Mother

At least I won’t be there to see it. This whisper creeps up on me, the selfishness taking over once again, perhaps for the third or fourth time of the day. I push it to the back of my mind and try to focus I try to remember where I am, sitting in math class attempting to understand derivatives like any teenager and failing miserably like most other people in the room. But I’m not like them and they are not like me. In my mind I’m imagining the relief of not waking of not being in this very same math class tomorrow of never having to worry about having to get into college of never having to be the school joke after going after a guy who never loved me, never liked me and made me a laughing stock of never having to hear my parents tell me that we may lose the house after all if I’m gone it will be one less mouth for them to feed of never having to hear a taunt again of just how much of a cow I am of never having to worry about getting treatment again of never having to deal with a therapist whose best advice was “You’d be happier if you got a boyfriend, did you think of that?” of never having to worry if I’d been taking the right meds if I’m bipolar, manically depressed, have a social phobia or an anxiety disorder or if I’m just some time bomb composed of a lethal mix of all of them. End it all, the whisper tells me, and I bite my tongue hard trying desperately not to cry or scream or just jump out of the second floor window. My hand remains uncontrollable as it tries to scribble notes of the lesson as my mind remains in a moral quandary, constantly wondering, why not? Why the hell not just jump now? And then I think again, at least I won’t see her cry. I’d seen my mother cry at my expense before, the guilt consumed me. It’s the one thing that kept the tears in my eyes, the tongue in my cheek, the one thing that kept the knife in the kitchen and the belt in the closet. I refused to be the one to make my mother cry.