1999?

She sat on the bus near the back, gazing out the window; seeing nothing. All she could think about were the eyes of the other passengers staring at her. Not at her disheveled clothes, her black eye, or the streak of blood across her cheek, but stealing a glance into her soul. Her outward appearance gave her away, making her transparent to every stranger’s eyes.

Two guesses to what had happened ran through the minds of each person riding the bus. The pretty young woman was either in a terrible bar fight or was the victim of physical abuse at some vile man’s hands. The elderly women clicked their tongues first in disapproval, then sympathy. The virile young men vowed they would never have let anything happen to her if she were their girl, then got mad thinking of a man who would do such a thing to a lovely girl like her. The other young women on the bus glanced her way then paid no attention at all, while the elderly men were too busy hitting on the elderly women to notice her.

Neither option was viable in this case. The outer wounds, and the inner wounds, were self-inflicted. By her own hand she created the bruises, the scratches, and the scars. Although she could not remember how, she had a vague recollection that she had done these sickly things herself.

She reaches out her trembling hand to ring her stop. She confidently rises from her seat and stumbles toward the door as the bus screeches to a halt. Safely inside her apartment building she runs for the elevator and lets the doors close, heedless of the woman from apartment 5C calling for her to hold the door. She bangs her head against the dark wood paneling again and again bringing her frustrated heart relief and a new outer pain for her to deal with.

Physical pain, so easily dealt with. Four or five aspirin, but then a groggy twelve hours later the pain inside is back again. When the inner pain returns she inflicts physical pain again to mask her suffering soul. Once she even had someone else abuse her, just to make less work for her, but the effect just wasn’t the same. Mentally, having someone else hit her didn’t hurt enough; it didn’t cancel out her existing mental anguish. He beat her so well that she was in a cast for six weeks following, but it just wasn’t good enough.

Up until two months ago she could go for weeks on end feigning happiness and not hurting herself. No one at work sensed that anything was wrong. The few bruises she had back then were dismissible, but now they were beginning to wonder.

The change was so gradual she almost didn’t notice it herself. But the inner depths of her mind and soul were in utter turmoil. Less than six months ago she was normal. She had never hurt herself, or even thought of it. Slowly this new disgraceful personality usurped the former. The beatings were now commonplace, a daily occurrence, this new personality had a hunger for pain.

It all began after a serious and revealing drunken conversation with an understanding bartender in a deserted bar. That night she managed to dredge up an entire past that she had forgotten ever existed. Memories of old times, both good and bad, rushed back into her mind at an immensely confusing rate. The bartender took her home at closing time and tried to calm the hysterical young woman.

She pushed him away continually; wouldn’t let him help. She pushed him too hard eventually though and the final time she pushed he fell backwards, and hit his head on the corner of the coffee table. He lay there bleeding as she called the paramedics. Within days he was out and about again, but she could not forgive herself for inflicting such pain on another human being.

Soon she found a way to escape the guilt; the pain she felt inside. It was so very easy to hurt herself. Beating herself up for days on end worked for a while. Leave work early on Friday, call in sick on Monday, and show up her happy old self on Tuesday, it was a clever plan. It fooled not only her co-workers, but her friends as well. Drinking dulled the physical pain so she gave it up. She became a perpetual angel of goodwill to her friends as the constant designated driver.

Lately she hasn’t been showing up for work at all and hasn’t spoken to her friends for at least three weeks. The pain of withdrawing from society helps her to forget the more important and complex issues. Her answering machine is full of unanswered messages and her closet is full of shredded business suits.

She has decided that tonight will be the end of all the craziness. The battle between the two personalities has been won, fully and completely. There is nothing left to fight for. Her recent rampage of self-imposed pain has destroyed any figment of sanity that may have remained.

At 6:10pm the job was finished. The last thing to hit her head that evening, even before she could finish taking the remaining half bottle of aspirin she had been saving, was not her own hand but a lead bullet. No more pain, no more confusion, nothing but the sweet angel of death to comfort her...

On the 11pm news this is what the local reporter had to contribute:
‘It seems the robber, a young man clad in black, entered through the window and found the tenant of the apartment sitting in the middle of the living room floor popping pills. A neighbour who saw the man enter assumed he was just a friend of the young lady’s. It appears the young man snuck up behind her and shot her. The bullet entered the back of her skull and it appears she put up no fight. Ironically, he seems to have finished the job she commenced. Her desire to die was strong, if he is watching right now maybe he will find solace in the fact that she wanted to die. The robber took nothing after firing the single deadly shot and appears to have been an amateur, whose desire to steal was quashed by guilt. Police are now investigating the possibility that she hired him to finish what she couldn’t quite bring herself to do. City police are asking anyone with information to come forward. Young man turn yourself in tonight before what happened to her happens to you, before guilt begins to eat away at you with an irrevocable force. Living with the pain you inflicted on her, another human being, will not be easy.’