Lies! I pound my fist against the ground as I think about him. How dare he lie to me? I thought he loved me, I though he needed me, I though I was his everything….but I thought wrong. I knew I should have never trusted anyone, I knew I should have continued living life as I once knew it…..isolated. But now I sit here in my happy place, my world of imagination that only exists in my head. There are many different locations in my world. A location of shadow, of light, of rainforest….but right now I’m in the Wetlands…my favorite location in my world. It’s a swampy area with ponds of water and lush grass. Yellow buttercups grow in patches on the earth and I sigh….he used to give me buttercups…The best part about my world is that I’m the only inhabitant and it’s a place where I can think…in peace.


Everything used to be so simple. But ever since I went to a new school, things started to crumbled beneath my feet and go downhill. I always used to be the ‘preppy type‘, paranoid about school and stuff. But after a while, those things just didn’t seem to matter and I began not to care anymore. I became apathetic to school, family, friends and life in general. I was depressed all the time…until he showed up. He was a new student who came to my new school at the beginning of the year. He was charming, sly, and beautiful. His name was Jake and I fell absolutely in love with him. The remarkable thing was, he was in love with me too….or so I thought. I mean, in the beginning he was sweet. He always game me flowers…buttercups in fact…for no reason. But after a while, I began to see the real side of Jake. He was controlling and abusive. He never let me out of his sight and he got furious if I ever talked to another guy other than him. The worst part was…he was a drug addict. Jake was getting worse and worse everyday…he even offered me alcohol one time…naturally, I had some. It tasted awful and I vomited it right back up. When I did that, he slapped me across the face and told me that I was a wimpy b***h.


That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was too afraid that Jake would come knocking at my door and hurt me again. I sat up all night until my eyes were so heavy that I eventually fell unconscious with sleep . Suddenly, I was woken up a few hours later by the sound of a shrill siren. I was confused for a second because the sound was coming from right outside my house. Somebody banged on the door with urgency. My heart thumped rapidly as I put on my robe and walked ominously up to the front door. I opened the door slightly and a police officer was standing outside, solemnly, and the headlights from his car were flashing.



“Do you know this man?” The police officer took out a black wallet with a picture of Jake in it. I froze.

“Yes….yes, that’s my boyfriend’s wallet.”

“Miss, I am sorry to say that a tragedy has happened tonight…”

…….The police officer told me that Jake was driving…stoned. He crashed his car into a tree and he…was….dead….


My life, at that point, had shattered. What was there left to live for? Jake was my everything and now he was gone….There’s nothing left for me to hope for….except for my happy place….my world. If only there was a way to be there all the time without only having to think about it. But there was a way. There was a way I could get away from it all…to be in my happy place forever without any interruptions. Constant peace and serenity. And so that night I went to my bathroom and searched though my medicine cabinet until I found a bottle of sleeping pills. I poured a handful into my hand and looked into the mirror at my reflection for the last time….and swallowed them.

….The last thing I remember was the cool surface of the linoleum floor and thinking about my Wetlands…and the sweet smell of buttercups.