Valerie: I don’t want to do this. I don’t. I’m not weak or stupid or selfish, okay. I’m not doing this for attention. I didn’t do any of this for attention (motions to scars on her arms. She puts the sleeve back and folds her arms around herself). I really don’t want to do this. I am a good person. I am in the top 5% of my graduating class. I really like to read and sing at weddings. I don’t know how to parallel park and I hate geometry.

I really try. I try. Everyday I do try. I feel this emptiness inside of me. I don’t know what to do most of the time with myself. I have such overwhelming anxiety about everything. When I’m not being anxious, I feel like I am going to cry for days. There are times when I will sit in my room and literally sob for hours.

I really just want this to stop. I don’t know why I feel like this a lot. When I was younger, I would feel like this for weeks at a time and then it would go away. As I got older, I felt it for months. But now I’m a junior in high school and I haven’t felt happy since my middle school graduation. I am dying inside. I just don’t know what to do

And no, I can’t just be happy. I’m not like that. It’s that feeling like there is this weight inside of your chest and you can’t breathe. Everything and everyone seems to be out to get you. You feel like everything is pointless and nothing matters in life. You think that you are worthless because all of your life nothing and no one has ever told you or made you feel like you are of any worth. Everyday you were told by your peers, your “friends”, even your teachers to stop being a baby. Stop complaining so much and making everything about you. You’re selfish. Don’t act like only your problems matter. There are children in Africa who are dying of diarrhea and kids in China are being forced into concentration camps and you keep crying because your mom told you that you’re ugly. Or that your dad called an idiot because you got an 89 on a test. Or that your sister pushes you down the stairs and threw away all of your clothes. Suck it up because there are people who have it worse.

If you really wanted to die, you’d do it already. Well, that’s the thing. I want to die, but I don’t want to kill myself. Does that even make sense? I wake up every morning feeling hopeless and I can’t handle the pain. Sure the pills and the puking and the blades helped but this time...this time. I’m so sorry. (sobbing) I am so sorry.

(Valerie walks off stage and then we hear a gunshot go off.)