I absentmindedly ran my fingers along the ridges of scars on my forearm and kicked the leg of the table, jiggling the laptop and sending dust to resettle like dandruff on an old man’s head. I ran my hands through my hair, which crackled and frizzed and had already been cleaned within an inch of its life. I was already considering taking another shower and maybe getting a life. I had been holed up in my loft for three days, trying to write something. So far, nothing. It was like somebody had painted over the windows in my mind. I would get faint shadows of ideas, tapping and yelling but they never got in. When I first rented this loft I thought it had been a gift from God. (No, not God, I reminded myself. He and I were having a little alone time from each other.) I had seen the tall roof and the big, big windows which seemed to swallow the entire world and filter in pure enlightenment. I had smelled the musty air of mystery about it and immediately set up shop, with a laptop that I had bought by drawing from my savings account that was meant for college. Now, the tall roof made me feel very small and the bright windows were reminding me how fast life was. How the next time I may look out of them, I might be a withered old person, with a knitting circle and a religious fever every Sunday. Atleast, thats what all of the old biddies at home did, God bless them. That and gossiped. I flung my arm across the little rickety table, sweeping white bits of paper, produced by me tearing any piece of paper I could see in hopes of ideas pouring out like when you crack an egg on the edge of a bowl, to flutter to the floor like snow. I picked my laptop off my lap and put it back on the desk, and shook my head to wake up, throwing my delicate glasses from my head. They shattered. Oh well. Its not like I actually required them to be able to see accurately. I just put them on to fit in with the other bohemian crowd, along with red lipstick on fridays at raves when nobody cared, and a cigarette. I never smoked it but everyone else did. I am the weirdo among weirdos. I jumped up, and strode out the door, though I could hear my laptop clutching at me with its little internet waves, calling my back to look up more adorable pictures of kittens. I ran down the greasy, black stairs, onto the gum spattered sidewalk. I stopped at a big sign, advertising corn. It showed rows and rows of golden corn with a wonderbread family staring off into the sunset like it was the best part of their day. It probably was.
    I came from a land of corn too. It was full of trucks and little white churches, with flat land that was one big puddle when it rained really hard. I hated it there. I felt so trapped that I had started carrying on with a boy who I oughtn't and wore plaid shirts, dyed my hair and put on so much eyeliner that I always looked really astonished. I even cut myself, to fit in with the other moody, yet rednecky adolescents. I even quit diving, which was the only thing my parents were proud about me for. Actually the team kicked me off even though I shaved my legs and pointed my toes and kept my hands off the girls. Then my parents kicked me out when they found a thong in my drawer.
With tears in my eyes, I clutched my shabby black jacket against the sudden bitter wind. I stepped slowly down the street until the familiar, deep, dark, warm smell of coffee blew through my hair. I opened the door to the cheery coffee shop that was starting to turn on its golden light since the sun was hanging what seemed inches above the horizon. I sat down on a stool and ordered a black coffee. The barista had hipster glasses and curly lips, which were colored blue, like her hair. She slid a mug of the stuff over in  a solid china mug. I grabbed onto the mug for dear life, because I hadn’t really slept in over a day. I gulped down the inky fluid and shuddered from the taste. I pulled out my crumpled notebook, a ball point pen, and began to doodle all over the page, like I was sifting for answers that would engraved in the table and I was getting a rubbing of them. My brother loved to get rubbings of nature. He had so many rubbings of stones and trees. He also asked every soldier he met to let him get paper and rub wax over their dogtags. He hung those on a special place on the wall. I smiled at this and began to giggle to myself. I tried to keep them down but they kept coming up like bubbles, and popped on my lips and blew out into the baristas face, who was trying to look into my eyes.
“Excuse me” she said.
She went over to a smirking boy in the corner and whispered to him. He looked over at me and nodded. With some swagger in his walk he sidled on over.
“ Um, excuse me, but are you under the influence.”
I looked up at him in astonishment.
“You have to leave.”
“Why of course darling.” I crooned and got up.
I grabbed my pen, stuck it in the crease where his ear met his forehead and walked out, blowing a kiss at him through the window. His eyes were as big as plates and his cheeks were coloring.
    The wind was still there, whipping my cheeks raw. I went across the street to the park and crawled up to the top of a rock that looked over a little lake. Lovers hid here in the summer and drug dealers occupied the area year round. I looked out over the lake, towards the sun. The lake sat like a forgotten hand mirror, with some silver trickling to the left for a handle. The sky was now all a dark smoky gray with streaks of red dashing through it. I realized I wasn’t alone. There was a figure there too, breathing smoke without a cigarette and marveling in a bored kind of way at the trees which looked like bunches of grey and white lace from the frost. I think it was a girl. She looked over at me and waved. She had a pale luminescent face with a petite nose, big doe eyes and hair streaked with a sour green. She had tears in her eyes.
“Who are you?” I asked. Something in her face tugged at my insides.
Now I know it isn’t normal to start a conversation with a stranger in a park but she looked so upset and broken.
“What do you mean, ‘who are you’ I’m you.”
I pulled out my phone and started to dial 911.
“Wait ma’m.”
Shocked, I dropped the phone. I came closer. She looked away into the water.
“I can leave you know. I can leave and your whole life will be simpler. Would you like that?”
My head like lead, I nodded.
She smiled.
“You are very brave. This will be painful, and constrictive but it will make things simpler. Wickedly simpler.”
And with that she pivoted on the tip of the rock and swan dove into the freezing cold water, her boots the last thing to enter the water. Without thinking I dove in after her, the cold water searing my arms like a thousand cuts. After struggling for a few minutes, my mind began to go blank. It was blissful, like all of the things that had been blown out by a maid with a vacuum and OCD. I grabbed her tight as black pooled in my eyes.
    I woke up looking at a sterile ceiling tile. A sterile, boring tile. I almost wanted to throw a very sharp pencil in it, so it would stick, like that one kid in eighth grade. I looked around me and saw a room equally sterile boring. Great, a hospital. I rubbed my kitten soft hand against my chin and it scratched on stubble. Amazing, now I’d have to go home and lop them off with the rusty razor that I had been shaving with for the last two months. A doctor came in conveniently at that moment.
“Ah, good you’re awake.”
He walked over, his bald head gleaming in the fluorescent lighting like the bottom of a well polished teapot.
“Now, would you care to tell me why you tried to drown yourself.”
I looked at him. He must be crazy. I might fall off a ledge and die but I would never try to kill myself. By drowning. I know of much more flashy and effective ways to die.
“I-I wasn’t, there was a girl in the water drowning.”
The doctor, the old sod, looked at me from over his spectacles, bushy eyebrow arched.
“An old women saw you talking to yourself and then throw yourself in. She also said it was a very good dive.”
“Well then she’s off her nut, not me.”
I realized just how much these words made me sound insane.
“Look, doc, this is a big misunderstanding. I have work to do at home, I’m going to be late on a deadline. I got to go.”
“Just let me check you over again.”
He stood up and walked out to get the clipboard that doctors seem to be attached to for life, closing the door.
    I got out of bed, ripping the stickers and other monitoring bits out off me and got dressed. Taking a deep breath, I ran out as fast as my legs could take me, kicking down the door. The doctor called out and yelled at me.
“Mister!”
“Sir!”
Nurses started to run after me, yelling the same words. I didn’t respond to them. I never will respond to those names ever again