Sie sagt, Ich weiß nicht wo mir der Kopf steht. (The beginning)

feel like I'm drowning. Like it's happening in slow motion, and no one is stopping to help me. There are no hands reaching down through the fishing holes. Just me, trying to find some air trapped between the ice and the water, just me.

It's hard to balance the apathy I feel with the passion I used to have for everything, for everyone.

I think about killing myself often. It's not that this is a new thing, of course. Just that I've started to contemplate it in ways I usually prevent. I used to only consider things that I couldn't actually do - put a loaded gun in my mouth. (Where would I get the gun, figure out how to load it, how could no one hear?) Now it's simpler. Now it's - just try something. Now it's - just take the pink plastic safety razor and break it open. Now it's - make it hurt, make yourself bleed, and let someone else pick up the pieces.

I don't even want to die. Not really. (But maybe a little. I know that life doesn't end here. I guess you could say, I've heard things that you haven't.)

I just want to get out of here, get out of this life. I'm so tired of the monotony. I wake up everyday and I feel terrible. I go through the motions and I feel nothing.

I want to lose myself. In fiction, maybe. I miss that.

I need help. I need to straighten my life out. I need to see a professional about all of this. I keep saying, At least I realize I have a problem. I keep forgetting that it doesn't matter unless I do something about it.

Build my walls and tear them apart. (Verse two)

Two a.m. in Florida where it's never dark, you know, and the strangest of friends are sitting on the concrete excuse for a porch.

"People change, my dear."

Your voice is heavy like wool over my mouth and I don't have anything coherent to say. I twist my fingers in yours more thoroughly, I watch the way your thumb traces mine. I want a sip of your whiskey and water. I spilled my drink and really can't be trusted with another.

We tiptoe like children around the biggest things we want to say. I don't mind that you're half in love with me.

You're right, though. Everyone changes, or is supposed to, or does without realizing it. Maybe that's what has happened. I feel like I've grown into the eloquence I always hoped for. I feel like I've lost the part of me that knew how to love. I feel like I can't stop loving the people I already do. I feel like I can't express it at all.

When I was fifteen, I thought I was going to marry into an Italian last name and I thought I could never love anyone more than the boy who I kissed on a city bus and fucked in the back seat of a used car.

When I was sixteen, I thought of nothing but Clayton until I had him and then we were inseparable and dangerous and madly in love. Somedays I feel like he's a bull in a china shop. Then, I wanted to be a rodeo queen.

When I was eighteen, I spent one single night awake instead of asleep, breaking foundations like bones and falling in love with someone else. (I said I wanted eternity and you promised, and the way it felt when I was with you... I could feel the electricity in the air the way I could feel my heart catch in my chest.)

Somewhere in between all of that, I fell in love with my friend, a little, too. I try to keep that quiet. He knows. I know. I damn his dark honest eyes every time we have a moment that I can't overlook. So there you go. At nineteen, a boy kissed me in a way I've never been kissed before. He kissed me as though chastity mattered. (Which is why he's my friend, you see. He's every temptation I've ever walked out on.)