“Help me.” I’m so silent, but the words coming out of my mind are so loud. Does anyone hear? My body is visibly still, my sweaty hands are clutching my pencil and jotting down notes as slow as possible to create the impression I am doing something other than thinking. It’s just a normal lecture for me, but in my mind the thoughts of last night are so strong. It’s an intense sadness masked by the anxiety that the despair is present. “I’m going to kill myself!” The words are strong, but accurate. I plan to kill myself. I couldn’t last night, but I am going to try again. With the pause of the professor’s voice, I find myself jotting in different languages my thoughts. “Life is pointless.” “I want to die.” The same phrases in Spanish, Korean, French. To me, these phrases are my most thought phrases. I am in such a large place but I am so isolated. However, this is safer than the illusion of friendship. People aren’t inherently nice. I know this from my family, I know this from what I have seen, both as a victim and an aid to a perpetrator. I tried to have friends, several times. I learned that I could dumb myself down so people knew I wouldn’t compete with them. I learned to bow my head and agree with people because other people are always right. I learned that there are two relationships I could have. The first relationship is one where no one knows anyone about me, and the second is where people know something about me. The first one will last, the second one will end with an anxiety more extreme than the one that keeps me from speaking. 

The lecture is pointless if I can’t pause my thoughts. Scopophobia: the fear of being seen. I started sitting in the back this semester. I thought it would be easier for me to go to class if no one was facing me. For me, walking is hard. No one understands it, I just look crazy, and I probably act crazy. I didn’t in the beginning before the problems with people started stacking up, but now I sweat and shake. I struggle to eat in public. Even though so many people sit alone, I am afraid to sit alone in public, and it has always been like that. So naturally, once I stopped communicating with people, my anxiety increased, because I was always alone. 

I protect myself with my hood and music. Something about covering my face gives me a sense of comfort. I am ugly: my smile is ugly, my hair is unmanageable, my face is acne-prone, and my build is chubby and skinny at the same time even if I work out every day. “You need to communicate better.” “You are lazy.” “You are a horrible sister.” “You don’t help out around the house enough.” “You don’t care about the rest of us.” Can’t you see I am struggling as it is? I can’t even sit through this lecture. 

“Help me.” I scream this silently again, my chest is thumping. I can’t control this barrage of thoughts. Sometimes, memories race back. I have two types of memories. I have memories of people I have lost: people who I am no longer in contact with, moments in time where this anxiety wasn’t so severe and I had something to look forward to, moments that will never be replicable. Then I have memories that strike anger in my bones. People who have severely hurt me. Sometimes, I craft memories, alternatives to those people’s actions based on my own alternative action. “Tell me that again.” I want to say, instead of just looking around wildly. “Touch me again!” I want to threaten, instead of just flinching, screaming, running. 

These memories are so intense. I am trapped in them at times but it isn’t really PTSD because nothing traumatic ever happened. Or, perhaps I just say that because to me, the situations were normalized to me. 

I give up sitting in class once I feel it is difficult to hide the “help me” from my face. My legs push forward, but sometimes, I can’t even walk from this anxiety. I walk forward, though, back home. I will kill myself today, it doesn’t matter. 

I spend the rest of the day in my dorm working. Of course, I am bothered by my thoughts, and around half the time is spent staring at the wall, but as 11 rolls around, I pop my headphones in my ears and I leave my dorm, thinking it will be the last time I do it. As I get closer to my destination, my heart is pumping more and more, my breath is deepening. I push myself up the stairs, and I feel the screams from inside my voice seeping out of my mouth. I pause, weeping, on the 8th floor. There are two things that can happen here. Someone can help me who won’t judge me, or no one will help me. I can’t accept the possibility of someone who is fake (the majority of people) will try to come here and see me on this stair, weeping. I look down; I should walk up to the tenth floor but the gap between the stairs looks so deep. Someone else did this, I can do this too. Nothing will matter anymore. I was going to leave a note, but I find it futile. I don’t want to hurt anyone by blaming them for my death. I stare down the hole, do I want to jump from there? I am calmed down, the help me is in my head but it isn’t outside of my head. I am looking down the hole of the staircase and I know I will regret it if I don’t try to jump again. And if I stay here too long, will people see me? I am shaking, so I sit down again, where no one will see me. 

It’s a few moments, but it’s long enough. I feel the fact that if I don’t jump now, nothing will necessarily get better. And no one will ever know that I was here at this moment. No one will help me. It isn’t anyone’s job to help me. I won’t let anyone know I was here if I leave. But I think about leaving. I realize I can’t jump. The hole is so dark and scary, I think about what will happen after I jump if I will be haunted. I am afraid of demons all of the sudden: what if while I am jumping I go to hell because I killed myself? I picture the demons laughing as they pull my soul out of my dead body and drag it down to hell. I am a horrible person: I have never done anything good. I would go to hell. But no one has ever done anything good to me. I deserve this because of all of the pain I am in. It isn’t selfish, G\_d won’t help me. G\_d doesn’t care about me. G\_d doesn’t love me. If G\_d cared about me he would help me instead of cursing me with unluck. 

If I leave now, I won’t return. It’s over. I smile a little bit. My one friend calls me, and I answer. I am crying, and I wonder if they notice that. I wonder if they notice that I am on a stairwell. I will hurt them if I jump. I will hurt my family if I jump, even if they would so easily hurt me. I think about how this grief won’t leave me for a while. The grief of this moment will exist just as the grief of the moment yesterday. But I stand up. I don’t look down, I walk out of the stairwell, and then to the elevator. It is conveniently at floor 9. I am miserable, but I am smiling. I smile all the way back to my dorm. Then, I lie down, and I go to sleep.