All this time, all my life, I have wanted to be normal. I don't even know what that is. Neurotypical. Not a depressive. Not someone who can't tie her own shoes some days. Not someone who turns into a flake a few times a year. Not disappointing.

Zach says he doesn't want me to be normal, because he doesn't know what normal is. But I long for it like a lost part of me, even though I can't remember a time when I met that definition. Sometimes I even forget what it's like to be happy, and that's almost better because at least I can't want it. I don't think happy and normal are synonyms, but surely there is something more to my life than this endless, ceaseless, senseless pain. I think I'm just distant enough from being suicidal to understand completely why people do it. In the moment you're not thinking clearly, there's no reflection. But all the moments up to that moment are this, what's happening to me right now. Just pain. And if for three months all you feel is pain, you would do just about anything to escape. Like a fox with its leg in a trap. It's not selfishness, or even sadness, really. It's complete and total desperation. It's seeing other people be normal and knowing that will never, ever be yours.

Death is normal. Perhaps it's the only claim to normal I will ever have. And that is an escape, the best escape.