Sitting in the dark, on the couch, she listened to rain thrash against the windows of the apartment. He wasn’t there, but she no longer expected him to be. Ever. That thought brought her musing back to the rain, and she stared. Light from the street lamp on the corner cut through the windowpanes and painted dim squares against the wall above the chair. She could see the waver and splatter of the raindrops as they warped the square she happened to be gazing at.
She lost herself there, and all her thoughts clustered and slowed until her mind was nothing but a field of glaciers. After their fight her constant feeling of inadequacy became greater. The feeling never left her mind, always sitting front and center like an eager student, forcing their way into he thoughts. Daily she drowned in a deep pool of her own self-doubt. Farther into the labyrinth of her mind she knew that if she’d stopped all those months ago when he begged her to, tears in his eyes, he wouldn’t have walked out. They’d probably be happy, living in a blissful bubble of a relationship.
For years he put up with her, clearing her vomit each morning after awakening from a night of drinking and a various farrago of drugs. He was patient, saintly patient. She pushed him. She knew, somewhere deep in her conscious, he’d break eventually, that he would just leave like everyone else, stop caring. But she continued to push.
Slowly, she shuffled to the bathroom, wincing as the cold tiles pressed against the bare, tough undersides of her feet. Closing the thick oak door, the sound of pouring rain muffled by the porcelain filled room, she shambled over to the bathtub and sat on the cool porcelain edge.
Her eyes strayed to the counter, stopping on the shining scrap of metal that laying on the white marble. She looked at the razor longingly, aching for the pleasure filled pain it used to bring as it dragged across her wrist releasing red, warm blood on her arm like a paintbrush on an expansive canvas. Her arms yearned to feel the blood trickle in crimson beads, her eyes to see the crimson path they left. It was a revolutionary high she’d discovered and partaken in at the age of fifteen, a way to release the pain of her mother’s death and father’s rejection. She’d stopped upon entering college, finding real drugs to be a better compensation for her pain.
Temperance rested her tired head into her ice-cold hands, barely holding back the tears that threatened to fall down her face. He was truly gone. Though they’d fought before, it’d just end with her walking into the bathroom and shutting herself in. This time was different. This time, he walked away, slicing open her old wounds with a ten blade.
“I don’t want to breathe for you anymore,” he’d uttered, making her heart stop dead in her chest. . It shriveled, dying quickly from the loss of her love. That one sentence was driving every thought in her mind, propelling her hand towards the counter where the sharp silver razor blade sat. He was gone, not coming back. Artificial light reflected off the blade, giving it a heavenly illusion of freedom. She also grabbed the bottle of bleach that resided under the sink, clasping it in her hand as she shuffled back to the bathtub, this time climbing into it rather than perching on the side. She said a few choice words of “prayer”, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand. Taking three deep, nervous breaths as her tears fell faster, Temperance Grey raised the bottle of bleach to her lips, gagging at the smell before taking one long swig of it, letting it burn her throat as it went down. Before the bleach forced her body into unconsciousness she dragged the razor across the lowest part of her wrist, releasing her own blood. Listening to the muffled sound of the surging rain, Temperance Faith Grey slowly succumbed to the bleach and the blood loss’ effects.