Letter From a Dead Girl

Part 2

Now Will, you see, back then, the thought of taking a life seemed foreign to me; especially my own. I remember hearing a suicide story on the news and asking myself why anyone would want to just give up on everything like that. But later the same week, I got a glimpse of what a person feels before they give up. I learned what it felt like to feel unworthy, useless, and unwanted.
    The day had started normally. Regular teases floating behind me, leaving lunch to eat in the corner of the library, racing from class to class to avoid bullies in the hallways. But, also like always, they still cornered me. The last bell was still ringing in my ears and I had just started packing away a project we had been working on in class. I had been very careful as I placed my model of the human digestive system in a box, painstakingly making sure to not even dent the cardboard. I had worked so long on the project and only had one thing left to do to deem it finished-add my name. I planned to bring it home because I had left all my markers there and wanted to make it perfect. It was our last project if 8th grade and I had promised myself I would get an A on this project and start summer on a good note. But even if I didn't get the best grade, I had told myself I wouldn't care because I was proud of my project and if my teacher wasn't, too bad for her. But it seems the bullies had other plans.
    Right when I had turned the hallway corner towards the front doors, they fell upon me. They made me watch as they yanked the box out of my shocked hands and took my hard earned project out of it. I know now is wasn't that big of a deal, but right then that project had been the one I had loved making.
    The one I had labored on for days.
    The one I used my best materials for.
    The one I had been so proud of-was also the one they ripped apart.
    The one they flung to the ground and stomped on.
    The one they destroyed and later left me with it to sob over. But this wasn't the circumstance that pushed me to feel useless. What the event caused did, though.
    It was later that night and I had been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for hours. I couldn't sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw their faces, heard their taunts. I was yearning to go to the beach, which had always seemed to calm me down back then. I remember telling myself just make it till morning, when I would sneak out once again to the beach. But I felt like I couldn't wait another second. I had just reached the screen door when my dad grabbed me. He had obviously been drowning his sorrows about my mother's death with beer.   
    I had tried to excerpt myself from his grip and when he tightened his hand in response, I begged him to stop. But he had been acting like he wasn't really there. Like he was off in his universe. Stuck deep inside a black hole. Instead he screamed his head off. Surrounding me with a never ending loop of insults. He kept telling me how useless I was. How I could never do anything and how I never would. And I realized, he was right.
    I couldn't do anything. I couldn't stop the bullies. I couldn't save my project. I couldn't even make my dad proud. The train of thought had been cut short by my dad's fist, driven by drunken rage. But the thoughts still came back, so many they choked me.
    That was the day the thoughts started, Will, each one pulling me further and further towards an untimely fate.