Things quickly got completely out of hand between Garden Snake and I - and I'll admit to my own wrongdoings. I shouldn't have gone after him just because I didn't like his tough talk. This back and forth continued for a while, actually, and Ghada had kicked off the near nightly visits to the campus in the woods. I was pretty much just in a bad mood all the time, and when things finally hit a fever pitch a while later, the great slice happened.

Yup, I cut my wrists up.

After that, I spent more time in the walls of the labyrinth than I did in the normal world. I was finding myself there literally as quickly as I could blink. I'd be walking down the street, blink, and then be transported to that little slice of heaven I had grown so accustomed to.

It seemed to be brooding. It was a deep, dark crimson both inside and out. It emanated a foreboding darkness that I could practically feel as I approached the door. I stepped inside and it felt like I could turn at any moment and see blood running down the walls around me. It was quieter than usual. It was quieter than it should have been. And it was overall larger than ever. It took me noticeably longer to reach the heart stone. What did I see when I reached the core of that enormous building? I saw a room flooded with this threatening light. It seemed to be seething.

Me: I messed up, didn't I?

Voice: …

Me: I can tell you're pissed, so go ahead and get it off your chest. Yell at me and call me selfish. But at least explain why you feel that way.

I got absolutely nothing from the voice. It made me feel bad. What I did must have upset my protector as well to cause such a reaction. It cut deep.

My return home was met with more silence. Mom didn't speak to me for weeks. I guess she didn't know what to say. It looked like she spent that time reflecting and I could see all over her face that I had broken her heart. Never in a million years would she ever have imagined me attempting to kill myself. Not her son. I came from strong genes.

Really quick - stop calling us weak. It takes a lot of strength to carry the weight of those emotions and the abuse for so long. You don't know what it's like to be that depressed, so don't act all high and mighty with me like you all just know the answers to every question and the solutions to all the world's problems. You don't know any more than I do. Stop judging me. If you haven't been through it, you don't really have a dog in this fight. You may know how to respond to it in hindsight, or when it isn't you, but the overwhelming majority of you don't know how to deal with it firsthand.

I was the loneliest I had even been. The world felt cold and empty, and my spirit remained broken long after I removed my bandages. Reality itself seemed to be rapidly unraveling around me. I took medicine religiously, I cried profusely, I obsessed over it, and I prayed only to receive no peace in the end. Theresa and Autumn had shut me out for a while. My platonic friends all disappeared. Silence. No one but my physician would talk to me about anything. Even my enemies wouldn't stop to just to say fuck you or call me all kinds of insulting names. Not even a rude gesture. I was completely on my own.

I felt like garbage and that made it even more difficult to resist doing it again, or maybe seeking out more effective methods.

I'll tell you more about how I got there in the next few chapters. It's time you learned about the Diamond era.

To be continued…