Chapter Sixteen: Words that Cut with Reality

Soundtrack: The A Team (Cover by Birdy, originally by Ed Sheeran)

Author's Note: Okay guys, I know you must hate me for not giving you anything in SO LONG. I know. I seriously hate myself for not working on this more. I legitimately have no excuse except for the fact that I'm busy and working on another novel that I'm not publishing on this site for hope of future publication for sale. So. I have no excuses, and I won't try to pretend like I haven't been lazy about this project. But I am seriously going to try to finish this during the next couple of months. So that's why this chapter is so short – I'm working on something longer, but I wanted to give you a little something to hold you over. Finally, reviews are the cat's meow, and I'd love to hear from you guys. Please? They only make me write faster ;) Love you all! Enjoy!

As I sat in my room – the room of my childhood, the room of my 'home', the room I grew up in, the room that was my prison – I couldn't help but feel the loss of everything. It wasn't just that school wasn't going the way I wanted it to, or that my family sucked, or that my love life was a shit-pile. It was everything – where I had been and where I was going. It was everything that I had, and everything that I didn't. For the life of me, I just couldn't see what the point was anymore. Why did I have to continue on like this? How could anything ever get better? Why should I sit around waiting for it to get better, when I knew that it wouldn't? I felt like I'd spent my entire life waiting for things to get better – I told myself that they would after this, after that, in a few years, after I finish this. But you know what? Life was a big heaping pile of shit. Shit that stunk and rotted on my pathetic, ugly, unwanted, unloved, dying corpse. The therapists were always going to be wrong – they'd try to make me go and introduce myself to people, say hi, make things 'better' for myself. They'd tell me I could do it.

But that was all a crock of crap. Saying hello to people wouldn't work and never has. It would just be me butting in where I clearly wasn't wanted, and never would be. Hell, even if I did manage to meet people it would probably turn out to be a bunch of shit anyway. Look at damn Jacob. That fuck-face made me think he'd be my savior – finally that one person who cared about me, who'd look out for me and be there. The one person who would finally love me. But he wasn't. He never was. He just wanted to get in my pants, and then beat me when that wasn't good enough. He was just a stupid fuck. Like everyone who would ever be in my life. That's all I had. I had to face it.

Looking at my hands, I understood the truth, finally, once and for all. My life was shit. It was never going to get better. In 20 god-damn years it hadn't gotten better. I'd been telling myself that it would for all those years. Hell, I'd been looking forward to it – to that beautiful future in which I was successful, beautiful, loved, and happy. But guess what? That wasn't actually going to happen.

So why not end it? Why not just say 'fuck it' and leave it all behind. It's not like anyone would miss me. And heaven and hell? That was all probably one big crock too. God couldn't exist. Not with everything that had happened to me. People said he wanted to test me, make me stronger. But you know what? That's crap. I shouldn't have had to deal with all this fucking crap.

At that moment, as I looked up from my hands and out to the dark forest outside my window, I realized the truth. What I was going to do. What I had to do.

"Just end it." I whispered to myself in the dark. "Just end it."

Just saying the words felt better, gave me a sense of relief. I didn't have to do it. I could just slip off and cease to be. Everything would just be over, final, done and easy. What I had written in my diary…it didn't have to just be me venting. I could just make it a reality, and finally end all of this.

"But how?" I wondered. I was never one for masochism, and I didn't think I'd have to courage to cut myself…or, I shivered as a I though, shoot myself. So pills? Maybe? But that could be messy. There was no guarantee that I'd get the right dose and not just end up in the hospital with the pumping my guts out. So. How then?

Suddenly, I remembered driving out at La Push a couple weeks ago with Jacob. He'd been yelling at me, and I'd tried to zone out, looking out the window. I'd seen a group of teenage guys jumping off a cliff into the Pacific. Cliff diving, Jacob told me when I'd asked. He'd hit me when I asked if we could try. He said…that I'd probably just end up dead.

And I could. I wasn't a strong swimmer, I never had been. Sure, I could float, but not well. So if the water was rough, and a storm was blowing in. Well, that would solve that.

"Done." I whispered again, smiling to myself for the first time in what felt like years. Finally feeling relief. Finally feeling like it would be okay again.