I stomp towards the store. Snow flows about me. It is a first true snowstorm of this year. The air is cold, 15 degrees below zero and windy. It’s still early, 2 in the afternoon but it’s getting darker fast. After all, it’s only a week to winter solstice and the darkest night of the year. My mind is painfully clear. I can almost see my footsteps glowing in the snow before me. My path is marked. The store comes into sight, all decorated for Christmas. The blinking bright lights hurt my darkness accustomed eyes. I close them. I am supposed to be at work now but I just could not stand it any more. The feeling of being out of place. There’s nobody to talk to, no common ground. Day in and day out I sit staring at a screen in a big hall among a team I have nothing in common with. They do manual labor, I write code. Alone. They have a team leader, rules and instructions. I just have vague explanations and a boss that is across the hall from me and no particular interest or time to talk to me. I stop at the store door for a moment and push my frustration with work back into the depths of my mind. Time to wear a mask of someone normal. Someone alive.

I enter the store. Tacky Christmas decorations seem out of place in the industrial design of this store. I walk to the candy stand and pick a chocolate. I know I should not have any, but I take it anyway. It no longer matters. I walk to the counter and eye the rows of bottles. What would be the best… Briefly I think about something sweet but discard the notion, not enough alcohol in them. Finally I pick half a liter of vodka, of a rather cheap variety. I usually don’t drink anything stronger than a beer so that should be effective enough. The saleslady looks at me inquisitively for a moment when I tuck the chocolate and the bottle in my rather thin jean jacket. I did not plan to spend time outside today. Dad put me down at the door and was going to pick me up later… As I walk out of the store I think of my parents.

They have done their best to raise decent people out of us and they have done well. I would not intentionally harm anyone, I never make demands, I’m always polite and I keep my problems to myself. “Don’t whine”, they said and I don’t. “Be considerate”, and I am. I’m so considerate of everyone else that I don’t dare to say a word to anyone in fear of saying the wrong thing. ‘Don’t squander your money’, and I don’t. Things are too valuable, they cannot be risked. Money is to be spent carefully on things that are useful, never on entertainment. But they did their best and I love them for that. I owe everything I am to them. As long as I live.

Coldness seeps through the jacket. I dig out the bottle in my pocket and take a gulp. The taste is awful but I force myself to take another one and then another. The bottle is tucked back into the pocket. With the same movement I take out the chocolate. I’d better face it. I’m scared. Scared of living, of people, of men most of all. My father has not even touched us since we grew too big to sit in his lap. There is a wall. No closeness. Not that I miss it. It is better that way. Makes him safe. I’m not afraid of him. Mom I hug sometimes when she is upset, like when grandmother died or our dog was run over but only then it feels OK. My kid sister sometimes hugs me, she says I’m nice and soft to hug. Everyone else scare me. Make me want to hide to the bottom of a closet as I did as a child but for some time now there is no closet I’d fit into.

Again I gulp from the bottle and cover the taste with the chocolate.

Men. They can’t be trusted. They can’t. You think one is safe and then suddenly you see he is like the others. And it so horrible. Why can’t they think with anything else than the stick in their pants. I do my best to be unattractive and some still touch me. A stranger in a bus station, those men when I was a kid. HIM. They all are alike. As long as they get their itch scratched they don’t care whose life they are breaking or watch getting broken.

The cold is gone and the taste of vodka seems almost good. I won’t put the bottle back any more.

School. There is no point in telling anyone they are hurting you. They say, it’s your fault. Be like others and they won’t tease you. Teachers can’t stop them and my mother kept saying, make a joke out of it, turn it into utter nonsense. I tried, oh I tried. In second grade an older boy called me a fatso and asked why am I fat. I remembered what my mother said, and told him it was because I had eaten a cloud. A nice tasty fluffy cloud. They teased me with that until I was in high school. There were other teases like this, made up by me like mother had said that were used on me until I sat on a rock near the big road picking out a truck to step in front of. I was also told to ignore them, not to mind. I did that too. It only made them believe they can do anything to me and it would not hurt. It did. Always.

I stand on a crossing. The road to the right takes me back to wait for my father, but I’m too drunk to go there. And I left my phone in the locker. It’s too valuable. I cross the road to narrow path among the trees. Snow is high there. I must slump just a bit further… there. This is a nice place. I can see the sky from here. Perhaps there’s a rip in the clouds and I can see the stars.

Love. I don’t know what that is. First, I think, I loved was in eight grade. He was someone that hated me. He used to beat me with books. Heavy ones. Dictionaries mostly. A few times with chairs. In sixth grade he had beaten blood out of my nose because he had taken my pocketknife and I insisted in getting it back. It was said to be my fault. I should have not taken the knife to school but I had not intended to. I had just worn the pants I had worn when working in the forest last weekend. I only had one pair of warm ones. But I was happy to see him every time. It never came to my head to tell anyone about this. He hated me and that was right. The next time I’d rather not remember. I should have been old enough to resist being coaxed into telling him even if it was as impossible as the first one. Then there was HIM. He was my friend. I believed him to be different. I loved him from far away and never expected anything of him. But he turned out to be like them. And that hurt. And I am out of options.

The storm roars… Show has almost covered me by now. The vodka bottle lies in the snow. It’s empty. Slowly my eyes are starting to close. Sleepiness overwhelms me. I feel warm, like in summer as a child.

Bikes, freedom, sunshine and fun. And him. “Lets go pick some berries, I know a good spot…” he said. “You go first, I’ll follow. That way.” All there was last years leaves and shelter of big trees. My friend, his sister was nowhere in sight. It was odd. I did not know what to do. And then I was lying on the ground, holding my legs tightly together like he had said and my panties were lying next to me. I went blank. I did not cry then. I cried in the thunderstorm as I walked home with my sister that day. I could cry then, I was afraid of thunder, it was OK to cry, she would not guess. And I never wore that lovely red dress I had worn for the first time again. He was one of Them.

I think I will sleep now. I’m tired and too drunk to stand anyway. There are no more roads, no more choices, no more strangers. There is wind and snow and dark, dark sky. I stare into it. Wind rips a cloud and for a moment, and I see a star gleaming. I leap up racing to reach the star before the cloud closes. I’m free. It worked. The note is on my phone screen. They will find it. I’m FREE.

Epilogue:
They looked for her, even after they found the note but there was no sign of her. She was finally found by a man walking a dog on springs first real thaw and pretty ironically on her twenty-third birthday. Life went on.