Goodnight... I didn't think I would wake up. Well, maybe I did. Seventeen pills ought to have done it. It didn't. I guess I had known that. My sophomore-year project on suicide told me that. That seventeen wasn't enough. And I shouldn't have told anyone either. I got dragged to a counselor in front of my crying father (who never cries). I got dragged to a therapist, whom, thank God, realized the insanity of my life, and my mother (who refused to talk about her issues). Maybe I would have gone a different route, used talking, anything else, other than taking seventeen Ibuprofen pills, (which, now, I am allergic to, oddly). Maybe if my mother were faithful back then, and she didn't stalk me like the CIA. At 15 my life was full of maybes, and what-ifs. Now I can't imagine leaving certain things behind. At the time I thought I hated my mother and I could leave her, and maybe I still could, but the other things and people, I couldn't. This is therapy enough, talking, writing, sharing a 9-year-old story with billions of strangers. Maybe this will help someone else, too.