December 26th, 2012. The darkest night of my life. I had been staying in hotel rooms for awhile, paying for it with the remnants of an inheritance I had after paying for cosmetology school. The 24th I had realized the money had run out and of course the next day was Christmas. That Christmas was my first one on my own, completely alone. It was also the last night I had in the hotel room unless I was able to pay for another week. Of course, I wasn't going to be able. I had tried contacting friends and family that Christmas day, just to see if I could get out of the room and have some company on Christmas. No one responded, no one answered my calls. Not even a simple "Merry Christmas!".
The next day I went to class, exhausted from a lack of sleep and anxiety from wondering what I would do for shelter that evening. I wore it well though. No one was aware of how depressed I was, and I felt that no one really cared. So I went through the day as if nothing was wrong.
The school day came and went. At closing I left and just walked up and down the main road of the city. Picking up all the change I came across, hoping to have enough to get some food the next day. At some point in the evening it began to sprinkle, bringing literal meaning to the phrase, "When it rains it pours."
My emotions were getting the best of me. I was feeling extremely depressed and anxious, unable to calm myself down. I started feeling dark, having thoughts of death and how no one would miss me when I was gone. I knew I needed help, so I started heading towards the hospital.
At that time of night, the streetlights along the road the hospital is on are turned off, as hardly anyone is on the road and if something happens...the hospital isn't far away. The sprinkle had turned into a steady fall of rain. I was soaked and becoming even more unstable. There is a certain part of the road that turns into an overpass, it crossed over railroad tracks and had been built in that way to allow easy access to ambulances. When I got to the middle of the overpass I stopped and looked over the edge.
I stared at the railroad tracks and became envious of their existence. Railroad tracks are cold and solid. They bend around any obstacle in their way, unbothered... unstoppable. They follow the path laid out for them, accepting their purpose without question or rebellion. Why couldn't my life be like that? Why couldn't I just accept the fate I had been assigned at birth? Why was my life more like those rails rather than the locomotive, a locomotive that was about to derail and crash in a rain-soaked chaos.
I reached into my backpack for my seizure meds (seizures are something I have suffered from since I was 16) and started crying about what I was thinking about doing. At this point the steady rain had turned into a violent storm. I started yelling toward the sky, begging my maker for answers and mercy only to receive streaks of lightning and the crash of thunder as a reply.
I gathered a mouthful of rainwater and downed the bottle, thinking "If these pills don't kill me, the fall will. And if that doesn't the train will when it comes along." I climbed up on the side of the overpass and screamed at the sky for a few more moments. Finally I prepared myself to jump....
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