I’ll figure this out someday

Maybe I’ll just stay right here for the rest of my days. What is the point in getting up if it means facing the failures that follow me like a dark raincloud bent on making me unhappy? Oh look, it’s the kid down the street who I used to play with when I was younger. When I was happier. He looks different. Maybe it’s the muscles he’s gotten, or a perhaps I’m just realizing how much of a growth spurt he has had. We used to be inseparable. Never parting until our mother forcibly took us back home for such nonsense as baths and bed time. Now when I see him, about once every few months, we exchange a quick head nod before going on with our own lives. I remember his carefree attitude, does he remember mine? Do I remember mine? Now I’m staring at the old photographs in my hands. Who is that smiling child? It can’t be me, can it? I give up and throw the pictures across the room and watch as they slowly drift to the floor. There’s the wall I would always tape all my new posters and my collages that I created out of the latest AP ma gazine issues. It’s still covered, but it won’t be for long. In a matter of days that wall is going to be blank. This room is going to empty. Those pictures, now lying on the other side of the room, are going to be packed up into a box and placed in some cheap self-storage unit. I can’t take all thes e soon-to-be-gone memories staring at me. I escape to the bathroom and sit on the lid of the toilet seat. My bedroom used to be a sanctuary where I could retreat but now I only feel a quiet nagging depression when I enter it. The bathroom is now my new sanctuary. Sure, it’s nowher e near as comfortable and it is always freezing. I watch as goose bumps form on my arms. I hug them to me and sit there quietly, pretending that everything is perfectly fine. I stare at the ugly pealing wall paper that lines the walls. As ugly as it is, I’m going to miss it. I listen carefully and hear only my own breathing and a continuous leak from the bathtub. Drip. My ability to cope is running low. Drip. I need an escape. Drip. One that is father then just the bathroom. Drip. Suddenly. Drip. The. Drip. Noise. Drip. Is. Drip. Too. Drip. Much. Drip. I run out of the bathroom and decide to go with my backup plan for times like this. I grab cold medicine and take a big swallow from the bottle. I slowly make my way to my bed. I lay down. Still wearing the clothes I wore to school. I try to just clear my mind. It’s a fruitless effort. Before I begin to delve into my own dark mind, the drug induced sleep put me out of my misery for another few precious hours.

-bye