My head was such a mess. Always finding the most awkward place, somehow managing to feel overflowing and yet completely devoid of any thought. To begin with I longed for the nights, the rare occasions that I could force myself to abandon the thoughts and sleep; only then could I rest, I could forget about it all, the nights were the same as they had been before Kelli’s death, it didn’t exist when I was asleep, it didn’t need to. Every night: silent, peaceful, understanding. But eventually the peace was no longer there, each time I drifted away, the same terrorizing nightmare shook my dreams. Kelli was always there, and so was I, but I could not touch her, couldn’t talk to her, she could not see me, hear me; to her I did not exist. And she was sitting there, on her bed, a razor blade in her left hand, cutting, slicing through her arm as I knew she had done every night when she was alive. Then next to her were pills, hundreds, and she was ready to take them. The doctors had said that that was the cause of her death, a mixture of overdose and blood loss…I knew that Kelli couldn’t have handled another failed attempt. And in my dream I could do nothing, I had to sit and watch her first do the one thing I truly hate, the thing that I knew had caused so much of her pain, self harm, and then finally she killed herself. She took all the pills, one after the other, as if it was the most important thing, as if it would cure everything, hold all the answers, and then, the affects of the pills already showing, she pushed harder into her arm than ever before, by this time she was lying in her bed, ready to curl up and feel her world ending, feel all her problems being solved, feel what it was to die. Her blood poured from her arm, she cried and cried, I could see her pain, I could feel it – and still do nothing. Every night there was one cut, one time when she pushed the hardest, in exactly the right place; her scream ripped my heart, her bed sheets soaked with blood, rich red, all around her, the last thing she would see, a world of pain and blood. And every night, I cried to her, screamed to her, begged her to stop, ran to her and shook her shoulders, tried to drag the blade away from her, but I just fell through her, she was oblivious to my efforts, my screaming, my pain. Somehow every night something in me thought that this was the night I would stop it, this would be the night that she would hear me, she would stop and come to me and hug me and say that she never wanted to do it again. But it never happened, every night was the same. No time or distance could lessen the frequency of my nightmares, nor soften the jabbing pain of the reality they reinforced.