User:Cycries

have you ever wanted to jump off a bridge? to forget everything and just.. jump? it's very easy, and plenty of people died on accident, but what if you were to die on purpose? or what if you jumped and didn't die? would you try again? does anyone want to die that badly?

maybe if you're a smart girl. a smart girl who was a bit odd in her elementary years. she had a creative mind and made close friends, though none of them were popular. that was okay. but some popular people would pick on this girl because she didn't believe in a god. being an atheist was uncommon down in the south, in the bible belt specifically, so it was almost destined that she'd be mocked. but she was mocked for her platinum blonde hair, her pale skin, her grey-green eyes, too, all because those traits just weren't that normal. she really, really hated herself for those traits, and she was only in fourth grade. that was reason one.

she loved her family, and her family loved her. her dad said that he would be in a very dark place if his daughter died. her mom did everything to make her happy, even though they butted heads sometimes- they were both leos, after all. her brother had depression too. so they'd joke about the darkest things, all in good fun, but there was a bit of truth in it all- they both knew it. her brother wanted to go to the air force so he could be a plane mechanic, and the girl was so deathly scared of losing him. she connected with him. she worried constantly already, and the possibility of her brother being sent out wasn't going to help- anxiety and depression mixed really, really sucked, she had learned. her mother's side was filled with rednecks that occasionally went over some bumps in the road, sometimes violent, so she had to act more daring around them. her father's side mostly contained rich northerners, and though they were nice, they weren't fun. so she had to act like a lady around them. she didn't really know what her real personality was since she put facades on so often, either for school, family, or friends. she didn't really know who she was. she learned to not trust people because she couldn't just be herself, she had to be someone to please them. she also learned not to cry and not to attract attention to herself, and not to be too annoying, not to be too clingy, to smile for the rich boys. she hated her lessons, but they came naturally, telling her how society functioned and telling her how she had to fit in. so she tried to become thinner, tried to tan, tried to dye her hair darker. she developed more facades too. that was reason two.

she met a girl that was creative, kind, hilarious, and fun. she liked her a lot. like, a lot a lot, and she was pretty sure she had a crush on the other girl. (the other girl had a crush on her too. but girls weren't allowed to date because they would get mean looks and they could've been hurt. it was the south, after all.) so they confessed to each other and they were very happy, but they were upset that they couldn't be an object. they unofficially dated. in tennessee, no one would want to hang out with them if they were gay or even bi. it was against the bible, or.. something. apparently love couldn't just be love, it had to have a gender assigned too. but they were still happy and joked a lot, and they loved each other with their entire hearts. they met a few other bisexual people and they made a safe group for lgbtq+ teens in the south. unofficially, of course. they had to keep each others' secrets so they could all be safe. that was sad, to say the least, that they had to keep it a secret so they weren't hurt or mocked or murdered. that was reason three.

she was born with asthma and anemia. severe asthma, but the anemia cleared soon enough. she couldn't breathe sometimes. she scared her parents nearly to death when she started heaving in the middle of the night, lungs giving away, and she sometimes let them off when it was just a panic attack or her crying. (she had to cry at night. no one wants to see a girl cry.) one night she started heaving, but it wasn't her lungs that were struggling, it was her heart. sometimes her heart hurt because she was feeling so bad and so depressed and so suicidal, but never like this. like electric shocks were running through her veins and her chest tightened. her mother took her to the emergency room the first time, and she passed out on the way there. she woke up on a dose of morphine and started talking funny and making an alter ego, mudspit, and told the tales of this country legend to her nodding mom. her father took her the second time, but there was a football game that night at the university a bit away, so there was traffic. her dad called an ambulance like he would several more times before his wife and him learned that they could drive their daughter to the emergency room on their own with no worry. the girl really, really hated the things that were happening to her, to her heart, but she would rather have it than the emotional pain she used to endure. she was just numb now. (she didn't know if it was from the abundance of morphine or that she just got tired.) that was reason four.

she and her girlfriend talked a lot to each other. the girls loved each other a lot too. but the emotional girl got a little jealous when other people flirted with her girlfriend and she didn't do much of anything, because there was a possibility she really did like them. did her girlfriend love her? yeah, she thought. or maybe not. what was there to love about her? her platinum blonde hair, pale skin, green eyes? her flip-flop personality? she was more of a person around her girlfriend, she actually laughed and she actually had a real character - maybe that was her being herself. (it was). but there wasn't anything to love about her real self, because if there was, then she'd love herself. but instead, she'd mock herself, replacing the old, faint bullies with her, and she'd tell herself she was worthless. no one loved her, even her girlfriend. her girlfriend probably liked the boy across the street or the girl she talks to in morning period. so she buried herself in a deeper hole of jealousy, because she really did love her girlfriend, but maybe she didn't love her back. it hurt her heart even more than the unsolved heart pain she would get once a month. she had panic attacks more often with the worry that the person she would die for didn't love her. that was reason five.

she cried all the time because of her jealousy. in the middle of the night, still, because she was afraid to show people that she wasn't a stone-cold bitch. she was afraid to show her friends. she knew she was being petty, overdramatic, expecting everything to go her way, but it really did hurt. she had already established reasons to jump off a bridge: 1- she didn't love herself. in fact, she hated herself. 2- no one would love the real her, either. 3- she wasn't safe if she was the real her. 4- she had an unknown heart condition and she wasting her family's money on ambulance trips and emergency room costs. 5- jealousy hurt so, so much, far more than jumping off a bridge would. emotion hurt.

she was still afraid to commit suicide. very afraid, really. she wondered if it hurt, if she was going to even die when she hit the ground, of what came after death. but she thought that anything would be better than the hellhole she was living in. she told her family she wanted to go to san francisco, and she had an excuse, too, because a couple of her friends had moved there. she read up on the suicide statistics from the golden gate bridge. only a few survived out of the hundreds that jumped. good.

summer came and she got to see her friends. she suggested that they take a walk across the famous bridge, just to say that they did, and so of course they decided they would. she lagged behind. on purpose. her friends had gotten far enough ahead, chatting about things, occasionally glancing back at her to see if she was alright. she wasn't. she climbed onto the railing and held on, glaring below at the churning water from the suspension bridge, and swallowed. her family wouldn't miss her. neither would her girlfriend or her friends.

so she jumped. and she survived.