Dear Diary,

            Yesterday we found out that Dave Karofsky tried to kill himself. A teammate saw him with Kurt on Valentine’s Day and told everybody. I guess they’ve been bullying him pretty hard and he couldn’t handle it. They said his dad found him hanging in his closet.

            Nobody really knows how to take the news. Mercedes is insistent that none of us would ever get to that point, would ever be that desperate. Mr. Shuester wants us all to look towards our futures. Kurt is devastated. He blames himself because he turned Dave down and then never answered his calls. He even went to a God Squad meeting and to visit Dave in the hospital. Sebastian feels guilty, too. Apparently they met at Scandals and he was mean to him. He’s vowed to change now. I don’t know if it will last, but I hope it does. Quinn thinks Dave was being selfish and trying to hurt all the people around him. She thinks he was cowardly. Everybody has an opinion.

            I don’t have the heart to tell them that I think he was brave.           

  Kurt and I had been cuddling on his bed for hours. He was upset about Karofsky and just wanted to listen to sad music and lie around. Really it was all he could do since he heard the news, but it made me restless. Every idle moment was another moment spent in my head, tearing myself down for everything that was going on. I had been trying so hard to be okay after I broke down in front of Kurt because I didn’t want him to worry about me, but I was angry and with everything that was happening with Karofsky it was getting harder and harder to hide what was going on inside my head. I could feel myself breaking, and the idea of it seemed even worse now. Everybody was so sad about what happened and nobody could stop talking about it. They didn’t even like Dave that much, but suddenly they couldn’t stop talking about him, couldn’t stop asking what they could have done differently.

I had thought about suicide before, but the idea was to free people from me—not burden them with my passing. I never wanted them to speak about me the way they did Dave, and I certainly didn’t want them to feel as bad about me as they did about him.

Everybody was watching each other so much closer now, and it was terrifying. I had to watch every move I made because if I made one slight misstep, everybody would see it and everybody would know.  At the same time, though, I felt like this was my chance. This was the perfect opportunity for me to stand up and say ‘will somebody please help me?’ But I couldn’t do it.

Instead I was lying in Kurt’s bed thinking about how easy it would be to die.  I needed to get up, go for a run, clear my head, but Kurt needed to lay around and talk, and if that’s what he needed, that’s what I’d give him. Honestly I was surprised he wanted to be around me at all; I had snapped at him a few days earlier, something I’d never done before. I just wasn’t fun to be around lately, and I wondered if he’d noticed. I wondered if he knew that, beneath my calm exterior, I was falling apart. I wondered if he knew, like I did, that this was just the calm before the storm.

I wondered what that storm would look like.

I had cut myself the day we found out, and it was the worst damage I had ever done to myself. I didn’t just cut—I slashed. I had never cut anything but my wrists before, but when I was finished I found myself with cuts all over my hips and legs. I felt better afterwards, though. I felt like all the pain I was feeling on the inside was on the outside too, where it belonged. This way, everybody could see what a fuck up I was. It wasn’t until a few hours later that I became terrified. I had worked so hard to keep it a secret, but these cuts were too deep, too numerous to cover with makeup. I realized I was going to have to work even harder to keep it a secret. Otherwise everybody would see what a fuck up I was.

I had my sleeves pulled up over my hands while I had my arms wrapped around Kurt, rubbing my thumb back and forth on his arm as he lay with his head on my chest. He hadn’t spoken in a while, but I knew he wasn’t asleep.

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” I asked. Kurt let out a shaky breath before answering.

“I just can’t help but wonder if it would have been different if I had answered his stupid phone calls.”

“No, don’t think that. You had no reason to answer his phone calls, not after everything he’s done. It wasn’t you, it was the kids at his school, it was society, it was this stupid fucking city that hurt him, not you. Okay?”

“I can’t wait to get to New York,” Kurt said, and I could feel the warm tears as they hit my chest.

“I know. I know,” I said, lifting off the bed a bit to kiss the top of his head.

Kurt cried in my arms and it made me feel sick to my stomach. If he felt this badly about Karofsky, what would he feel if it were me? I never wanted to hurt him like that. I wanted only the best for Kurt—he was the only light in my life and I loved him so damn much. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that if I kept things going the way they were. I had done nothing but lie to him about who I was, who I am, and he deserved better than that. I was at the point, though, that I didn’t know how to get out. I didn’t know how to tell Kurt, how to tell anyone how much pain I was really in. I didn’t know how to tell Kurt that the person he loved was a lie, that really I was broken and I didn’t know how to ask for help.

That was it; I needed help—professional help.  I was broken, and I couldn’t fix this by myself. If I wanted to be with Kurt forever, I was going to have to work hard to get it. I had to put my fears aside and tell Kurt everything, tell my parents everything, and try to get better. I just needed to speak up. I needed Kurt to love me for me. I wanted to do this for myself, too, because damn it must feel good to actually like yourself.

            “Kurt?” I asked. My shaky voice caught his attention and he turned toward me, his red-rimmed eyes filled with concern.
            “Yes?”

            “I, um, I…” my voice broke and Kurt sat himself up a bit more to look at me. I need you, I screamed in my mind. Fuck, I need you. Help me! “I just… I need… I can’t…” I can’t do this. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t fucking do it because what if he hated me? What if he was so disgusted by what I had done that he ran out of here and never spoke to me again? I would have no reason to live if he left me.

            Worse, what if he still loved me and just wanted me to get better and what if, in the process, I just ended up hurting him? What if I just pulled him under and he drowned in his own self-loathing? I couldn’t live with myself if the only difference telling him made was making Kurt as miserable as I was. It seemed like either option would end with me killing myself, which is where I was headed anyway. There was no reason to take him down with me. Kurt deserves far better than to feel like this, and I just couldn’t risk hurting him.

“I just wanted to remind you that I love you.” Kurt stared for a moment before pursing his lips. He knew that wasn’t what I wanted to say but, thankfully, he didn’t push it.

            “I love you, too,” he said. He sighed tiredly and snuggled up next to me. He kissed me on the cheek. “I’m here for you, Blaine, whatever you need.” He closed his eyes and I waited until his breathing had evened out to cry.