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“Today class, we’re going to write a paper. What is life?”

And so I sit there, holding back emotions I feel surfacing, because there’s SO MUCH I want to say, but too much I know id be risking.

I can see myself, see exactly what would happen.

The sirens, the chaos. I can sense it, almost hear it. Handcuffs, white jacket, padded room- perhaps a chair, with the letters J-A-N-E written on it, across from some uptight counselor with those rimmed glasses slid halfway down her nose.

This is life. I don’t want to write this paper, to conform to society, to turn into one of those “ohgodisntlifewonderful’s.”

“So Jane, what do you think about tagging along with me and a few guys tonight. You know, a little partying or something.”

Dear GOD, I will not give in. I will not depend on someone, anyone else, for fulfilling my emotional needs, my emptiness. Not family, not friends, not god.

Hah. God?

You mean the one that sits and watches thousands of people, young, old, men, women, boys, girls, break down in tears and they write their last letter, blow their brains out, slice their wrist down to the bone?

But really, that’s fine. You can put on that phony smile and TELL me you live for god. But since when did words prove anything?

Come to truth with yourself. Take off your mask. Peel away all the fairytale stories you were told when you were young and naïve, that hypocrisy you carry along in your back pocket, placed nicely beside your insecurities.
WE’RE NOT WHO WE LIKE TO THINK WE ARE.

I keep dozing off as I try to write this damn paper. I can see vaguely the expressions on my neighbors faces, to my left, to my right. Smiles, laughs, whole hearted optimism. Why don’t I connect with these people again?

“Jane, we’ve been working on this paper for fifteen minutes, and you still haven’t written a thing. Is something wrong?”

…Is something wrong?

I could go on for days, through tens of sheets of paper. But I wont.

You know what one of the people I admire, Sylvia Plath said? The one who SHOVED her head in the oven?
“I am drowning in negativism, self hate, doubt, madness. I can see ahead only into dark sordid alleys where the filth of my life lies, unglorified, unchanged. But I will not get sick, go mad, or retreat like a child into blubbering on someone else’s shoulder.”

THAT’S it. Right there. That is life. A competition, full of naïve contestants, in which victory in unattainable!
Do you think we get to choose whether or not we get to go to hell?

LOOK AROUND YOU.
Death, disease, poverty, rape, war, abortion, suicide…

Or are we already here?

I get to writing the last word, but it’s too late. My pens run out of ink.