Thirteen Reasons Why

I recently read this book called “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher about a girl named Hannah who kills herself, but before she does she makes these tapes that explain why she killed herself, and who was involved in her making that decision, and then she sends the tapes to the people on them and tells them if they don’t pass them on, then someone who has a copy of the tapes will release them to the public at school, ruining their lives.


It got me thinking: What are my reasons? If I were to kill myself, what would my reasons be behind it, and would anyone care to listen if I talked about it on some old tapes?

Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t, but nonetheless I have gone over everything in my head, and I think I have figured out MY thirteen reasons why.

Reason #1: Steven Hanson- We dated when I was in ninth grade and he was in eigth for over three months and even though it wasn’t very long, it still hurt when he moved away to Texas.

Reason #2: Kenny Winters- Asked me out to Homecoming this year and then decided he didnt want a real relationship…couple of days later I caught him kissing my close friend.

Reason #3: Amanda DePoy-We were friends at the beginning of the year, inseperable in fact, until Amanda’s old make-out buddy decided to tell Amanda i told ppl they hooked up, which I didn’t. Amanda’s hated me ever since.

Reason #4: Matt King-Matt, Amanda, and I were like the three musketeers but he sided with Amanda over me and even though we have begun talking again, it still stings when I think about the way they both treated me for all those months up until now, and how i thought they were my friends, but if they were they would’ve just trusted me and not a shit-load of rumors.

Reason #5: Addison Burnside-I hooked up with him at a party after me and kenny went to homecoming together and did nothing more then make out with him at a park afterward, but thought that we had something there. He decided he liked my friend Nicole instead, and I found out that they had had sex soon after Nicole dropped me off at home.

Reason #6: Patrick DICKer-Thought he was my friend but turned out to be a total douchebag who listens to what people say about me other then make his own opinions about whether or not he wants to be my friend. He thinks I’m a “whiney, self-conceited bitch”. (I just had to do that with his name, it’s just too priceless)

Reason #7: Holden McCarey-Decided to try and feel me up (which i did not agree too) when we were sitting in his car after a first date. Told all the guys at the place where he does gymnastics that I “put out” and “if they’re looking for easy pussy they should give me a call”.

Reason # 8: Jared McDonald-dated him for a week but broke it off when he told me he didnt want to date a girl with “baggage”…My apparent baggage is my little five year old brother who i have to babysit a lot, which leaves less time for a boyfriend.

Reason #9: Tommy CaHill-first kiss when I was twelve years old. Blabbed to his whole school that I let him touch my chest that night. The kiss wasn’t even worth it.

Reason #10: Ricki Gallagher-I’ve known him since I was in fifth grade and yet he still insists on calling me a slut everytime I walk past him. I don’t even really remember the kid.

Reason #11: Drake Stanton-My best friend who desperately wants to understand whats wrong with me but I don’t want to let him in. He should not be on this list by a longshot but sometimes they say if u love someone u have to let them go.

Reason 12: Phoebe Zodiac-My evil alter-ego who wishes everyone would just go die and leave her alone. She only comes out to play when I’m depressed, which is often, sadly.

And Reason #13: Everyone at my high school who says that I’m either a bitch, slut, or liar. You don’t know me at all, so it makes no sense that you would all criticize me for something you do not know that I am. I am sorry your all so conformative.

So, there they are, my thirteen reasons for wanting to kill myself.

Actually, those aren’t the real reasons, not by a million miles, but sometimes it just feels better to be able to blame other people on our unhappiness, even when we know it is only ourselves who makes us unhappy.

Thank you.

All There is to It

Ive been thinking a lot of things through lately, trying to remember when I started wanting to kill myself.


I dont remember, I think it was just so long ago that thet fantasies started, that I just have lost track of the years.

You know the fantasies I’m taling about; the bloody bathtubs, lifeless body hanging from a rope, unconscious lump of dead weight lying on a bed, pill bottle sitting empty on the nightstand. I’ve had them all before, and many others I don’t relly understand. Throwing myself in front of a car, jumping off the golden gate bridge, going skydiving without a parachute.

I have come up with a solution to why those last few fantasies seem much more intriguing then the others. They’re…exciting. I think if I was going to really go through with it I would want to go out with a bang, you know, live on the edge for the last few moments of my life.

That’s crazy, though. Who thinks about things like that on a daily basis and thinks that it’s normal?

I do, duh.

Isn’t that normal for a teen to think about that? I mean, all people think about how they’re going to die someday at one point in there life, and i just happen to think about it now, and most of the time suicide is what I come up with, because im too chicken to get out of my office and go live in the world.

If you live, then you die faster. That’s all there is to it.

Hope is Terrifying

Relay for life has been going on at my school for about a month now.


I don’t get it. Why are people trying to raise money for a cure that we have been trying to find for years and years? I think people are living on the possibility that there is a cure, but I really don’t think there is any point in wasting valuable money we earn with hard work on something that may never happen.

Yes, I know it sounds just awful not to want to raise money for cancer, but I think I’m being realistic, or at least my depressed mind does.

Something happened to me though that changed my mind. I met someone awhile back when I was in the hospital for attempting suicide near my sixteenth birthday.

I had a hospital bed with only a curtain seperating me from the person on the other side, a person I didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but somehow that didn’t matter.

“What’s your name?” a girl that looked no older then ten years old with shoulder length blonde hair and a pretty little smile on her peach lips asked me, drawing back the curtain.

I looked around for my mother, but she had decided to leave me to wallow in my own self pity.

“Violet”, I didn’t look at her.

“My names Alyson”, she said, her voice giddy like a little girls would be.

I was confused. Why would anyone be putting on a happy face if they were in the hospital? I didn’t expect to be in the hospital, I expected to be dead; I hate hospitals.

I nodded.

“What are you in here for?” she asked in an innocent voice.

I almost burst out laughing, it sounded like she was asking me what crime I committed to be sent here.

I sighed, glancing around me to see if any of the doctors noticed that I was being hurassed by a little girl.

The girl gulped, turning her brassy blue eyes away from me for a moment, “I collapsed at school”, she said.

“Why?” I had to admit that I was interested.

The girl got really stony, “I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was six and I thought I had gotten rid of it two years ago, but it turns out it’s back again”.

I just stared at her, leukemia was serious, you could die from that, and here I was wallowing over not dying when this girl was fighting for her life. I felt like such a fool.

“I tried to kill myself”.

She turned to me, her eyes brimming with tears, “Are you sad?” she asked.

I blinked at her, not knowing what to say. I didn’t know if I was sad, I didn’t know if I was angry, I just didn’t know.

“I don’t know”, I told her the truth.

Alyson sighed, leaning her head back on the Emergency room cot.

“I would never want to kill myself”.

I was surprised, “Really? Even if the doctors told you you were going to die a painful death soon?”

I didn’t think about the question before I asked it.

Alyson turned her eyes to me and smiled warmly, “Leukemia isn’t painless, and we all have to die someday, but I just couldn’t do it to myself, if I have to go, I’d rather go knowing I tried to live while I was here”.

I couldn’t speak, here was someone who was terminally ill again due to cancer and talking about dying as if it weren’t scary at all.

“Aren’t you at all afraid to die?” I was perplexed.

Alyson shrugged, “Not anymore. There comes a time when death stops being scary and just becomes a fact. What’s really scary is hope. You know, even if they found a cure for cancer tomorrow I wouldn’t take it, I would just die, because if the cure doesn’t work, then I have gotten my hopes up for nothing, and that pain has to be worse then death”.

I began to sob in those moments, silent tears that cascaded down my cheeks and made faint tracks along my face.

“What’s wrong, Violet?” she asked, concern etched in her furrowed brow.

I shook my head, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Nothing, I just have a feeling your going to outlive me”.

Alyson is the smartest person I’ve ever met. I know what she means when she says that hope starts to become scarier then death, because I have felt that many times before. I just didn’t want to try and get better anymore, because if i tried and failed, then my hopes were even more dashed before, and you fall into an even deeper depression. Death starts to become less and less scary, because there is a certain guarantee that you will not fail, unless your mother catches you or you chicken out. Death is easy, it’s not painless, but it is easy. You don’t have to have a valid reason for wanting to die, you just need your heart to stop beating. How much easier could it get?

But what if I could get better? What if I could learn to let go of my past and love the people in my life? What if they find a cure for depression tomorrow? There are so many what ifs that I don’t want to have to think about, which is why a little girl with cancer is much stronger then me. She has already thought the what ifs through and lived through them so far. I could never do that, the pressure would just be overwhelming, and the pain of not knowing is more then agonizing.

Hope IS terrifying.

Oh, it’s Alysons birthday today.

Happy eleventh birthday my hospital buddy!

Dr. Whats-his-name

My mother took me out of school early today to go see a crisis counselor in some foreign area of town where it looks like everyone lives in constant fear of either being mugged, or molested, or both.

I walked into the counselors office and immediately felt like Alice must have when she fell down the rabbit hole; completely disoriented and completely idiotic.

“We have an appointment at 1:00″, my mother smiled kindly at the lady working at the reception desk.

The lady didn’t smile back, she just took down my information and told us that we could take a seat in the three chairs pushed up against a far wall.

I took that oppurtunity while we were sitting there waiting for one psychiatrist to come out of their office and take me back into the room which I’m sure smelled of pinesol (all the counselors and psychiatrists offices I’ve ever been in do), to take in my surroundings.

It was the smallest office I had ever seen, from outside it looked like the house I imagined Hansel and Gretel lived in, quaint and dainty with Christmas written all over the outside design.

The inside was even more sickening. The walls were a bleach white like they had been painted that color just to give someone a headache for staring at them too long.

“You have to at least try and put on a happy face, just a little one”, my mother shrugged, smiling meakly at me.

I rolled my eyes. My mother could be so stupid sometimes, she didn’t get that I was not happy, so I was not going to just out on a happy face so she could feel like I was improving. Besides, if I smiled it felt like I was giving myself a false hope that I was getting better, and I knew I wasn’t yet.

“Violet?” the counselor came out to get me, putting in a gleeful smile.

Great, I thought, someone else to tell me how happy I should be because my life is so much better then most peoples.

I didn’t look back at my mother who had her hand on my shoulder, but went into the room withmy head held high, just so the counselor-guy couldn’t see how indignant I was to even be here.

“Hello Violet, I’m…”

I stopped paying attention right then and there. When I came into the office the first thing I noticed was a giant glass door that led out to a grassy plain and a lake nearby, with elegant geese running across the grass.

I went straight over to the window and looked out at the geese who were flapping their wings and running around like manaics, just happy to be wild and free.

I put my hand on the glass, feeling utterly lonely. I wanted to be a goose, to be carefree and happy was all I had ever wanted. I wanted the mother goose with all her little ducklings to take me in as one of her own, even if I had to be the ugly duckling, I didn’t care.

“Violet?” a felt a warm hand on my shoulder.

I flinched away.

The psychiatrist stepped back, “Well, I can see I’m going to have my work cut out for me here”, he said as if I were some experimental invention he was planning on fixing and entering in a science fair.

I kept my eyes narrowed to the floor, my arms wrapped tightly around my chest. Couldn’t he see that I didn’t want him to work with me, I didn’t want him to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, I just wanted someone to listen to me, to treat me like I really mattered and that I wasn’t just asking for dumb attention, because that’s not what all this was.

Maybe I would talk more now with the psychiatrist, if only I could remember his name.

Phoebe Zodiac

My best friend asked me if I was depressed today.

“Why would you ask me that?” I stopped walking and turned to face him.

Drake looked perplexed, shrugging his broad shoulders, “You haven’t been talking lately and you barely look at me anymore”.

I bit my lower lip, starting to walk again slowly with him by my side.

“No, I’m fine”, I lied.

I could see the expression on his face that meant he was hurt that I wasn’t giving him the truth. I turned away from his disapproving eyes, why did he have to know me so well? I thought I was doing a good job at hiding my doubts of sanity from Drake, even though I shouldn’t have even tried. I’m not a skilled enough actress to hide my feelings in the real world, on-stage it’s so much easier to mask anger or sadness into glee, because you know you can be sad again later without pretending. When your sad or angry in the real world, it becomes much harder to mask, because it’s completely real and believable.

“Are you sure?”

I sighed, reaching up to stroke a stray piece of reddish-brown hair that had gone astray on his head.

“Yes”.

Drake nodded, biting his lower lip in frustration.

I was mad at myself for not telling him, and I don’t know why I didn’t in those moments, i really don’t. I trust Drake more then anyone else in my life, more then my mom even, and me and my mother are usually very close.

It’s not that I’ve known Drake Stanton for very long, in fact it’s only been four months, but sometimes when you have a connection with someone you just know that you’re going to get along, and after you spend all those four months together, you realize that person knows you better then you know yourself.

I have been analyzing that since this morning when Drake and I talked, how someone can know you better then you know yourself, and I think I know understand how that happens.

People make judgements about you the more they get to know you, they make their own opinions about who you are just by listening to you talk and seeing the accomplisments and mistakes you make, even if it is in the short period of time as our friendship has been. They notice things you don’t see in yourself. We rarely think about what our words tell about who we are as human beings, but they tell so much, and people see that when we don’t.

I could tell you the littlest things about Drake that he doesn’t catch: He’s the most contradictory person I’ve ever met. He’s pretty cocky but he doubts himself in school, he’s smart but he says some of the dumbest things you’ve ever heard. He loves soccer but celebrates when the seasons over, and he loves being Violet Blake’s my best friend, but hates being my best friend.

Apparently when I’m depressed I’m not Violet Blake anymore, and I turn into this hideous alter ego of myself, someone who hates life and is always trying to put people down. At least, that’s how Drake sees it. He even gave my alter ego a name, he calls her “Phoebe Zodiac”. I don’t know why or where he came up with crazy idea that I’m two different people, but he says whenever I’m depressed I become “Phoebe Zodiac” and no one wants to be around me, not even him. I would suppose it’s because she’s not real and no one wants to be around an imaginary, depressed girl, but I think Drake may be a little on the crazy side himself, so maybe it’s just him.

I hate the way I feel like I can’t tell Drake anything. He’s never betrayed my trust that I have in him, and I do have some, but I am just so uncomfortable with myself when it comes to trusting anyone, that it makes me want to stab myself in the cornea of my eye with a pitchfork.

I could kill Phoebe Zodiac.

Prison Bars

School is going to be hell today.


I used to like school, used to like learning about the english language and chemistry, but I don’t anymore. Now school just seems like another prison for me, somewhere people can bombard me with questions I don’t have the answers too, where kids can act like they don’t care if I live or die.

I bet they don’t care, I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if they didn’t care.

I don’t really care what happens to me at this point, I’m just sick and tired of being trapped in this body where I’m not even comfortable in my own skin, stuck inside this mind where nothing important is going on, its all just mush now that will someday turn into dust, if it isn’t there already.

I’m not stupid, I just don’t feel like giving a damn anymore. My parents ask me why, my so-called friends ask me why, but the truth is I don’t know. One day I just woke up and I didn’t care about my grades anymore. I stopped dressing up in cute little skirts and bouncy tops, I stopped doing my hair so it flowed over my neck and shoulders, down all the way to the lower part of my back, and I stopped wearing the glorious make-up that I had once prided myself over.

Why? Why, they all want to know. Did it ever occur to anyone that I just don’t care what other people think about me?

No. I didn’t think so.

I think I sound like a self-righteous, pious bitch whose just ranting about being a poor, innocent child that just doesn’t want to do the school-work, when that’s not it all. All my life I’ve wondered what I’m going to do with myself when I get out of high school, but now I see I may never get out. Serves me right, mean, criminalized depressionists don’t deserve to be let out of jail.

So, I’ll just sit here in my cramped cell space, loathing the very moment I came into this world and was bore into this world of madness. I’ll just sit here and wait for the poison to be removed from my heart, where it is as cold as the prison bars I’m trapped by.

Conversations with the Dark Thing

Dark Thing: Hello.

Me: Hello.

Dark Thing: How are we doing today?

Me: I’m fine.

Dark Thing: Well, do you want me to fix that?

Me: Not really, but I know you are going to anyway.

Dark Thing: Don’t sound so cynical, Violet.

Me: Aren’t I always cynical?

Dark Thing: Only when I want you to be.

Me: Oh yeah, I forgot about that little detail.

Dark Thing: There you go again, always the one with the sarcastic comments.

Me: Piss off.

Dark Thing: Violet….

Me: Stop it.

Dark Thing: Hush now Darling, don’t you see this is all for your own good?

Me: I’m not listening to you.

Dark Thing: Oh, but you’re listening to me all the time, even when you don’t realize it.

Me: Go away.

Dark Thing: You see that knife over there Violet, the one with the shiny tip just pointy enough to cut into your flesh?

Me: Yes…

Dark Thing: You know you want to pick it up.

Me: No I don’t.

Dark Thing: Don’t you? Don’t you know it would feel nice if you just let the knife cut into your skin, not enough to kill yourself but enough to make you feel the pain?

Me: NO! I won’t! get out of my head and LEAVE ME ALONE.

Dark Thing: Roses are red, Violets are blue… Aren’t you blue, Violet? All sad because her daddy didn’t care enough to look after her, didn’t love her enough to leave her with a responsible babysitter who wouldn’t treat her like a play thing???

Me: STOP IT!!!!! I WON’T LISTEN ANYMORE!

Dark Thing: Hush now Violet, just pick up the knife and do it, I know you can.

Me: I can’t I won’t.

Dark Thing: Yes you will, just let your hand do all the work, there you go, pick it up.

Me: Please don’t, I don’t want to hurt, I don’t want to bleed!

Dark Thing: PICK UP THE KNIFE, VIOLET!

Me: I Can’t, I won’t!………………………………………………………………………………………

Alright, you win.

Dark Thing: Good girl.