TITLE: Not Broken
AUTHOR: Trista Groulx (the dustytiger)
RATING: PG13, TV14, T (for suicide reference)
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kim, Bobby, Jimmy, Joey, Paulie, nor Catherine. They belong to their creator, NBC. I just wanted to borrow them for a quick moment.
SPOILERS: up to Transformed (aka after Jimmy gets custody)
CONTENT: Kim, angst, tragedy, illusions to death and suicide
SUMMARY: Kim is trying to move past her depression over losing her best friend, her son, and her support. Can she do it or will the Depression take her?
AUTHOR"S NOTES: this came to me while I was dealing with my own depression, and listening to a song called "not broken" by a band called Hurst. This is not a songfic, and you don't need the song to understand this fic. It's all a thought process, no dialogue, if you're not into that stop now. It deals with severe depression if you're not into that stop now. It deals with suicide, if you can't handle that stop now. If at anytime you don't like what you're reading, just stop. Please don't leave me any messages just telling me it sucks, tell me why, and tell something that made you keep reading it, if you can't think of anything, then I don't want to hear it.
for those of you who are not scared, read, enjoy (well that's debatable) and review.

Everywhere I looked something reminded me of my pain. Of my depression. Everything in my apartment, either reminded me of my son, or of Bobby. I couldn't deal with it anymore. I didn't want to be there anymore. I just felt like I had to get away, far away. I didn't care where, as long as there was nothing around to remind me of the past.

I had accepted a long enough time ago that Jimmy and I were finally, really over. He was getting remarried. He was going to be happy with his new wife. I had finally realized how much everything we did effected our son. I didn't want him growing up like I had.

I never wanted my son to have to see what I had seen. But I had done just that. For the first seven years of his life he watched helplessly as his mother chase after a man who would only pretend to love her.

Joey had one advantage over me though, his father does genuinely love him. Even if he sometimes has trouble being a father. Jimmy's always been there for Joey, and while I say it's been more like a big brother, at least Jimmy's always been there for him.

Jimmy had tried to do the right thing by marrying me before Joey was born. Even if he did screw that up royally. He never was a commitment kind of guy, and I had known that since they day I had met him. He was a philanderer and proud of it. He had basically challenged me into our first date. I accepted, and nothing between us was ever normal.

For a while I was happy with Jimmy, we had fun together, and everything seemed great. Then, everything else, things changed. I started feeling sick in the morning, and missing periods. I had gotten myself pregnant.

I was worried at first about what would happen to me, and my unborn baby, but I honestly believed that Jimmy would always be there for me. He had promised me so many times in the past that he would catch me if ever fell.

He never really did learn how to catch me when I feel. When I fell, I fell hard. This time was different though, not only had he failed to catch me, but he had kicked me, while I was down. He kicked me harder then everyone's ever kicked me, and I'm not sure what our future has in store for us.

When my partner, and best friend died, I thought I could go to Jimmy for comfort and support. I needed someone to support me. I needed someone to tell me that the sky was not falling. I needed to know that my world could be rebuild.

I thought Jimmy could be that person.. He had promised me so many times that he would keep my word from falling. But I was wrong. He didn't want to have anything to do with me. He just turned me away as if everything we had been through before was nothing.

I always believed that Jimmy did love me, somewhere deep down inside him. I believed he had to love me because of all we had been through. How can you not love a person who you've been to hell and back with?

But I discovered that it was all a lie. Everything he had ever told me was a lie. He never loved me, I knew that now. While the man who wanted to so much to love me, was gone. The man who had offered me his heart once was dead now. I would never feel that love. Real love, not just some hope that he cold learn.

Bobby really did love me. I don't know how he could have loved me. But he did. I'm not even sure why he would have wanted to. I just knew that he did. When he had offered me his love, I refused to accept it. Hoping to have the man I thought I loved back. Hoping that man could learn to love me as Bobby did.

He never did. Jimmy was no capable of that kind of love.

I saw him die. I saw Bobby die. He practically died in my arms, after being shot by a man he had once considered a friend. They say that only the good die young. Bobby proved that when he died. Bobby was certainly good, and he died much too young.

I cannot now, nor will ever get the event of that horrible night to stop replaying itself on my eyelids. Every time I close my eyes, the scene plays out before me. I still see Paulie's face. I see the gun. I see him shooting Bobby. I see the gun pointed at me.

Mostly I see Bobby, laying there, bleeding, dying in front of my eyes. Despite all my training I can't help him because of the gun in my face. Those images will never be erased. Bobby's ghost will haunt me until my dying day.

That's why I tried to make it all go away. I'm not proud of what I did. I can't justify it now. I'm not even sure that I could then. But at the time it seemed logical, it seemed like it could work. I didn't care about anything at that moment but getting those images out of my mind.

I needed to clear my mind. I needed to sleep. I needed to free myself, and free the ghost at the same time. I just needed it all to disappear, if only for a moment. I just wanted to forget everything. I wanted peace. I wanted quiet,. I wanted calm. I needed it all more then I have ever needed anything in my life.

I had tried everything at that point to get it to go away. I tried every combination of pill. I tried ever kind of relaxing technique I could learn. I had tried to get over my own pain by immersing myself in my nation's pain. Nothing ever worked.

I was still sad, more then sad.

At the end of the day, I was still staring down the barrel of a gun. The ghost was still haunting me. Everything I was trying to hide from would still be waiting for me as I tried to close my tired eyes.

No one could understand my pain then. No one had lived what I had lived. No else had seen what I had seen. I just wanted to see light again. I wanted to see the world again. I just wanted something different.

I was already feeling dead inside. Nothing could change that. I was feeling lower then I had ever felt. I felt like I wasn't even needed. Despite what I was feeling, I wasn't really feeling anything. Maybe that's what true despair is. I could no longer see the good in my life. Maybe I just didn't want to.

One night I made the stupidest decision of my life. I decided to chase a bottle of pills with a bottle of wine, then get in the bath. I thought it would solve all of my problems. I thought I might finally feel the relief I had been so desperately seeking.

I could not have been more wrong.

Part of me knew what I was doing. That it could very well kill me. I didn't' care, as long as it chased my demons away. I couldn't live with his ghost, anymore. I couldn't live with any of it. I didn't even know that I wanted to live.

The only person that stopped me from doing it sooner was my son. He had become my world. I knew that he still needed me. But for a moment I honestly believed that he would be better off without me. I wasn't being the best mother to him, this way he could move on, and believe that I was in a better place.

My son is also the only reason I thought I would never try it again. He really is my world. He is the only person who means anything to me. He is the only person who will always love me because I am always going to be his mother.

I hate myself for letting him see me like that. I hate myself for making him be the one who found me.

I was in such a haze at the time. All I wanted to do was exorcise my own demons. I needed to free his ghost.

I never realized that he would be the only to find me. I honestly don't know what I was thinking doing it with him in his house.

That night is never very far from my mind. That horrible night I tried to kill myself. I tried to kill myself. It's so hard to admit. I did. My sweet little boy was the one who found me.

My precious angel who I never wanted to let see the big bad world had to call 911. He had to tell them that his mommy was in the bathtub, not moving. He had to let the paramedics and firefighters he had always know in the house.

He had to let them in so they could do their job. That night their job was to save me. All he knew was I needed help, and they could make me better. He had to watch as everyone desperately tried to save me.

He watched as a part of me was probably fighting them. He watched me in my darkest hour. He just watched. Everyone was so worried about me they forgot that he needed to be shielded. I was not there to be his shield. I had caused him to see it all.

They worked hard on me. Harder then they probably should have. If I had not been a friend, and co-worker I doubt they would have tried so hard. Not for some suicide.

I know I wouldn't have tried very hard to save someone who had decided they wanted to die. I would have let them go. Thinking that was what they had wanted. I even did it after I got back after everything that had happened to me.

I would have let a young woman die. I would have let her go because I thought that that was what she had wanted. If I had been working with anyone but Doc, I would have let her die. Just like anyone else who could have worked on me would have.

What any sane person would have done. Just let me die, because I decided I needed to die that night. But they didn't let me die that night. There are days that I wish they had. Sometimes I curse them for pulling me out. For saving me.

Especially now, that I no longer have custody of my son. It all seems useless now. What's the point of being alive if I don't get to see the one thing that kept me alive?

What's the point of life if the only person I want to live for is not really in my life anymore? I admit that go to bed each and every night wishing that I will not wake up in the morning.

Every single night the last thing I hope for is that I will not wake from my slumber.

I just don't see the point anymore. I feel like no one cares about me anymore. I feel like I am a burden on the few people who bother to still care for me. I hate my life the way it is, but I am broken.

I try to be not broken. I just am. Something in me died with Bobby that night. I still ponder what that might it was. What died when I saw Bobby die before my eyes.

Perhaps it was my belief that somehow, in the end, the right thing would happen. The naïve thought that good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people. I think that's what died in my the night.

Despite all the crazy things I had seen. All the senseless violence. All of the needles death. Despite it all, a part of me still believed that if you were a good person, you would be rewarded.

Then I watched the best person I knew die, right in front of me. Just because he helped a friend.

Watching Bobby die, proved t me. Nothing I believed about good and bad was the truth. Everything I one believed in was now just a lie.

He was a good soul. A great person. He loved his mother. He practically raised his brother and sisters when his father left. He had bit of sorted past. He had risen past it. He had over come it. He had made something of his life.

He became a paramedic. He saved lives. He saved a lot of lives. Even when many others may have given up on. He was stubborn about never letting anyone go if he could help it. He was the one who made sure that we always did everything we possibly could for every patient we saw.

It never matter who the patient was. A homeless person's life had just as much merit as the President's if he was in our bus. It didn't matter who's life. The life was of value. Saving that life meant something. For a moment it meant everything.

Weather the patient was a child with a small cut, or was in dire straights, Bobby would make them feel like they were the only person that mattered at that moment. If he did lose someone on his watch, he would go to his church. He would light a candle for them. He would pray for their family.

If that's not a good person, then no one is.

He was also a person who loved me for me. Not because I was fulfilling his inner caveman, nor basic human needs. He loved me for just being me. When he told me so, I rejected him, not believing that I could have that kind of love.

Also believing that one day, maybe Jimmy might love me like that. Now I knew that he never would. He probably wasn't even capable of loving me. Not the way I wanted. Not the way I needed.

The only man who ever loved me was now gone.

Where was I supposed to go to help fix myself?

There was Doc, but he was like the father I so desperately wanted while I was growing up. He's an amazing person, and would support me one hundred percent. But what I wanted, what I needed then to be loved. Wholly but a man who just simply loved me for who I was, and who I had been.

I didn't need sexual love anymore. I had that with Jimmy, I always would. I needed spiritual love.

The kind of love Bobby had offered me once. The kind of love I had rejected. He was gone now. He was now a hole in my heart, and a ghost from my past.

Everything in New your was becoming a bad memory. Not always a bad memory. Just a memory I could not bare. I could never forget anything when everywhere I turned brought all the pain back.

I needed to leave.

I needed to leave New York. I needed to start over. I wanted to bring my son, but I knew that I couldn't do that to him. I loved him too much to take him on this journey with me, not that I could feasibly take him. He didn't trust me enough to follow me anymore even if I thought I could bring him.

I would see it when he looked at me. There is something deep in his eyes, questioning me. Wondering if he will find me, sick, as he puts it, in the bathtub again. I can't let him live like that.

He's happy here. His daddy is here. His school is here. His friends are here. This is where he has to stay. New York is home. It will be his home until he chooses to leave. I will not take him from everything as I plan to go so far away. I'd say it would shatter my heart, to leave him. But it is in a million pieces on the floor anyway.

It is already broken, smashed beyond recognition and I truly believe that only leaving may fix it. I know that this is the only way I can fix myself, and Joey will learn to live without me.

I have packed what I think I'll need to start a new life. Though I'm not sure that even that will help me chase the demons. At least I won't be reminded of them at every turn. I just want to leave it all behind.

I begin to scribble notes for those few I still love.

My Precious Angel,

I'm sorry. I know you don't understand why I am gone. It is not that I don't love you. I'm gone is because I do. One day you will understand. One day I might find you again. But for now I need to go. I will always love you. This is not your fault. Never forget that. I love you, until we meet again.

My old love,

You don't understand me. You don't understand us. You don't understand love. I think I may always love you. But I know you will never love me. I need to be loved. Someone offered me love once. Someone may again. But this time I'm not asking you. I would say I am sorry to have do this. To you I'm not. Goodbye

My mother,

Mom I'm sorry. Mom I just can't do it anymore. I need to leave this place. It's too hard. You taught me to run, and you may never see you again. I do love you, and I'm sorry Mom. It was all too much. I lost my strength. It's all gone. But I will always love you, and we will meet again soon.

It was better to leave it this way. It was better for them to think I was gone, and not face the truth.

I left the notes in my apartment. I picked up what I needed to start again. I actually believed that was what I was doing. I dropped the few things I had to charity, where it would never be found.

I then walked to the place where I would take my last steps. I walked to the bridge. I knew I would jump from it. I was going to exorcise the demon. I was going to free the ghost.

I am going to be not broken.

The End

End Notes: I'm not really sure where the end came from, it's not what I planned, but it works better this way, I think. If you think this has no redeeming qualities what-so-ever I would rather not hear it. If you just want to help me improve it say something nice don't just trash it. If you like it, tell me, I want to hear that. I know it's sad, but that's depression. I know it's a tad choppy and it jumps a little, but again that's depression, that's the point. Thank you all hugz and kissez trista