’t remember

When every star fall

The last time I was simply and plainly happy.

Brought you to tears again

Can you?

We are the very hurt you sold

I didn’t think so.

That’s the danger of nostalgia, isn’t it?

Can you hear me?

No not anymore. My memory is fading.

Are you near me?

I still wish I was.

Can we pretend?

Haven’t we been playing this whole time?

To leave and then

It’s hard to pretend we’ve been left farther apart than we already are.

We'll meet again

If I smile tightly while I say this it’s not because I’m lying.

When both our cars collide

It’s because I know that’s why I’m crying.

We can’t keep meeting like this.

What's the worst that I could say?

I want you to stay.

Things are better if I stay

It would all be so much easier this way.

So long and goodnight

But you were never here, were you?

You’re just me.

And I’m alone.

So long and goodnight

Goodbye.

Well, if you carry on this way

I can do nothing but move forward.

Things are better if I stay

All I have is this moment.

So long and goodnight

There is no going back.

So long and goodnight

But I’ll tuck you in gently, my childish fantasy

before I turn off the light.

I Went to Europe and All I Got Was Depressed

Gabby Gillespie

ISSUE NO. 2 • Are we there yet?

This is what I didn’t say in all my instagrams from when I studied abroad.

Content Warning: This piece heavily discusses depression and suicide

        Do not go to Europe because you think it will cure your depression.

        I do not think any continent has the power to cure severe depression. I have only tried Europe and North America. Australia seems promising, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

        I had been in a deep depression for about a year and a half when I packed my bags for old London town. I had asked about study abroad options on all my college tours and planned to go first semester junior year with all my friends since we were freshman. Even though I could feel myself getting worse, I had never let something like a pesky crumbling mental state make excuses for me to sit out.

I nodded along in agreement as family friends told me how much fun I would have. I needed to believe them. Pictures of Europe had decorated my walls and screensavers since middle school, put there not for a burgeoning wanderlust or any desire for cultural enrichment but because Europe is the classic cocoon where you escape anything that troubles you and grow into an impenetrable fortress of confidence and mystique (See: Eat Pray Love, Sabrina, Eurotrip). I fully bought into those Audrey Hepburn Tumblr posts and would think without any irony as self-loathing ate me alive that one day I would go there and leave my issues in the trash can at security.

The cobblestone streets and sunny canals on my Pinterest board did not match up with the landscape of my mind where all the gutters overflowed and citizens choked on smog. I slept three hours a night and five hours during normal daylight hours, laying in bed much of the time besides. I made myself physically nauseous from worrying. I was paranoid constantly and could not trust a single person not to betray me at any moment.  For about twenty months now, I thought in an iambic pentameter of suicidal ideation, with all my regular thoughts being followed by a stressed little “kill yourself” each time. It was the backbeat to all my melodies, showing up even without any summons or triggers. It followed me home every night, taunting, calling my name and telling me to turn around and finally embrace it.

I needed to go to a hospital.

Instead I went to Heathrow.

///

I struggle mostly with passive suicidal ideation where you can think about taking a long walk off a short building all day long but do not have concrete plans or are seeking the means to act on these thoughts. “Volitional moderators” is a term for the factors that turn suicidal thoughts into suicidal behavior. I thought the verb “to kill” over and over, but in only a few moments was I volitionally moderated enough to go “so kill”.

This distinction may seem confusing to those who do not experience suicidal depression. I just said I was constantly thinking about killing myself, so wouldn’t that mean I was always close to doing so? I guess. Yet still in my mind during all those stressed syllables, I could see a veil keeping me from what I could do. I knew when the veil was up and when it was slipping.

I know the veil was actually falling in these moments because I could see what was on the other side, and I felt the panic you get when you know something is coming to kill you- heartbeat quickening, blood rushing, mouth dry, and the clearness of mind adrenaline brings. My broken brain features a piss-poor memory, but I remember these moments crisply even though the action was only happening in my mind, these seconds before some sort of self-preservation kicked in or I got interrupted and the veil fixed itself. So when I say I really almost killed myself then, please believe me. If you said a bear chased you, I would offer the same courtesy. I learned pretty good manners in England.

I remember the four spots I came closest, and now I offer you them so if you are studying abroad or there on a trip, you can take pictures and post them and pretend to not be severely depressed too.

Here is the tourist’s guide to where to almost off yourself (that’s a British term):

1. The High Street Kensington tube stop, London, UK

I passed through this stop on the Circle line almost every day that semester. High Street Kensington is close to the palace so you will see a blend of tourist spots and upscale housing. This was also the stop closest to my school’s campus which has since been demolished and turned into condominiums. The stop itself features a Pret a Manger, a Ben’s Cookies, a stationary store, and a dark restaurant that they will let you pee even if you are not a customer (thanks, guys!).

It was late, and I was waiting for my train after my 6:30 Introduction to Theater class ended. Unlike the average college student abroad, classes were something I looked forward to, as it was a social situation that I could simply show up to without the agonizing of planning and possible rejection. Everyone else in the class walked home together while I alone had to reach my dorm via tube. I thought of my friends walking together, their bond continuing to strengthen after mine had been amputated.

I feel like I missed out on a lot of socializing as a kid so now I create these simple inorganic rules to understand how other people do it. I create values in my head based on minutes clocked together and allocate points to different kinds of interactions- small talk, one point, intimate confessions, five- like I’m playing the Sims. It seemed like everyone else around me was unlocking level after level while my bar wouldn’t move. Those little failures to connect were annoying in the moment but would all pile up when I found myself alone. If I had someone to ride with that night, I wouldn’t be thinking like I was.

I was listening to a cover of “Horse with No Name”, one of the slow, monotone songs that I would retreat into on these rides as they were perfect to disassociate to, a new symptom of my illness that left me somewhat dazed almost all the time.

I was not dissociating right now though. I was filled with dread. I had nowhere to go that I wanted to be. No one else was on the platform, I thought opportunistically, There were no witnesses to feel guilty about. I imagined the smack of body to train, sort of feeling like a belly flop into the community pool but with no pain after the hit. I thought about Mario and Luigi and perfectly timing a jump to the approach of a moving object. I almost laughed at the idea of the beeps that played when the plumber stepped on a poison mushroom going off as I jumped.

The train approached. I thought about the commuters being home late because of my interference, commuters with kids and lovers and better reasons to be on time than I had to be alive, who would resent me for my interruption even while they pitied me. My feet stayed rooted to the concrete platform until I stepped between the sliding doors.

2. North Bridge, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

When you get off the train from London to Edinburgh, you ascend the stairs to the top of North Bridge, which connects High Street and Prince Street. It is a beautiful spot. You can see Arthur’s Seat, a peak of the gorgeous Scottish highlands. From that vantage, you can enjoy the highs and lows of the hilly ancient city. You can also look down through the train station’s glass ceiling, which resembles a mammoth greenhouse.  I crossed the bridge at night, leaned over the edge, and imagined my body landing on that glass, the splat that was me shocking the travelers inside the station.

I had booked my solo trip to Scotland the night before, buying an expensive train ticket, a cheap hostel bunk, and a cheaper bus ticket in an impulsive fifteen minutes. My mom saw the charge and called me, beseeching me not to travel alone, but I refused. It was over the extended break from school in which I had over a week of no plans besides watching reality TV in my musty apartment, dreading a roommate discovered me on the couch, unmoved. I was sick of seeing Instagrams pour in from friends in Italy and Iceland, enjoying plans I had been too afraid of rejection to request inclusion on. I needed to salvage this time with something to share when classes resumed, the silence while listening to others’ joy unbearable.

A group of my friends had already seen Scotland without me, and I knew I would be making sad comparisons the whole time as I saw it alone, but it was the closest place I could go to on a Friday and make it back by Monday. I weighed my desperation against that and showed up for my early train.

Travelling alone is often touted as a wonderful, life-changing experience. A chance to escape it all and really get to know yourself. You’re free to set your own plans and do what YOU want to do. You’ll talk to people you never would have if you had friends with you. Your confidence will sky-rocket and forever will self-assurance follow you.

Studying abroad leaves you alone whether you want it or not. You will be alone waiting at airport gates, riding trains, riding the tube. Alone walking through art museums, laughing at short films in darks screenings, standing on balconies and staring at skylines, watching outdoor plays, finding small joys in being part of the world as a solo observer. You’ll be alone eating meals you put off for too long, drinking coffee in crowded shops and dreading people negotiating seating and outlets. Alone ordering take-out that feels extravagant for just one person. Walking home alone because you thought living separately from your friends would be a good idea, because you were fairly confident they would have refused you if you asked to live with them, because you did not think you could bear that so you avoid asking the question altogether.

​         Most of time being alone did not make me feel liberated. I felt I had no say in my state. Attempts to remedy it were short-lived and could never fill the hungry hole I was. I saw my friends rarely enough that when reunited, huge gaps had been carved of their lives that I would never know. It felt like they had all crossed a threshold together and the moment after the fusion, it became unattainable for newcomers. I was lonely with others and with myself and no cultural experience made that go away. I had spent enough time in my head to go far past the point of healthy reflection, a point of constant circling back to flaws and miseries with no one around to take me back to reality.

I had been having a nice enough time in Scotland at first, a little high off my impulsiveness and determined to not let my mother’s worries manifest. I enjoyed a pleasant train ride where I read Macbeth. I went to the coffee shop where JK Rowling wrote and enjoyed an Irish Coffee.

But then the sky got darker. I hadn’t eaten a substantial meal that day, and the effort to secure food is mammoth for the sick like me. I put pressure on myself to find a delectable meal every time, treating a boring meal as some sort of failure to constantly live life to the fullest in this one little way. As I was away, I also needed a place to eat said meal and I was afraid of a judgmental look because I was eating alone or that I would be turned away because of the state of my travelling clothes which limited the restaurants I allowed myself to seek service in.

I finally became ravenous and went to the meal I would eat almost every day abroad after all my spiraling, unsatisfying but attainable and one that came with a place where you could eat alone and be accepted- an egg salad sandwich from Pret a Manger. Pret’s are EVERYWHERE in Europe, and I thank them for being a depressed girl’s refuge time after time. I had one of my lamest moments ever in that Edinburgh Pret as I sat at the community table, watched a new episode of my favorite show on my phone, and sobbed. I wept right into my egg salad on whole wheat with watercress. A pair of young parents and their baby in a stroller stared at me as my mayo-scented hiccups broke through the loud fast-casual eatery.  I guess they would not be one of the amazing people I met in transit.

I used to be more melancholic than anything with a few occasional outbursts, but during this time, my depression created these big, public sobbings. I was a crybaby. A loud fat crybaby with big fat baby tears and big gulping gasps, weeping over how I deserved no place in human existence. I Chris-Crocker-ed it in my bed, on the tube, on the sidewalk, and in hotel bathrooms with people just on the other side of the door.

I put on my headphones and walked to my hostel. But before that, I stopped on the bridge and dizzied myself by leaning over the edge and staring down at the station below.

I was lost in my patterns. Of doing very little then making one impulsive decision in pursuit of happiness, of starving myself and then being unhappy with the taste of what I finally ate, of thinking about killing myself passively and then finding myself here, one jump away from action.

I stepped back suddenly as if my inhibitions in the slam of the door on their way out. It was too cold to debate so I just left. I got some Indian food and a glass of cheap wine. I read on my phone in my hostel bunk and fell asleep before midnight. I had thought about going out alone, even packed an outfit, but I thought about returning to that bridge with alcohol in me and again feared a falling veil.  

3. St. James Park tube station, London, UK

You may have noticed by now I have a thing for trains. A lot of positives to suicide by train. No one would have to find my body, it would be found upon deliverance. It’s also quick, no post-moment to regret it and hope for reversal. And I live in New York City so convenience cannot be understated.

My ideation used to prefer stabbing. I remember watching the end of Romeo and Juliet in the eighth grade and observing how cleanly Juliet went through herself with Romeo’s happy dagger. That age is when I first started having suicidal thoughts, and I would run my hands over the hilt of my mother’s kitchen knives. I was afraid of cutting myself when chopping vegetables, but when I was the proverbial onion, I was not so bothered.  Stabbing is messy and requires quite a lot of strength, especially if self-inflicting. It isn’t quite so easy as an approaching D train or tube, in this case.

I find myself at Saint James Park because I have just left my parents’ hotel, named for another saint. St. Ermin’s Hotel was a secret spy base for M16 during World War II. I had stayed on the daybed in my parents’ room for almost every night that week. I sort of felt like a spy, going undercover with my family of happy tourists while keeping my state secret of personal misery. My dad, slightly amnesiac, kept asking me to list all my trips taken so far, and I smiled as I recounted museums and historical sights, hiding my feeling of inadequacy with how few I had been on, as I found it hard to find anyone to go on them with, two having been cancelled by friends already both for the reason I assumed of hating me. I talked lovingly of the National Theatre, which I spent many hours alone at, sitting on my computer and trying to write or do homework or really just avoid my insufferable roommate.

I had five roommates. Three were from China and were very nice and mostly kept to themselves. One I had chosen, a girl who’d become one of my best friends over the course of last year. I wanted to room with her because I wanted to grow closer to her and because she was outside my main friend group that I often felt periphery to. The last roommate was an acquaintance of hers who had begged her to room with us.

As someone who constantly feels completely unlovable, I try to be nice to everyone I meet. As someone who often felt friendless and bullied growing up, I try to understand that the person most people dislike often has a lot to offer. And of course, as a ~~Feminist~~, I never want to tear down another woman, recognizing the societal factors that make us compete with each other.

All that being said: this girl was a cunt.

She had a face like a puckered lemon and a personality like a palate cleanser. Have you ever met a person with so little self-awareness they sort of become a marvel? Had everyone they met just smiled and nodded their whole life or was the bubble they existed in so opaque they just missed any sort of negative reinforcement?

She was undoubtedly self-absorbed. She spun the strangest details into brags- she had eaten vegetables for dinner, her friend from home dated a millionaire, her mom was very generous to their housekeeper. She was extremely proud of not wanting to go out on a Saturday, of eating healthy food made at home, of spending a day doing homework. Her jokes were undetectable because of her monotone, and if you didn’t laugh, she would spin that into a brag too- she had this dry sense of humor not many people understood. She monologued in her bland vocal fry without interruption even as another person tried to add something, even if that addition was that you had heard this story from her before.  

Boring would have been fine. I can get along with boring. But this girl had a mean streak that came out the moment you stopped listening and nodding with brag after brag. She would disengage the moment you shared something individual, even if your own point contrasted with nothing but the experience of her hearing the sound of her own voice. The only two people I have seen tolerate her after a long period of time were the sort of people pleasers who were so nice they were in complete denial about people’s flaws. My other roommate was one of these people, and she asked me to avoid any sort of conflict.

But she’d tear me up with upturned nose and WASP-y derision. She had a narrow worldview that would have made maximum sense in a Cathy comic. She fretted about her body, said she appreciated how her friends pointed out her weight gain, and talked to me with the assumption all women were similarly preoccupied. She told me a lewd joke a male acquaintance made about her boobs. I said if my friend said that to me we wouldn’t be friends anymore. She literally said “boys will be boys.” On one of our first nights in London, we were at a bar, and a few guys were surrounding her. I went over to ask if she was okay, as women do. The next morning she rebuked me as a buzzkill. At first I stood my ground, but she would prick and prick, and I crumbled.

I look back and pity her, knowing it takes a very sad person to feel safe in such a small box. But at the time, all I felt was pissed off.

A part of me that still liked myself knew she was someone I should be flattered to be an enemy of, but that’s not comforting while she’s eating next to me, when she is currently picking apart the food I eat and the flannels I wear. I would hear her saying my name from another room with the derision she gave everything and want to come out kicking, but then I would think about her untouched arrogance, how she would bring this up for weeks, how I’d eventually assuage. So I stayed in my room and hated myself more for my weakness. I became quiet around her, fortressing myself with loud headphones (although she still talked when I had those on, unable to leave a silence).

I thought I was a fairly docile depressed person, partial to staring out of windows and weepy nights in, but anger arrived that autumn. I snapped over the trivial. I made a mistake and wanted to punch a wall. I, an out-of-shape girl from the suburbs, fantasized about getting to physically fight someone, tired of all my tyrannies being stuck inside my head.

As a fun bonus, this girl also had a casual homophobia I had not encountered much in college and was sort of shocked by to see still out living in this expressively liberal woman. Fitting in with her general Cathy comic tendencies, her sensibility was about ten years out of date, claiming herself tolerant but saying she wanted a gay best friend to dress her and take her out, but that lesbians were “weird,” giggling like a child at the idea of a woman dating a woman. She laughed as she told a story that sounded to me as about a friend earnestly trying to come out to her, but she framed as a joke (To be fair, her jokes were terrible--so might not be able to give her flack for this one).

I had heard all this and mostly ignored it. I was just starting to express my own queerness and did not need to hear her say “weird” with that little-girl disapproval about something I was actually sensitive about (Ironically, she once bragged that she had an amazing gaydar. Guess I was a blip). But then as a fun anecdote, she shared that she and her friends used to make out at high school parties because boys asked them to, a story that most people would be embarrassed about or at least disgusted by the misogyny of, but she thought was really cool of her. I was surprised she said this and she asked snobbily hadn’t I ever done that?

I saw red. The anger said, “Self-pity, take a walk. I’ll get this one.” My words were calm but my face was red and eyes hot with tears. I said how nice it must have been to kiss a girl as a teen and not watch your friends suddenly ignore you, to not worry every hug and compliment would be seen as a come-on, to not hide your crushes because if you shared, you would end up completely alone. I stood and screamed and tried to break this bubble because I was big now and this wasn’t supposed to be a problem anymore. I didn’t want to be afraid again, especially not of people in my house, in my school. Because my current mental nightmare began with meeting a girl like her who when asked what I was worth, everything she did said nothing.

I went to my room and cried and my other roommate came in, upset with me for pushing the issue. She said now the other girl thought I hated her and I answered that I did.

I was rotting. If eating a cheesy meal or watching a stupid movie with a bottle of wine made me feel better for a microsecond, I did it. It’s not like I didn’t want to be better. I held my self-loathing and my self-worth on opposing scales but I really was trying for the second to win, even when standing on platforms and bridges.

But this girl made one side of the scale tip further and further, and I am looking at my photo album and watching the light drain from my eyes. I hid out in cafes and libraries as late as I could before the tube stopped running and I had to go home. Of course, I have an illness. I was depressed long before she was ever my flatmate. She didn’t know she was dealing with a suicidal person. But she did know I was trying to be her friend once. She did know someone had said her words hurt and thought that hurt was silly. She knew it was raining and still pissed on my leg and I don’t need to forgive her.

I can’t forgive smiling to my mom and telling her all her worrying was for naught, lying and saying I was doing just fine over here on my own. I can’t forgive sobbing the moment my family’s black cab was out of sight because I wanted more than anything to be with them so at least when I woke up from a depression nap, someone who wanted my victory was there. I stood on that platform feeling more alone than I ever had. This time the volition wasn’t about a declaration or a retribution. I just wanted to not be in pain, to not have to walk back into that flat.

I got on the train though. It would make my mom sad if I didn’t.

4. Hyde Park Corner Tube Stop

        I have confided my friends how lonely I am and the invites start springing up. Maybe they wanted to make an effort all along and just needed a direction. Maybe it wasn’t about me.  

        We are on a dinner cruise and I take a picture with the people I’ve now known for two and a half years and I feel grateful to have shared life with them. We dance, and I am looking for the people I met when I had no one to talk to and am grateful for them too. My roommate talks to my friends and doesn’t acknowledge me. We roll our eyes as she walks away.

        My friends are so sad to be leaving, and I disguise my immense relief in jokes. In the same way, I thought anywhere was better before I came to London, I am thinking the same thing as I leave it. I feel pricks of jealousy as they share stories and the in-jokes go over my head, but I am a bit hopeful again that I’ll be there for the next memory.

        After the cruise, a few of us decide to go over to a winter carnival. My friends and I admire the lights and walk through the vendors, playing with their handmade toys. It’s a good night.

        I walk to the train station. My friends offer to let me sleep on their couch so I don’t have to walk home alone but I want to be tough so I begin a long journey back.

        I walk through the crowded station and think about how this will be one of my last times alone on a tube platform. The laces on my boots hit my leg with each step.

        I had a good night. I could have been having good nights all along. I could have asked for help sooner. I wasted my parents’ money and worries. I wasted an opportunity I can never get back.

        I had one good night but the hole is still there. It’s still going to be there at home. I might feel like this forever and that is the most terrifying thing I have ever thought. I just keep thinking I don’t wanna don’t wanna don’t wanna. I can see through the veil and the void on that side matches the void on mine. Hopping through the veil at least means I have say in where I am though.

        It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming.

        It’s just one more day.

        I pick the void I’m in.  

//////

The first time I told someone I wanted to kill myself was in a therapist’s office almost a year after I left for London. I didn’t realize I had never told anyone until I did. It’s literally something that is always on my mind. It was a secret I didn’t know I was keeping.

I still stood too close to the edges of platforms after I came back. But I also told people I was unhappy without joke or allusion. When I got angry, I hit a bag instead of myself. I made trying new things into my pattern. I worked all day and slept eight hours all at night.

But I still think like that. I know this comes and goes and I’m afraid for its return. We’ve run into each other enough in the last few months. Even when I was doing all the right things, it found me. My life is about to undergo a big change and I won’t be able to write off one bad semester and start over again.

I still haven’t told most of my friends what I almost did, but I told a couple. They had no suspicions at all. Suicides don’t tell people because they want no interference if they ever act. I give people the power to kill me but not the power to save me.

I’m a competent suicidal, who successfully hid behind jokes and Instagrams and good grades for years. I broke alone. I have lots of friends but still thought the the burden of my life would be a relieving absence to them. I gave them even less credit than I gave myself.

I wish I had been stronger. I wish I could get that time back. I wish I hadn’t spent all that money to cry in cafes. I want to know what those months would have been like if I didn’t second-guess love, but I never will. I can only have the scratched future.

Do not go to another country because you think it will cure your depression. No marble statue or Gothic cathedral is going to fix you. But if you are in another country and find yourself alone in train stations often enough to drop your veil, just get on the train. At least then you can go somewhere else.