Tomorrow Might Be Enough

A chilly breeze blew strong and carried smells of car exhaust from the nearby bridge and the barest hint of a whisper of rain, mixing effortlessly with the smell of her own shampoo as her wild hair flew around her face. The halogen lights from the gravel making plant from across the way shone intensley on the fast flowing water. She pretended that it was the moon as the cloud coverage made it impossible for her to see a single star let alone the bright white globe. Something about the moon glow bouncing off the small river near her house always seemed to calm her, which is why she spent so many hours sitting out on the log. Although it was so late it was nearly early, she didn't feel the need to go in to bed. Not yet.1

The conversation from earlier was what was keeping her awake. It weighed heavy enough on her conscious that her slightly slender shoulders were slumped under the imagined pressure. Plucking at a brownish blade of grass, she replayed it in her head and tried to find the reason she had made the slip. If she knew the reason behind it, maybe she could stop it. Maybe she could help, and if not help, at least make better choices. 2

"Would you miss me?"3

"What?" Came the incredulous question from over 3000 miles away. They had been talking for about an hour, no record for this pair, when that little bomb had been dropped. "What are you talking about?"4

"No-"5

"And don't tell me nothing, you dork!"6

She had bowed her head as if to hide the sheepish smile from the phone. "I just meant, you know, is something happened to me. You'd miss me. Right?"7

"No. I'd be too pissed that you were gone. I wouldn't miss you for like, at least, five years. Or not until I wanted to talk about surfing or graphics or poetry with someone who really understood what I was saying and then you'd be gone and then I'd be pissed all over again. So no, I don't think I would miss you at all!" Then the voice grew still, grew small, grew soft. "Are you okay?"8

"Sure, of course! I don't even know where that came from," she answered readily, turning on her side in her small bed to cuddle the phone closer to her. If only her friend were here, then these weird thought would be drowned in laughter and hugs. "Crazy thoughts provoked by lack of sleep and an overindulgence of Fritos."9

"Honey, look. Your life is feeling sucky right now, I know. It's hard to see where anything good can come from all this, but I swear it will get better. I know that things have been rough but-"10

"Pfft. I'm fine, really. Just tired, I promise. Don't worry, doll face. I am all there in cute underwear!" The laughter sounded a bit forced from both ends and she quickly turned the conversation to something else; something not so dark, something not so scary, something not so real. 11

After another hour, she got off the phone and stared at the wall, for once not seeing the shapes and faces in the wood paneling. That had been a mistake and a bad one. Now her friend was on alert. Now her friend would be worried each time the phone went unanswered, each time an e-mail wasn't resonded to right away, each time a MySpace comment went unapproved. That had been a mistake. And really, where had it come from? She didn't think like that, so why had she even mentioned it? She knew sleep wasn't going to happen soon, so she dressed in a hoodie and jeans before heading to her thinking spot down the road from he house. 12

A small voice, one she didn't associate with herself at all spoke up as she sat down. It whispered in a liquid chocolate voice that of course she had been thinking about it. Each time it rained and she stepped on the gas a little too hard coming around that last curve on the interstate. Every time she had a headache and paused with the bottle of pills in her hand before shaking out two, just two. All the times when she was at work, wondering if she was robbed right then how much of a fight would she have to put up before they shot her. She had thought about it during the early mornings when she was trying to sleep, when she got off the phone with her mother who was an emotional vampire; the thoughts were like Spanish moss, the moment it got one little finger into a nice confused brain, it spread and took over everthing. 13

It started early, back when she was teen. She had been raised in a strict household, where beatings were as common an meals. She had just broken up with her boyfriend of six months, an eternity in high school, and had been feeling really down for weeks. Her step-father decided that he didn't want to stare at her moping face any more and have her the impossible task of raking up pine needles from their large yard. A rain storm started soon after she had finished her first pile, the wind knocking more needles from their homey branches. After hours of being in the rain, with her hands pink and stiff and snot dripping like a percolator, her mother finally came home and rescued her. There had been a large fight between her mom and step-dad as she had sat silently under their yelling faces, staring at the carpet between her sneakered feet. Then he had pulled her mother into their room and she retreated to her own room to huddle under three blankets in the hopes of getting warm, trying not to listen for the point when her mother would relent, promising to make their daughter see that she had to obey. She knew the sound of bedsprings would start soon and the next day it would be worse twenty minutes after her mom went to work. The rhythmic squeaky sound of her doom started ten minutes after the door was shut and she cried herself to sleep before it ended. 14

Her step-father was a large ex-Marine who knew how to work his muscled arms for maximum effectivness. He beat her, mostly aiming for her lower back or the front of her legs until the handle of the rake broke. In a fit of rage he struck her one last time across the breasts and then set her to her room, where she cried as silently as she could because of the normal 'Stop whining or I will give you something to cry about' hung unspoken in the air. He left to go to the store and she jumped at the opportunity to escape. But if she ran, he would track her down as surely as if she had left bread crumbs for him to follow. So, the first time it had been pills. A knife was too messy, and she was already in too much pain from the rake. A Sam's Club size bottle of Tylenol and water were ingested in twenty minutes and she was already vomiting on the floor when her step-father had come back home. He smacked her a few times before calling 9-1-1.15

The next time had been a razor blade singly sweetly over her wrists and spelling out her confusion in red, thin strokes. In the six years since her last attempt she had grown more desperate and thought she could take the pain; how could a few cuts against her thin skin compare to the hurt in her heart? But she was wrong, and the fire burn of her cuts made her cry out. At first, she just stood there fascinated as the yellow light of the florescrnt bulb made her blood shimmer as it started to trickle, the pour out of her wounds. She was watching her life drain away, but soon the red mess was everywhere and she was still hurting. The out pouring of blood made her dizzy, scaring her into some kind of action. She stumbled out of the cool blue bathroom and shook her lover awake. "I've had an accident."16

"Wha-?" he had mumbled. He sat up a little and tried to pull her into the bed by one slick wrist. She couldn't remember who cried out louder, her in pain or him in fear. "What happened?!"17

"I had an accident."18

"Oh, God. Oh, sweet Jesus!" The moon had poured through the windows making the blood look like fudge syrup as it flowed down her arms and dripped from her fingers. His face, already naturally pale, looked like a dead thing as ran into the bathroom for a towel, as he sked her what ha happened, why had she done it. 19

She lied. "I didn't mean to, I don't know. I'm sorry, please, it'll never happen again." He promised to love her, to stay with her, to do anything if she would just get some help as he wrapped the blue towels covered in shells around her wrists like handcuffs. But she had scared him and he had left anyways, staying that she made it too hard to love her. That was the way life was. 20

Now, it was coming to on the thirteenth anniversary of her first attempt. Was there some poetic justice that thirteen was the bad luck number? She looked over her life, forcing herself to face it all. Her father was dead, her husband had run off with someone else. She had lost her one chance at being a mother a mere three months after rejoicing over her good fortune. Her mother was like a plague of locusts and the last remainder of her family was in a world where one slightly embarassing sister who had to take pills just to leave the house most days was just too much to handle. Her friends, all with their own lives, had almost no more room for her problems and seemed furthur and furthur away while she felt all alone while even in a crowd. 21

She still laughed and danced and flirted. She still worked hard at both jobs while offering what ever she had to anyone who needed it. But when the doors were closed, she took off the masks as she shed her clothes. When at home, she ate once in a while and tried to sleep when she could. And each day it was a little harder to get out of bed, each day it took her a little longer to get her act together, each day she raced home a little sooner so she could just stop. Her sleep was always interupted by doubtful dreams and terrifying thoughts. 22

What if it never got better? What if this was what she was supposed to suffer through, always? God didn't care, friends didn't listen, family didn't pay attention. Alone and lonely, two very different things, were intertwined so that they pulsed the same color behind her closed eyes. The breeze came again, this time blowing the opposite way. Then another voice, as if brought by the fresh air, tickled against her thoughts and brushed them aside like so much unimportant trash. What if you do it and you end up in a place where all you can do is feel like this?23

She jerked at that, her fingers stuttering as she shredded the winter dead grass stalk in her hands. That would be so horrible! She could see it, a place so flat that sky met land in every direction for hundreds of miles. To feel like this without the small comfort she took from her friends, from the smile of a baby or the licking kiss of a puppy. Without the sun or the water or the stars or flowrs, just a grey field of nothingness where she would have no distractions from her self doubts and self induced heart wounds. A world so sharp with pain that each breath would be like a knife to the ribs and each tear would dry before it had fallen onto the dusty earth. To sit, dazed in a fog of lonely laziness and emotional overload and where everything was empty of almost all meaning. Except her thoughts, except for the aching and the loneliness, except for the absolute awe striking pain. It would drive her mad! 24

Suddenly, the silence of the early morning was shatterd by her cell phone ringing. She pulled it out, confused on who would be calling so early it was really late? "Hello?"25

"Just...it's me. I...I love you. You are my dearest friend, and I love you. I just... I just wanted you to know that."26

Even over all those thousands of miles she could hear the unshed tears and her heart broke a little. She could see her friend in her mind's eye, head bent and one hand clutching the phone while the other rubbed nervously at her own knee. "I know that. I know that!"27

"Is it enough?"28

She couldn't answer at first. What was enough? What was ever enough? But she couldn't make it worse so she forced a smile and hoped it came through the line. "Of course it is. You know what that means to me."29

"Is. It. Enough."30

"I," she hesitated. "I don't know. I wish I could explain it, but I don't even really get it myself. I... I'm sorry."31

A long watery sigh came through from the other side and ended in a choked sob. "I would miss you until I died. Don't go without saying goodbye," her friend commanded and then hung up. 32

She tried to calling out to her friend as she leapt to her feet, but pins and needles shot through muscles, making her cry out. She dropped her phone and beding over was nearly as painful as standing. Yet, it was a good feeling, a raw feeling, a real feeling. She had to call her friend back, make ammends. Tell her she wasn't really seriously thinking about it, though that would be a lie. Trudging back through the night that was slowly brightening, she tried to push through the thoughts of what was wrong with her and what was wrong with the world. She had to catch some sleep before tomorrow offically became today in her head. 33

And she had to find a way to get out of bed the next morning.