Lucy Koerner

Content warning: This article contains references to suicide.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 1-800-273-8255. 

Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. 

On-call counselors from Yale Mental Health and Counseling are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290. 

Additional resources are available in a guide compiled by the Yale College Council here.

***

Tick. Tick. Tick.

My room is silent, save for the faint ticking of the watch that lies beside my head.

Tick. 

Tick. 

Tick.

“Get up,” I tell myself. “You only have one thing to do.”

Cards, paired with sparkling envelopes, lie in the first drawer of my desk. I had bought them for friends’ birthdays to craft my annual declarations of love and affection. I did not expect to use them for this.

My bones are heavy as I force myself to sit up. I grab a pen, jet-black, and pull off its cap. I stare.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Ink drips from the nib onto the card’s pristine surface. “Damn, I have to pick a new one,” I think. But my fingers are stiff, frozen in place. My nose starts to burn, and my vision becomes a foggy vignette. “Who do I even start with? What do I say?”

I lie back down, the exertion of such contemplation excessive. My eyelids are tar, dark, sticky and weary. “It’s okay. Soon.” The refrain echoes in my head as I sink further into my abyss.

I silently go over tomorrow. My throat is wet with tears when my door is pushed open. I stir, fatigued, apathetic, yet disoriented in my stupor nonetheless.

She stands under my doorframe in her uniform, hair still tied back in a dishevelled ponytail. I wipe my face on my pillow, my mascara leaving dull gray stains on the fabric, and turn to gaze at her directly. Two inches taller than I am; my little sister. Her hands clutch a bundle of pink plastic flowers, and she smiles, the slight gap in her front teeth ever-endearing and girlish.

“Didi,” she says, “I got these for you.” I barely register her movements but find my hands reaching out as she extends the faux bouquet towards me. I must look perplexed because she grins wider and begins to explain.

“You buy flowers all the time and they always die. These won’t. I thought you’d like them.”

She turns and walks out the door, gently shutting it behind her. My heart shatters in my chest.

I cannot.

I cannot do this.

I cannot do this to her.

I put the card paper back in the drawer and collapse into my bed. The abyss, only just a cesspool devoid of light, is now purplish at its edges. My fingers wrap around the soft plastic. “Stay.”

Two years later, I walk through Grove Street Cemetery just before sunset. I read every epitaph, letting the words roll over my tongue as I swallow them down: “beloved father, grandfather, mother, sister, daughter.” 

Love lasts in each engraving, the desire to preserve those we cherish palpable. I start to wonder: “what would’ve been…?” and stop myself. There is no reason to ponder the road not taken.

Nevertheless, my mind begins to conjure a kaleidoscope of the last several months, the path I chose. Names, faces and memories — a never-ending montage — emerge. My sister. My parents. Graduation day, as I bid my favourite teachers adieu. A girls’ trip to Bali as Lis, Nat and I dance on the sand until dawn. My best friends from home the night before I came to Yale, gathered around my dining table and eating takeout, reminiscing upon our years past and expressing our excitement for those to come.

And Yale. I think of dinners with people I only met hours prior, laughing until my ribs ached. Late-night talks sitting on the Silliman swing with my girlfriends as we muse over boys we like and embarrassing antics undertaken the night before. Walks around campus when I find myself suddenly rooted to the pavement and staring in awe at a stained glass mural, astounded that I made it this far, that I made it here, that I made it at all.

A bouquet of fake pink flowers sits on my desk.

Every day I thank the heavens for the road not taken.