I couldn’t hold myself up any longer. My hands slipped from the counter and I hit the tile floor with a thud. I tried, and failed, to lean up against the wall so I could sit in an upright position. I thought belatedly about my funeral. There would have to be one, right? But who would come? What songs would they sing? What would they say about me from the pulpit?

Each breath became harder to pull in than the last, yet my body fought for each breath, strained for life, even as every breath became more painful than the previous one. I wanted the end. I welcomed it, but my body said no. But what I wanted didn’t matter. What my body wanted didn’t matter. What mattered was the pills I had swallowed minutes ago, and the irrevocable path they had set me on.