The sting of my warm tears with the chill of the tile floor is a combination I will never shake.

“What the hell are you doing Courtney??” he yelled from the other side of the bathroom floor.

“N-nothing” I managed to choke out in-between sobs.

“I’m just looking at the grout… it’s some good grout you got here” I said with a laugh.

I always knew how to make the serious not so serious.

At least I thought so.

I was the lonely pretty girl.

What a cliché!

I remember walking home from a party I didn’t want to be at, drunk and alone. I walked quite a distance before I stumbled to the ground. Because, gravity.

I laid on the sidewalk in my lace shorts and disheveled designer top and cursed the world. I stared up at the blackness of night and cursed your name. Cursed my existence. Cursed it all.

I rolled around and laughed at the minerals finding their way between my fingers. The streetlamp created a shimmer effect on the dirt now growing like an ink blot all over my arm.

It was pretty.

I’m sure if any bystanders saw this shell of a pretty girl slowly losing it on a random sidewalk in a town, she had no business living in, they would have mumbled “rich girl problems” and went on their way.

I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t wealthy. I wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t loved. I wasn’t.

I was just a “lonely pretty girl.”

Well not lonely per say, I had my depression to keep me company.

I knew I could always count on her to choke out any sense of joy. She had this knack for permanently attaching the covers to my face and convincing me everyone was talking poorly about me.

She meant well. I think.

Her friends would often visit too!

Anxiety, and her “gasping for air” presence was a regular at the local bar.

You know the bar where paranoia and obsessive-compulsive disorder would hang out at? Yes, the bar at the end of the street! The one with the single bar stool and the broken neon sign outside? You know what I’m talking about… the sign that read “PLEASE Someone save me!!”

Well… maybe you don’t know the bar.

It’s out of business now anyways.

I hear someone turned on the lights and it all melted away. Very Wizard of Oz like.

“I’m melting! Melllllttttiinnngg!”

There was this huge sign above the light switch that said “Under NO circumstance will you flip this switch!! Only trouble ahead!”

It’s interesting how it just took a flip of a light switch to bring an entire business to its knees.

Whoever broke the rules and turned on the lights must have been courageous and strong. They must have known that this bar needed to be in the light. It needed to be seen, for exactly what it was. It needed to be let go.

And the patron needed to be saved by the only person who could save them.

Me.