I crossed state lines, carefully balancing my body on the driver’s seat. I felt closer to collapse with each passing second, like my body was about to cave in, my bones about to break one by one. I carried my doubts and my dreams deep within my heart, beating against the smooth muscle that tied me to this life. I could picture his face so close to mine, his hands, strong and smooth. I could smell his scent embedded in the cloth of the car seats, wafting up to greet me. He didn’t know. I had believed that when the time came I would find a way to tell him, that the words would come and they would be right and everything would be okay. But I couldn’t do it. I carried regret on my pilgrimage. I was a coward, I was selfish and I was a terrible person. I carried hatred of everyone and everything, but especially of myself because I was not good enough. I never would be now. I could feel my cuts tingling, and my fingers began to itch. I felt like I was going to split right in half and fall to pieces, all my blood and secrets spilling out on the side of the highway. He would have to read between the lines. I carried my sadness, hidden for so long; buried deep inside my soul because to hold myself together when everyone thought I would fall apart was true strength. I couldn’t let them see me because they wouldn’t understand. They would melt me and reshape me into the confines of everyday life, into their box, into the shoes I was expected to fill. They would turn me into the girl that they wanted me to be and then they would hate me for it because in this upside-down f****d up world you’re always somebody’s b****. Or you were dead. I carried my suicide on that long car ride. My slow, considered, logical suicide, my midnight manifestos and moonlit musings on the futility of life. I knew that it is so much easier to give up, to not care anymore. I carried knowledge that I wished I didn’t have, which was a rarity. I had fought and paid many times over for the things I had, but some things I wished I didn’t know. I carried my life that night; I carried my sadness and my love and my fear. I carried my disappointment in myself and in him and in my life. I carried a life that was not mine, a life that I was now responsible for. Deep within my stomach the seed of life began to complicate me even more. And all I could feel was sadness.