Brilliant … But Bouncy

I Saw Myself As She Saw Me.

One day during a long ride in the country, Larry and I stopped to admire a lake. Since it was mid-summer, the place was packed with people running up and down the shores, drifting in and out of the water, waiting in line at the stationary ice cream truck. We were just two bodies amongst the summer crowd.

Larry went to the port-o-johns and I was standing, smoking a cigarette and staring at the water, when a little girl walked past me. She couldn’t have been more than eight years old, happily sucking on a freezer pop, her wet hair still dripping down the back of her orange one-piece.

In her youthful innocence, she reminded me of myself at that age.

As she trotted past me, she glanced up and caught my eye and I gave her my biggest, friendliest smile. The little girl’s eyes widened and she instantly started to cry, transforming her walk into a run as fast as her little feet would carry her – back to her family, back to safety.

I’d scared her.

I’d smiled at her, which terrified her.

Suddenly I saw myself as she saw me: standing in the sand wearing torn jeans and black boots, my hair disastrous, a large black helmet in my hand, skull rings on my fingers, a cigarette in the other hand. I stunk of ash and filth and stale beer; I hadn’t showered in days. I probably hadn’t even brushed my teeth.

On the inside I was still a little girl, toddling down the beach with my popsicle. But on the outside, I was revolting.

I’d spent much of my youth wanting to be a teacher; I so adored children. But I scared this girl without trying. I couldn’t have children with Larry, and I knew that, but I’d always thought I might someday teach. Another dream dropped by the wayside that day.

“Ready, Baby?” Larry asked, reappearing.

“Yeah,” I said.

It wouldn’t have helped to tell him what had happened. Larry didn’t see the world the way I did. He’d been loud and crooked and harsh for years; he probably wasn’t even aware that he scared small children. He wouldn’t have understood why this was a new experience for me. He didn’t understand that leather and boots didn’t fit on a family beach.

On the way home, Larry and I had sex in a cornfield somewhere near Grapeville, Pennsylvania. Afterward I wrote a poem in my head as I rode on the back of the motorcycle on that beautiful summer day.

It’s one of the few poems I can still recite from memory.

You Give Yourself Away.

Larry and I no longer argued after the bars closed, because I would never again keep him from sleep. He went to bed and I stayed up listening to music.

As the angst of living with Larry while being very much alone began to take hold more permanently in my brain, I turned to the one thing that kept me functional: music.

In 1987, U2 released The Joshua Tree album and I bought the cassette. Its lead single, With or Without You, held a special place in my heart. Something about that song made me think it was written specifically for me, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it might be.

Night after lonely night, I would put my tape in the boom box and hit “play.” At the chorus, I would scream-sing at the top of my lungs:

I can’t live … with or without you ….

I did not know to whom I was singing. I only knew that I felt deeply, painfully, excruciatingly torn, like my life could never be my own because something was pulling me in opposite directions. I felt like I was dying but had no idea why.

Sometimes I believed it was Larry who was holding me back. It had become difficult to live his life, but I had no life of my own to live.

Sometimes I believed it was my parents. I couldn’t live their lives either, but I was miserable living without the people I so dearly loved for the first 20 years of my life.

Maybe I couldn’t live with or without The One from college. Or maybe it was Bonnie. I just couldn’t live the way I was living.

The deepest, most profound meaning came to me from the song’s refrain:

And you give yourself away … and you give yourself away …

At this point in the song, I crumbled completely. I had numbed myself for too long to be able to cry, but I would wail like a wounded animal in a steel trap: “And you giiiive yourself awaaaaaay…!”

I knew, deep down, that I had given myself away, lost myself completely, misplaced my very soul.

This had happened for no discernible reason; I was just gone. The person I’d been had completely vanished, even from my own view. Yet I had no idea where I’d gone, or if I’d ever be back.

And you give and you give and you give yourself away ….

Maybe I’d given my soul, as the retreat pastor had said, to all those men with whom I’d had sex. That felt true, but something else felt like it was truer; I just didn’t know what it was.

Mostly I just randomly moaned aloud in tune, knowing the song was deeply, powerfully, inextricably linked to me.

And immediately, at the song’s last note, I rewound the tape and played it again. And again.

I wallowed in the song like a pig in a mud bath. I played it again and again and again and again, every single night, all night long, for months.

I had no idea – truly, not a clue – that I was singing With or Without You about alcohol.

I Saw My Reflection.

After several days of complete madness in Daytona, it was more than a little disheartening to arrive back in Pitcairn.

The Sunshine State – even though I’d avoided all sunshine – had reminded me what it was like to have fun, to party all day and night, to be amongst people who drank like I did, who proclaimed freedom as a mantra, who thought I was a superstar just for lifting my shirt.

Now I was returning to the doldrums of work and empty bars. Reality hit like a sledgehammer.

The apartment was dark and dingy, a reminder of my agonizing loneliness. The garbage reeked in the kitchen since no one had emptied it before we left, and the bathroom smelled as moldy as ever. The stench of stale cigarettes and ash would have been unbearable if I hadn’t been smoking a cigarette when I walked in. The thin carpeting was filthy and my bare feet felt grittier than when I’d been romping in the dirt outside our tent.

Larry clomped up the steps behind me, tossed some stuff onto our bed and went into the kitchen to make a sandwich. He didn’t seem to notice the condition of our apartment, or the smell.

Until I’d had this one day without alcohol, I’d somehow not been aware of the state of our apartment.

My home was embarrassingly disgusting. I wondered for a moment why anyone would want to live here. How would it appear to other people? This place was gross. But I’d never noticed it before.

A week away, and one day without alcohol, and … here I was.

I was sad to be home, disappointed in what I’d come home to, apathetic about Larry, excited only about going back to work where I could see my friends, get high at lunchtime, and earn another few dollars so I could drink for another few days.

I stepped into the bathroom and, for the first time in a week, I saw my reflection in the chipped bathroom mirror. I dropped my cigarette into the toilet and stared.

I hadn’t seen my own face in a very long time.

I’d spent a week ignoring my pain with the help of countless cans of beer, and some root beer schnapps. I’d had sex with Larry several times in the pup tent without a single thought about how I appeared.

But back at home, with the offending bedroom nearby reminding me of Larry’s fists, and the offending window reminding me of my suicide attempt, I was stunned into stillness.

I was no longer listening to the solid roar of motorcycle engines or enjoying Lookin’ Out My Back Door on repeat. I wasn’t the suave character who’d had such fun dancing in the bar with the guys in Daytona. And I wasn’t the sexy girl I imagined I’d been as I randomly flashed bikers, strolling coolly and confidently through the masses of black t-shirts and tattoos.

In spite of so much time passing, I still looked like someone who’d been pummeled in the face then dove out a window. In other words, I still looked like me.

And I had exactly one shot left on my roll of film.

I Was a Toddler Without a Toy.

On our way home from Daytona, I was distressed. We had barely enough money for gas, and no one would buy me any beer.

Danny was driving as I whined all the way through Georgia. “I gotta get back to fuckin’ work,” he growled. “We’re not stoppin’.”

“Let’s just pick up a 12-pack,” I moaned, my hangover screaming for redemption.

Larry said, “We’ll get a fuckin’ case when we get home.”

“I can’t fuckin’ wait until we get home,” I moaned.

I spent hours contriving new ways we could get some beer without taking any time:

“There’s a liquor store at the next exit!”

“Let’s get a pizza!” (No one ate pizza without drinking beer.)

“We could say we got a flat tire and spend the night in that hotel!”

I was a toddler without a toy. I couldn’t think about anything else.

Danny finally snapped. “There’s a fuckin’ beer right there! Just drink that!”

Coincidentally, there was one can of Miller Lite in the car.

No one knew how long it had been there or from whence it came. It had definitely been there for more than 24 hours, in the closed car, in the blazing Florida sunshine. No doubt that one beer was rancid.

But like any good alcoholic, I considered Danny’s suggestion.

The beer had been rolling on the floor of the car for days, flitting under the seats, then rolling back into view. Even if the beer hadn’t been the single most puke-worthy beer ever, the rolling meant that the carbonation would cause the can to explode if I opened it.

And if I survived the beer explosion, what was left would be half a can of rancid foam – meaning, not just awful but virtually impossible to drink.

Still, I seriously considered this option.

The Crux: there was only one beer. And I knew that one beer would never, ever be enough.

At that point, the rancid, rolling beer was the only beer on the planet. It was certainly the only beer I was going to get during the full-day-long drive to Pittsburgh.

So I didn’t open it.

And I stopped asking for beer.

Instead, I thought back to my childhood. How did I survive long car rides in my youth?

I remembered singing with my family, reading books, playing a variety of games, having a great time riding in the car.

I desperately loved family games.

“Let’s play the alphabet game!” I suggested.

Danny and Larry – to shut me up – begrudgingly agreed. I taught them how to play.

“I packed my suitcase and in it I put …” Danny needed something with the letter A. “An apple.”

Larry went next: “I packed my suitcase and it in I put an apple and … a banana.” Letter B.

It wasn’t a great start, but by the eighth letter, we were making the game into a little song. Things rhymed. There was a real rhythm to the “suitcase” we were building. I’d never played the game this way before – and it was awesome! An extra challenge!

By the end, when someone sadly broke the game, we had a fabulous suitcase packed.

After the success of the game, beer was no longer necessary. We had a fun drive home without it.

Show Him Your Tits!

Danny, Larry and I camped in two tiny pup tents with no sleeping bags at an official Bike Week campground. During the day, Danny did his own thing. He’d wake up and disappear, and we did, too.

Larry spent much of Bike Week wandering around and looking at motorcycles while I compared myself to other biker chicks.

Unlike me, many biker chicks were dressed in whole-body costumes. Some were head-to-toe in leather and chains, complete with a studded collar. Some were pierced in places I didn’t even know could be pierced – and every last piercing was visible because of their lack of clothing. Some were tattooed on every inch of bare skin, making it hard to tell where their original skin might be, wearing only a thong and pasties to “cover” themselves. Others were literally chained to the old man, being dragged around like a dog. Still others had their own bikes: sparkly purple Sportsters or pastel pink dressers with shag-covered seats, the women wearing glittery chaps and a sleeveless leather vest.

Somehow in the midst of these women, who for all intents and purposes were dressed like prostitutes, a biker with a gray beard aimed his disposable camera at me. Then he just stood there staring at me and smiling.

Larry noticed. “Show him your tits!” he said.

“What?”

“He wants to see your tits!”

Dumbfounded, I lifted my shirt revealing two small breasts; I never wore a bra. The guy snapped a picture, gave me a thumbs-up, and walked away.

Another guy saw this exchange and rushed over with his camera, too.

I looked at Larry for verification. He nodded. I lifted my shirt again.

I have never been particularly proud of my body, nor did I ever consider my breasts interesting, so I found the “tit shot” phenomenon to be an amusing pastime. As I was wholly detached from my own emotions, I had no idea that it should concern or humiliate me. I mentally categorized these frequent shirt-lifts as representing freedom from social constructs.

The only part of Bike Week that bothered me was Florida’s ridiculous open container law. We weren’t allowed to drink beer while we walked around gazing at motorcycles.

So, after a few hours of hearing about the legendary Boot Hill Saloon, we went for a visit.

The Boot Hill Saloon was my favorite part of Bike Week. We went inside (air conditioned!) and Larry ordered a couple of Miller Lites. We never left. We drank and chatted with the other bikers. We explored the walls, which formed a giant collage of junk: old photos, magazine clippings, license plates, graffiti. We played pool and danced with a guy wearing a Budweiser box on his head.

For hours and hours and hours, the jukebox played CCR’s Lookin’ Out My Back Door. Sometimes people groaned, “Not this song again!” and walked out. It never occurred to me to leave. I decided that Lookin’ Out My Back Door was my new favorite song. I adored the guy wearing the beer box on his head. And I decided that I would never again drink somewhere without a pool table.

None of these resolutions lasted beyond Bike Week.

Missing daylight in Florida made me happy, so much so that Larry and I hung out at the same dark bar all day every day during the time we were in Florida.

And by the end of Bike Week, I could give a side-style tit shot while holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, smiling for the camera in the dark.

I’d become an expert.

Everyone Wore Chains and Leather.

Within days, I’d forgotten about jumping out the window. I was too drunk to care.

Bike Week is, essentially, a week-long party that takes over an entire town – in this case, Daytona, Florida – terrifying local residents and sending them indoors, or enticing them outdoors to drown in the deafening roar of engines that never stops.

Bike Week is an experience that would be best finished for bystanders in one day. But for those who partake in the multitude of activities offered to the throngs of bikers who attend, one day would be insufficient.

Motorcycles lined the streets, parked three- and four-deep along the curbs with a never-ending line of bikes cruising past.

Everyone wore chains and leather. Men had scraggly, ridiculous beards of all shapes and colors. Women wore virtually nothing – and, sometimes, nothing at all.

Shops on the main drag sold everything from food, jewelry, and official Bike Week gear to leather jackets, swimming pools and vintage motorcycles. The most popular thing to buy at Bike Week, by far, was a tattoo. Lines for the pop-up tents and vendors offering tattoos snaked into the streets, blurring the line between “queue” and “crowd.” Most of the people in the lines were already covered with ink – brightly colored birds and flowers on the women, skulls and knives etched into the men. Some of them were completely covered – meaning, I couldn’t tell where they might get another tattoo, since there was no skin left on their legs, arms, torsos, necks or faces.

At one point, I decided to get a tattoo: a black panther, which would go on my upper left arm. Something about my seventh grade book report on wild cats made me believe this was a fine choice. And Larry – who already had some small, rather lame tattoos, promised to fund this effort if I wanted to stand in the line.

I did. Larry went off to look at the bikes, and I got in line.

Figuring it would be awhile, I stood prepared and double-fisted, not wanting to go without beer for a moment. After the first beer, I had to use the facilities – but I held it … just long enough to finish the second beer. I had to find Larry to get another one and by the time I did, I had decided the tattoo line wasn’t worth it.

While the main draw was walking up and down the street looking at all the different motorcycles (with me proudly yelling “shovelhead!” and “panhead!” at Larry), Bike Week also had fine recreational activities like motorcycle races, bike shows, light shows, mud puddle jumps, beach rides, concerts, and parades.

My least favorite activity – which took place at every large biker event I ever attended – was the Weenie Bite Competition. Bikers would ride through a field with a “chick” on the back, standing up, both of them cruising slowly under a hot dog, hanging from a string. Chicks were supposed to bite off as much of the hot dog as they could, sometimes being smacked mercilessly in the face until the bike spun out and pulled away. There weren’t a lot of actual bites taken from that hot dog.

I wonder if they switched out that disgusting hot dog for every rider. Probably not.

“Do you want to do it?” Larry asked.

“Fuck no,” I said.

Larry laughed. “You’d be good at it!”

“I am not doing that,” I said. It looked not only difficult but humiliating.

And I never tried it, a fact of which I am extremely proud. I was plenty humiliated by other activities.

Everything Hurt.

Driving to Daytona took all day, even though we took the Camaro.

“Danny’s bike’s busted,” Larry said. Larry’s younger brother had a Sportster, but it was always broken.

Since I could barely sit upright, I could never have ridden all the way to Florida on the Harley, even for something called Bike Week.

I was happy to crawl – quite literally – into the back seat and sleep for the vast majority of the ride. There was a big hump in the middle of the backseat so it wasn’t exactly comfortable. But being awake after a serious suicide attempt was simply unfathomable. I slept as long as I possibly could.

We started early in the morning with Larry driving, then Danny drove, with switches made during stops for gas or restrooms.

No one asked me to drive.

Everything hurt. My head was pounding. My back ached like I’d been beaten with a baseball bat. My appendages screamed in pain – I couldn’t move my arms or legs without great effort, and even my fingers felt broken. My knees were scraped from crawling on cement. Even my nose was sore, having been hit repeatedly. And my eyes felt like they’d be permanently closed; I could barely squeeze them open to find my way to restrooms.

I was nauseous and dry-mouthed no matter how much Diet Coke I consumed. I never drank water if I had to pay for it, so I remained parched.

Still, it was astounding that I could move at all, let alone walk. But nobody was carrying me to any restrooms. There was not one ounce of sympathy for my plight.

Our only discussion – ever – went like this:

LARRY: “Do you remember what happened last night?”

ME: “Yeah.”

LARRY: “Good.”

That was it.

I moaned – once – as I rolled over the hump in the backseat and said, “My whole body hurts.”

Without hesitation Danny bellowed, “Guess ya shouldn’t’ve jumped out the fucking window!”

Apparently whining would not be tolerated.

Danny seemed angrier than Larry, who didn’t seem angry at all. I wondered if Danny’s bike was really broken, or if we were taking the car because of me.

Whenever we stopped, they both got out and shut their doors behind them, just leaving me in the back. The car was beastly hot at every stop. I had to pull myself forward and push the very heavy door open from the backseat – challenging on the best of days, but nearly impossible with my limited mobility.

They didn’t seem to care if I died back there and, serendipitously, I actually started to care if I lived.

In fact, I started to get excited for Bike Week. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I decided that if I was going to live, then going to Bike Week was just what I needed.

By the time we arrived in Florida, I was ready to party.

And I would be doing it with a few hundred thousand of my closest black-t-shirt-wearing, overly tattooed, boot-stompin’, heavily bearded and/or scantily clad friends.

What Do You Think Happened To Me?

As I lay flat on my back in the yard, I wondered why Larry didn’t come for me. I wondered for a long, long time.

Meanwhile, instead of walking the block-and-a-half around the slum building into our backyard, Larry walked five blocks to the gas station.

Yes, the gas station.

Because in Pitcairn, the gas station in the center of town is where the police hang out. So if anyone needs a police officer, Pitcairn residents know where to find one.

Larry thought I was dead.

And he had just beaten me senseless before I jumped. That could mean trouble for Larry.

So Larry – who has more street smarts in one little finger than I will ever have – went to get a police officer before checking on me.

And Larry walked to the gas station, because he knew he wasn’t sober enough, in the eyes of the law, to drive.

I didn’t know any of this; I just stayed flat on the ground in the dark.

After what seemed like an hour, I saw a flashlight beam. I couldn’t lift my head; I assumed Larry’d arrived.

The police officer walked toward me slowly, checking for signs of life. He shone the flashlight onto my face, startling when he realized I was not only alive, but bruised, beaten and bloody.

He exclaimed, “What happened to you?”

By then, I’d forgotten I’d been pummeled. “I jumped out the fucking window,” I snapped. “What do you think happened to me?”

“Are you all right?” He continued to shine the light directly into my eyes.

“No I’m not all right!” I growled. “I jumped out the fuckin’ window!” The flashlight was blinding, my face ached when I tried to squint, and every part of my body hurt when I squirmed even slightly.

The police officer didn’t quit. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

“I don’t need a fucking ambulance,” I said. “Just leave me alone.”

The police officer mercifully waved the flashlight from me and onto Larry, which is when I noticed Larry for the first time.

“Well she’s alive,” the officer said.

Larry surprisingly laughed. He was either so relieved that he was now giddy, or he thought it was funny that I was in this painful predicament.

The officer did not laugh. “What are you planning to do?”

“I guess I’m not gonna do anything,” Larry said.

“You wanna just leave her here? Or … you want me to write up a report?”

Larry stood over me, gazing down at my limp body in the dark. “Nah, she’s all right,” Larry said. “Thanks for coming, Officer.”

“Okay,” the police officer said. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

Larry walked with the officer out of our yard.

He did not come back.

I waited for the help I so desperately needed but, by request, I’d been left alone. Again.

Eventually, I rolled my stunned and obliterated body over, lying on my face for awhile. Then I pushed myself onto all fours like a dog to crawl, one minuscule movement at a time. I crawled out of our backyard, crawled down the block, crawled back up the block, crawled onto our porch, pushed open the unlocked door, and crawled up the stairs into our apartment.

I passed out on the floor.

At sunrise Larry woke me: “Ya still comin’?”

My pulverized body felt steamrolled by a dump truck. My eyes wouldn’t open.

“Yeah,” I said.

I crawled down the stairs and into the car. We were going to Bike Week in Florida.

I Wanted the Insanity to Stop.

I wanted to die.

I was beyond drunk but I didn’t think, Maybe I can fly! Nor did I want to show Larry that I was really leaving him. Sure, my judgment was completely skewed by my alcoholic thinking, but it wasn’t the alcohol that caused me to jump.

I’d just been beaten to a pulp by my boyfriend and I quite rationally believed: Now I have nothing.

The thought, when it finally took hold, clarified the loneliness that had been brewing and stewing inside of me forever. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could not handle anything beyond this moment. I’d reached the end.

I did not want to be a part of this people-filled world where I didn’t fit. I wanted the insanity to stop, the stupidity to stop, the pain to stop. I just wanted to be done.

But as I flew through the night sky, for the milliseconds that I was allowed to fly, as the pitch-black silent night enveloped me and I plummeted to the ground below, I had only one coherent, uncomplicated thought.

The Thought was: “Uh-oh.”

Translation: This wasn’t smart.

Since I catapulted through the window as though I were an Olympic diver, I fell head-first.

As I fell, my head collided with a staircase railing that emerged from the apartment below ours. My head bounced off the railing, flipping my whole body onto the ground below.

I was thrown onto my back with a brutal thud. It knocked the wind – but not the life – out of me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that railing probably saved my life. The staircase that I didn’t hit, and the sidewalk below that staircase, were both solid concrete. My head hit a sliver of wood instead, which then propelled me into the much softer, grassy backyard. I’d fallen fast and far and somehow completely avoided hitting anything fatal.

Since it was the middle of the night, I saw nothing. I heard nothing. Larry was nowhere. Our backyard was strategically placed so that we had to walk a block and a half around the slum building to get to the yard – so I’d never been in our backyard before.

But I knew where I was. I knew what had happened. I just couldn’t move. At all.

And I was completely, utterly alone.

Also, I was 100% alive – which was not what I’d wanted at all. I’d finally given suicide a real shot – no more aimlessly whacking at my wrists with a dull razor blade in a drunken stupor. I’d really, really tried to die.

But there I was, not dead on the ground, staring at the sky, watching the stars still sparkling up there as they’d always done.

I lay silently in the grass, unable to move.

After I hit the ground I knew, the way that only the innermost core of one’s being can know, that I must have some reason for being on this planet.

I just didn’t know the reason. And there was only one way to find out.

With all the energy I could muster, I screamed at the sky: “What do you want from me now, God?!”

The world was quiet, and the stars continued to sparkle. I did not hear the voice of God. I didn’t hear a train passing or even a barking dog in the distance. There was no sound.

So I yelled again: “What do you want from me now?!!”

Still, I did not receive a reply.

I lay motionless in the dark, and waited.

Why Struggle?

I walked into the kitchen, battered and furious, and strode straight to the window. I unlocked it, knowing there was no screen to hinder me, and pulled it up as high as it would go.

Plenty of room for a body to get through.

Larry and I lived on the second story but because the basement was above ground, the yard was actually three stories below.

“Get away from the fuckin’ window!” Larry yelled, appearing from nowhere. He grabbed me from behind, shackling my arms and lifting my whole body away from my planned escape route.

“Fuck you!” I screamed. “You fucking hit me! You tried to fucking kill me!” I wriggled and tried to break free from his grasp. Again.

This time, his strength was being used to save me.

Blood was dropping from my face onto our kitchen floor, causing my hair to stick to my face as I writhed. I couldn’t wipe it away; everything was an irritant. I bent forward in his arms, pushing at him with my back, trying to twist away.

“I didn’t try to kill you,” Larry said, his voice slightly kinder somehow. “Just fuckin’ stop this shit!”

“You tried to fucking kill me,” I repeated, though that wasn’t my main concern. “You hate me!”

“I don’t fuckin’ hate you,” Larry snorted, but I barely heard him as he pulled me further away from the open window, force-walking me across the kitchen like we were playing some kind of picnic game.

“You don’t fucking love me!” I wailed. “Let me GO!”

“Fuck no,” Larry said, sounding eerily calm and wise.

I squirmed harder, desperately trying to break free. He would not let go, and he was not being gentle. He held my arms motionless under his arms; my feet kicked aimlessly at nothing. “You need to fuckin’ calm down before I let you go.”

“I do NOT need to calm fucking down!” I yelled, still flailing. But my screaming was just a mask.

My rage scarcely contained the dangerously surfacing thoughts I’d carried with me since childhood: I am completely alone. Nobody loves me. No one will ever really love me.

I thought I’d buried those thoughts completely with the alcohol, but no. They were thumping rhythmically inside me like a heartbeat, louder than ever before.

I’d forgotten that Larry had just beaten me to a pulp. It didn’t occur to me that I was excessively drunk and wildly exhausted. I didn’t think about my past or my future. I became hyper-focused on this one recurring thought: Nobody will ever love me for who I am.

My aimless kicking stopped as I suddenly realized that I was fighting for no reason.

Why struggle? I didn’t even want to live.

I became suddenly quiet. Believing that I would be forever unloved and alone, I fell limp in his arms.

My feet touched the ground, and Larry finally loosened his grip. I stood up, silent.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe we can talk now.”

Finally, Larry released me and stepped toward the living room.

As he did, I turned and ran full force toward the open kitchen window. Without hesitation, I dove through in one fluid motion, hurtling through the air toward the ground below.