I wake up and crawl slowly out of bed. The apartment is empty, except for me. That's the way it's been for months now. I've got that sickening, achy feeling of someone who didn't get enough sleep. I almost put on a pot of coffee but decide that there is no point.

I turn on all the lights in the apartment, the way I used to when I was home alone as a kid. The same paranoid uneasiness I felt then seizes me now. My parents would come home and find me frozen in the kitchen with the biggest knife I could find. I was afraid someone would get me.

The clock blinks 3:52 at me as I rifle through the drawers. What does one wear on such an occasion? I pick out my favorite red sweater and a pair of jeans. I put my hair up, I take my hair down, I put it up again. I change my jeans. I take my hair down again. I don't bother to turn off the lights or lock the door behind me when I leave. I get halfway down the hallway before I turn back around, go in and write a note on my refrigerator.

I start the car and drive around the block a few times thinking things over before I finally head to my destination. I leave the car in a grassy patch near the bridge. Someone told me when I was a teen that people who survive always regret it. Regret throwing themselves off or regret surviving? I had asked. She hadn't answered me.