It's ok.

The long ago pen pal said today:

"I thought you killed yourself and couldn't bring myself to email you, fearing no response."

I take this, and put it in my back pocket with my receipts, change, and a red plastic pencil sharpener.

"Don't think about it anymore, forget it."

It's hard, and hardly advice. I miss the intimacy of cutting, the depth of skin and the amount of pressure needed. Things you don't need to know, knowledge that will never make it into any formal essay, and likely never any fiction you write.

The word September hits my stomach like a punch. I am sicker than I think I am. Another year, I don't know how well I will do on another year of the grind. I am rubbed raw, rubbed raw from all this trying. It's like scraping your knees on concrete, getting up, and doing it again. Continuously scraping your knees on concrete until all the skin wears away.

Why would you do that? Something has to change, and I don't know what. How am I going to handle school for another year? It never gets easier. Life gets harder, work gets harder.

Yelling. There's more yelling. It's so fucking hot. Heat makes me anxious. It's better when no one gives a fuck, like your mother, like your father, like the friends who are busy, and the friends who have boyfriends and would rather hang out with them than you, the friends who are too cool for you, the friends who don't understand the things that make you happy, the friends who party.