suicide is such a simple thing

I was twelve years old, sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the old lions-foot bathtub my father had drug from the junk pile out back when we moved into the house. It had belonged to my great grandfather before he was stricken with dementia and couldn’t even piss by himself. The whole house had been his. I always thought it was creepy because I had his old room. Anyway, Dad had painted the tub white and set it up in our basement. The paint was peeling where our feet had slide for years in the rush of water.

And here I sat, picking away the strips of paint from the tub sides, droplets of water pelting the small, misshapen lumps of by prepubescent breasts, trying to breathe. Breathing isn’t simple. But the idea that came to my simple, twelve year old mind seemed just that.

So I picked up a series of shampoo bottles, the kinds that stood on their openings, the kinds that when closed at the end, the plastic had been scrunched together and pressed, creating a thin edge. At each end of this edge, the plastic had become sharp. And I pressed each end to the pale skin of my left wrist, testing each bottle till I found that that Pantene Pro-V Volumizing Conditioner worked the best.

With my right hand gripping the bottle, I pulled and pressed that tiny sharp edge back and forth over the same patch of skin till I had unearthed drops of blood like strawberry seeds. They bubbled and filled and brimmed over, rolling down my wrist. It was beautiful. It was the beginning of the only addiction, besides soda pop, that I have ever been able to keep up.