‼️Content Warning: su!cide, vomit, stabbing.‼️

**_The national suicide hotline number is 988._**

Hope is real. Help is real.

**You are important.**

—

My key still fit the lock.

I’m surprised he didn’t change the lock.

As soon as I stepped into the foyer, I felt like I was 13 again. The foyer has a bookshelf full of dusty books and random objects that I discarded there years ago.

This place looks more grey than I remember.

I put my key down on the table next to the door and step over junk to get to my old bedroom.

Laying on the floor, I’ve found thirteen year old me.

“Marx?” I whisper.

They are crying. No, sobbing, they are hysterically sobbing. They are twitching and screaming. I want to help but I don’t. I stand in the door way and watch. Then, I shut the door and turn around to my parents’ bedroom door.

When I open that door, my lip quivers. I step back, my back hitting my childhood bedroom door. I stare into the room in horror.

What the hell.

This never happened.

I don’t even own a rope…

What is that? _Who_ is that?

It smells rancid, like rotting meat.

That can’t be me, is it?

I’m unhappy but I’d never do _that._

I turn and run into the bathroom. Falling to my knees, I vomit in the toilet. I look up and see my sister strung up on the shower rod. Vomit spews out of my body, it doesn’t stop for a full three minutes.

I understand now. That’s why I was on the floor in my bedroom. How could I be dead and on the floor? Well, I’m hung, on the floor, and now sitting on the bathroom floor so something is wrong.

Something is warped.

I need to leave.

I scamper to the front door but the doorknob won’t turn. I yank it and kick near it.

I need to leave.

I run to my childhood bedroom and swing the door open thinking I can get out the window.

“No” I breathe.

I’m dead, stabbed, my body is leaning right up against the window.

I can get out the sliding glass door. I turn and fall onto the ground. Getting back up, I run into furniture. As I open the back door, I sprint around the house and down the street. I don’t scream. I just run and run until I don’t know where I am.

I find a kind woman to take me back to my apartment.

I started taking anti-psychotics soon after that day.

—

Authors Note: this isn’t a cry for help. I’m dancing to the Beetlejuice musical soundtrack, I’m completely okay.