GHOST VALEDICTORIAN

I think about ghosts a lot. Not the conjuring, biblical Hollywood crap, the quiet ones lingering in my room. Sitting at my bedside, hoping I'd take my antidepressants today and staring at myself in the mirror while I apply concealer to the eyes that haven't known peace in twelve years. Quietly watching my new clothes with tags still on, bought in the desperate hope of finally stepping out of my bed and staring at the toothbrush I haven't picked up for two days in a row. Living beneath the scars on my arms, on the days they ooze with blood, on the days they seem like distant memories.

I often romanticise the morning after I kill myself, hoping, praying to wake up as one of them. To finally exist freely. To fulfil my lifelong dream of being invisible.

I will probably die with an open tab of JavaScript tutorials and unsolved LeetCode problems. That's a miserable way to die. Underachiever. Failure. Just not good enough.

I wish I could go back in time and be her again, the prodigy, the girl who attempted suicide and scored 100 on her English exam after failing to kill herself. The golden child, too broke to live, too ambitious to fail.

I imagine dying choking on a half-finished assignment and the word "used-to." Used to be brilliant. Used to be exceptional and used to make people flinch with how sharp I was. Now I flinch at Google Forms.

Call it suicide. Call it burnout. Call it divine retribution for trying too hard. I call it Tuesday.

It's so easy to become an overachiever when you're dead, I suppose. No seeking validation in the name of love from your mother, who needed you to be everything and everyone at the same time.

When depression has you in a chokehold and you spend your days reminiscing about death, only a handful are lucky enough to find an escape. Being smart became mine. I was eleven, spending weeks crying in the bathroom because I didn't have words for what was wrong yet. I finally told my brother, trusted him with whatever I could articulate. When my mother found out, she said that if I focused on studying and
excelled academically, things would get better. And I believed her. Because she was also teaching me the other equation: that my friends were temporary, that I cared too much, that they'd all leave eventually because nobody actually gave a shit about me, except her. So I made myself perfect, because perfect meant permanent. Perfect meant I couldn't be abandoned.

So what if I am getting bullied, or every breath I take in my room feels like it's going to be my last? Or every time I open up, I rely, I trust, I love, every time I ask for help, there's a voice reminding me how I am privileged, and it's all in my head, and people who are destined for great things don't cry falling asleep. If I just focused on being perfect, it would all go away.

I only know how to be perfect, and the thought of not being her scares the shit out of me. It's like my only identity has been stolen away and buried in the dirt with a failed attempt. I don't know what I would be if not the golden child with so much pain that I forgot how to breathe. I miss the adoration, the applause, and the jealous friends whose mothers would do anything to make me their daughter when my mother never thought I was enough. Now I have lost all the love that kept me going. That's the only form of love I received, rotten with envy, high, seeking validation, carving holier than thou, my parents would be so lucky if they had you as their daughter.

If you're perfect, there's no reason for abuse. As long as I was perfect, they were in the wrong. Wrong to harass me, wrong to call me a slut, wrong to blame me for emotional outbursts, wrong to hit me after I tried to kill myself, but if I am not her, what reason do I have to say enough is enough? What reason do I cook up to falsify their good parenting? How do I stop the abuse, and how do I tell myself you do not deserve the pain they cause you?

Love is a result of perfection. Nobody can love me if I am anything less than perfect.

And now in death, I will reverse it all. I will stay up for days without needing anything my depression-riddled flesh needs—no antacids before the meds, no food to sustain myself, no mustering enough hope to wake up tomorrow. I will finally become her again. The girl I hated, the girl I can never be in this life. The girl who deserved all the love in the world.

And I will sure as fuck make her proud again.

Better dead than perfect.

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THY ELOQUENCE

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