And then one day, it finally happened: Jack left me.

I had found out he was cheating again. Just as I suspected, he was sleeping with his drug dealer. When he came home from the tattoo shop, I planned to confront him.

But, in the end, I didn’t greet him with my pearl handgun. I couldn’t. I was curled up on the floor in front of my mirrored closet in sweatpants and a bra. I hadn’t eaten in so long that I didn’t have the strength to stand up. My legs just wouldn’t support me.

“Look at your fucking self.” It was Jack’s voice. I could see his boots at eye level. “Look at you. You are not even a person anymore.”

I struggled to get to my feet. It was useless. “You make me sick,” he went on. “I want my fucking life back, you crazy whore.” Whore —it was the same word his uncle had used when he had raped me.

Jack disappeared. Fifteen minutes later, I heard his voice again. “You need to eat something.” He spoke not with care, but with disgust. He bent over me with a fistful of chicken fingers and shoved one in my mouth. I spit it out. Just the idea of food made me want to vomit. But the more I spit the food out, the more he tried to shove it in my mouth. My entire face was soon covered with grease and scratches.

“I hope you understand that you are going to die if you don’t fucking eat this crap,” he spat at me. Eventually, he gave up and just threw the food at me.

“Fuck this shit,” he said. He pulled out his cigarette pack, ripped off a piece of foil, took a few hits of meth and then stood up and strode straight to the closet. He knew exactly what he was doing. He pulled his suitcase off the top shelf and started throwing his clothes in it.

“Please don’t leave me,” I suddenly blubbered. Snot poured out of my abused nostrils like running water; greasy bubbles of mucus formed in my mouth every time I formed the words, “I love you.”

As he walked through the house, getting his stuff together, I grew more and more desperate. I clung to his feet whenever he walked past, trying to keep him from leaving.

I heard the front door open and shut several times. Jack was removing everything from the house: the furniture, the bedding, the guns. He was trading up and moving in with his dealer. The only things he left behind were the cooking supplies and kitchen utensils, which I obviously had no need for, either.

This time, it was really over. I lay on the ground in front of the closet for hours. All I could hear was my heart beating so hard against my bony chest that it hurt. The blood in my body felt like lava: it burned everywhere. This was what heartbreak felt like. I needed to do something to calm down. I crawled into the bathroom and pulled myself over the sink. I wanted to get some Darvocet.

Staring at me from the door of the medicine cabinet was the devil. It had strings of brittle blond hair that had snapped off at various lengths; eyes recessed deep into the sockets and surrounded by bruised black circles; cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood; and its complexion was sickly cyanotic. The devil was my own reflection. I had made my living with my looks, and now they were gone: the beautiful blond hair, the full smiling face, the big bedroom eyes. All the curves that men paid thousands of dollars just to look at had melted away to reveal a skeleton in rags.

I opened the cabinet and knocked the bottle of Darvocet off the top shelf. It hit the ground, and I followed it. I unscrewed the cap and swallowed four pills. It was a lot of downer for an eighty-pound girl. But I didn’t mind. I just wanted the pain to stop. And if my heart stopped also, so be it. I really didn’t care whether I woke up or not. When it came down to it, I just couldn’t imagine life without Jack.

I don’t know how long I lay there for, fading in and out of consciousness. It was more than one day and less than four. At one point, I awoke to hear the phone ringing. The answering machine picked up, and I heard a man’s voice. I strained my ears in case it was Jack calling. But it was Matt, his partner at the tattoo shop. He kept saying over and over, “Jenna. Jenna. Pick up the phone.” I blacked out again.

“Jenna. Jenna. Pick up the phone.” He was calling again. Doesn’t that guy ever give up? I finally dragged myself to the phone. My body felt like it was falling apart, leaving a trail of small bones and patches of skin strewn on the carpet behind me.

I picked up the receiver and it slipped out of my hand, hitting me square in the forehead. It swelled instantly. I didn’t feel a thing. I fumbled with the receiver until it found my ear.

“Jenna? Jenna? Are you okay?”

“No,” I managed to rasp. “No. Come over. Please.”

Within ten minutes, Matt was in the house. When he looked at me, the color drained out of his face. “What the fuck happened?” he asked. “You need to call your dad right now.”

That was the last thing I wanted to do. Asking my father for help would mean admitting that I had failed. And I’m so hardheaded that I would rather suffer the worst pain imaginable than call someone who had abandoned me and beg. But I had nowhere else to turn. I could either stay here and die or take Matt’s advice. It came down to choosing between pride and survival.

I vaguely remembered my dad calling months ago with his latest telephone number, and I had actually, by the grace of God, written this one down. It took Matt fifteen minutes of searching through the house to find the matchbook I had written the number on: it was built into one of my collages.

All I said was “Dad,” and he knew something was wrong. My voice was so shaky and weak.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m not okay.” I tried to explain my condition.

“I’m coming right now to get you,” he said.

“Dad, I won’t survive the ride.”

He insisted.

“Dad, I will die on the trip. I can’t even walk.”

I wasn’t being melodramatic. My heart probably had a day and a half of pump in it.

“How can I get you here?” he asked.

Matt told him to book me a plane ticket on the first flight out of Vegas. He advised my dad to have a wheelchair ready for when I got off the plane. I was that bad.

After he hung up, Matt dressed me in an oversized T-shirt, carried me to his car, and put me in the backseat. On the way to the airport, he stopped at a drugstore and bought me a protein shake. I tried to drink it, but as soon as the liquid hit my throat, I vomited. Whatever stray morsels of food were still in my stomach came tumbling onto my shirt, along with clots of blood and who knows what else. I kept trying to drink the shake, but I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach.

When we arrived at the airport, Matt borrowed a wheelchair from the airline and took me to the gate. I don’t remember much about the flight, except that I was violently ill and the people next to me were repulsed. They asked if I was being treated for cancer.

When the plane arrived in Reading, I remained in my seat while everyone filed off. Then the stewardess lifted me into the wheelchair. I dreaded, more than anything, having to face my father again. I was always a good daughter. Sometimes I was headstrong or moody, sure, but that was part of being independent. Now, here I was, twenty years old, being brought back home in a wheelchair, stinking from my own vomit. Not only had he never seen me like this, but I don’t think he could have even imagined it was possible.

When the stewardess brought me off the plane, I lowered my head. I was too scared to even look at my father. I didn’t want to see the disappointment and horror on his face. I cried so hard that every sob racking through my body hurt. All that hate I had accumulated for my father over the years, all the resentment against him for not understanding what I was going through, just released with the tears. He was here for me when I needed him most. He actually loved me.

“So, where are your parents?” the stewardess asked after a few minutes. “I can’t wait here with you much longer.”

I looked up and wiped my eyes. My father was standing ten feet away. He didn’t even recognize me.