“Once you do this, you can never go back. You understand?” A voice in her head that sounded much like her younger brother told her as she looked over the railing into the raging waters below. What is there to go back to? They don’t need me, no one does. What’s the point? Crouching down she shut her eyes, trying to fight the storm inside her mind. There’s no use, I can’t do anything, it’ll never change! Straightening herself back up, she leaned over the railing. She could hear the voices of her friends and family inside her head, warring and conflicted. “Go ahead, just do it!” turning into “no, please, don’t!” turning into “you’ll be doing us a favour!” She thought about when she was a little girl, her father teaching her to ride a bicycle, her mother placing a kiss on her knee after she’d scraped it falling out of a tree, weekends helping out on her grandparents farm, playing hide and seek with her brother, the time her soccer team won the regional championship… She thought about the time she and her friends drove two states over for a Lady Gaga concert, and last Valentine’s Day when her boyfriend surprised her with a candlelight picnic… They need me. Then her thoughts turned to the bullies throughout her school years and all the things they used to say to her, how they must have been true, the fact that she couldn’t even keep her hamsters alive, and she thought about her dead end service job… No they don’t. She should be crying, she thought, but all she could feel was numb, there were no tears left to cry; there’s no point. She climbed over the railing, keeping her grip tight. She pictured her loved ones, imagining their reactions- their agonized faces, shattered with grief and heartbreak, before they morphed into relief and apathy. She thought about what it would feel like to let herself fall, how long the pain would last, would it ever truly end? What of the afterlife, what would I be condemning myself to? And what if she didn’t? What if she climbed back up, went home to her family? Would they be relieved, would they have even noticed she left? Would they care? What of the years to come, could they be better, would it be more of the same, does it even matter? Does anything matter? She looked up to the night sky, the vast endlessness of the stars stretching out above her. Once you do this, you can never go back. She looked back down at the water raging below.