Aislyn threw another pill down the garbage disposal, taking a long look at the label on the bottle before placing it back in the medicine cabinet. She closed her eyes hard for a moment before looking out the window at what seemed to her to be such a grey world. It felt like her existence was in the form of an old black and white movie minus the romance, and at this point Humphrey Bogart couldn’t even save the plot.

She shook her head quickly, as though to dispel the thoughts that were building up in her mind. Increasingly she began to notice that it appeared her thoughts were more enemies than obliging companions. Aislyn opened the cupboard one more time to make sure that her pills were in the front where her parents could see them; her practice of deception had served her well, she had done it without even noticing. She then grabbed a notebook and pen, threw them into her bag, and went out to her car.

Staring at herself in the rearview mirror for a moment, she silently posed the question as to why she made the decision to cut her hair so drastically. It was long, black and perfectly straight for as long as she could remember, and just last week she decided to have it all chopped off. She stared at it for a moment, it was messy and unruly, and as much as she missed her long tresses, she enjoyed it. She didn’t quite know why she did it, either as one last act of rebellion, one last hurrah, or because tomorrow it wouldn’t matter anyway.

As she drove she noted that everything looked slightly different in her current state of mind. She took the long way on a whim, passing the places where a few of her old friends grew up. She took a lingering glance at each of the houses, watching phantoms of herself at varying ages acting through the innocent joys of childhood. She sincerely believed that nothing in her adult life would ever be able to compare to the caged freedom of youth.

Aislyn felt a crushing lightness in knowing her future. On one hand it was liberating knowing that nothing she did today she could be held accountable for tomorrow. At the same time a sort of paranoia was creeping slowly into her mind that anybody might suspect her date with destiny tonight. Every creature that crossed her path seemed to take notice of her before continuing on in their carefree manner. She told herself that it wouldn’t matter if the whole town knew, no one would be able to stop her now. ‘World,’ she thought, ‘it’s a little late to be finally giving me your attentions.’

She arrived at her favorite café, ordered her favorite drink, and sat down to a table. She took a sip of her beverage; every sensation was magnified by the simple fact that this was the last chance she had to experience any of it. Getting out her notebook, she ran her fingers over the cover knowing what valuable things would be written in it soon, and how it would be the only connection anybody would have with who she really was or why she would ever want to do what she was going to do.

Aislyn closed her eyes for a moment, drumming her fingers lightly on the table. What was there to live for anyway? Not Athena. Her sister had less than a twenty-five percent chance of living – they had caught the cervical cancer at a very late stage. She wanted to see her one last time, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to handle seeing what the chemotherapy did to the person that meant so much to her. Aislyn would rather keep every single sweet memory she had of her sister until it was pried away from her. She couldn’t see her sister like that, not the person that had pushed her through life so far, the person that had told her to do what she wanted to do.

Athena would say “Will it make you happy? Because nothing else matters.” Aislyn had heard it from her so many times, and she could almost hear her saying it now. When Aislyn was in high school and her parents didn’t like the way she dressed. When they told her she would never be able to make a living as an art history major. When she got her tattoo – a paintbrush with drop of green paint coming from it, and the other end was a fountain pen writing out the words “Dear World” in cursive.

Athena had been the one light in her life, one of the only people who knew that Aislyn had never really taken her pills. They were anti-depressants, and Aislyn didn’t like the idea of chemicals messing around with everything in her brain. Changing serotonin levels isn’t quite the same as taking aspirin for a headache. And a side effect of being suicidal? It didn’t seem like much of a choice: become suicidal without pills, or with them. At least without them she would know that she could make the decision of her own will, nothing interfering with her judgment. Her parents would’ve never been able to understand why she wouldn’t take the medication, they hung on every single word that her psychiatrist said. If he would have told them that her only cure was to be put into an institution for ten years, they would have heavy-heartedly but instantly agreed.

Katherine was the only other person that had any clue that Aislyn wasn’t alright. Katherine had heard all about how much Aislyn hated her psychiatrist, the vendetta that she had against any sort of medication for her apparent disorder and the way she thought she should be able to deal with it all by herself. And as valuable of a friend and listener as Katherine had been for years, Aislyn had tried for a month and a half to get a hold of her before giving up. Katherine had begun dating a boy named Max about two months before, and every spare moment of Katherine’s time needed to be spent in his presence. She said that she loved him, but Aislyn believed it all to be some sort of façade of happiness, a forced adoration to banish her loneliness. The worst part of all was that Aislyn disliked Max very much, he was controlling and inconsiderate, the complete opposite of what her friend deserved; Katherine would hear nothing of the sort.

Thinking over these facts again made Aislyn quite sure of herself, and she opened her notebook to begin writing her own autobiography, the only communication that she would have with anyone after she was gone.