[CONTENT WARNING: deals with personal experiences of suicide and mental illness.]

i don’t really know when i realized. i have no idea how i named them. i have no idea what makes them, but i know for sure what made them.

i was thirteen. no thirteen year old kid should ever think that god forgot to kill him. 

it’s the stupidest thing, too; just heaps and heaps of schoolwork and an unstable social life. i was afraid that everything that could go wrong would go wrong. i knew this. i knew. so i thought: i should have been hit by a car or slipped on the curb by now. there should have been a burglary gone wrong or a house fire by now. there should have been a heart attack or fatal kitchen mishap by now. something should have happened by now. i should be dead by now.

this is not why most teenagers want to kill themselves, i know. very unconventional. it is all everyone ever says about me. unconventional. old soul. ahead of his time. stuck in the past. i like old things because i know they are real. i know that they happened. i have no idea if any of this is real, or if any of this is happening. i leave things unfinished because i dreamt that i did them, and so in my mind i surely got it done. i see things through frosted glass. i know what’s happening; nothing is ever truly clear.

it started with an english class and a project i refused to do. i had an essay and three charcoal drawings of scenes from the modern prometheus due in february, and they were assigned in december. this was around the same time hspva applications opened up, and i decided to apply twice. for two different departments. why i thought this was a good idea, i don’t know. i bet you couldn’t wring it out of me if you went back in time and beat me over the head. i had no reason, and i haven’t come up with one yet.

at first it was just zoning out. i would sit still for entire class periods, eyes glassed over and only hearing my own thoughts turn to static and microwave noises. i thought this was a normal thing for people with adhd. i kept thinking it was normal even as i started losing time. i forgot my weekends, i forgot my days, i forgot what happened in the class before this one, i forgot what you said to me ten minutes ago, i forgot how i got here, when did i wake up, what time is it, what day is it, it’s wednesday wait what no it was friday just yesterday no it was thursday this morning what’s the date where am i what school is this what’s my name no that’s not my name who the hell are you i don’t know you back off. 

and then i learned his name was sergei. i might have chosen it. it might have always been there. i call him seryozha. he calls me rodka. i think he is more than half of me now.

seryozha is mean. he is cruel. he says things i could never even think of uttering. he is a vessel for my rage; i never let myself feel angry. he feels it for me. he keeps the walls up.

he has said many things. “fuck off,” to my best friend. “don’t talk to me,” to my girlfriend. “you don’t love me, i don’t need you, win win,” to my mom. they all get it. they all know. i could never let him do this to anyone else.

to me he is kind. he holds me in invisible arms and says gentle things.

there is another one. his name is alexandr. or sasha. he likes sasha better.

sasha is an asshole. sometimes i hate him. he is sardonic and cynical and he says things for the fun of it. he is not bad by any means, no. more often than not he’s simply the one who will wear my face when i’m tired of being me. he is funny. he makes people laugh. but when i start to feel like a slow heartbeat, and seryozha won’t take any bullshit, sasha is not above ruining relationships just to get us away from the rest of the world. 

there were others. two more. volodya and vanya. i don’t know where they went. i think they are part of seryozha and sasha, now, because seryozha doesn’t cuss as much and sasha isn’t as mean.

they are so different from me i’m not sure how people didn’t see it sooner. seryozha is left-handed. he doesn’t talk a lot. his leg doesn’t bounce, he’s not a people pleaser, and his handwriting is godawful. sasha talks with his face more than his tongue. his posture is so terrible i’ll come back to consciousness and my back will ache. he makes crude jokes, he secretly hates all my friends, and his handwriting is impossibly worse than seryozha’s.

and so they helped me. they kicked me through the three-year locked door of middle school and into the long hallway of high school, and are slowly but surely prodding me towards the exit sign.

sometimes i worry that i’ll wake up and the house in my head will be quiet. every now and then, it gets close; the house is cold and the lights aren’t on, and the car is missing from the driveway. i think, who played this trick on me, this long and lonely trick? but then the car pulls in and the lights turn on and someone’s asking me what the fuck are you eating and another voice says it’s eggs sasha and this wonderful terrible larger-than-life confined-to-my-head brother-mother-father-given natural-miracle merry-go-round of life keeps on spinning, around and around and around, whispering i love you, i love you, you’ll never be alone again.