James signed and sat down on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. The day he had at work today was shit, full of dance rehearsals, vocal exercises that were out of his range, and his boss screaming in his face every time he did something wrong.
It was just one of those nights. The nights where James wanted to find a way to let out his frustration, but he was too tired to go to the gym.
It was a sleeping pills and self harm night.
James knew the drill—he would cut his leg a couple of times, take a handful of sleeping pills, and lay on his bed waiting for it to kick in. These were James' favorite nights, when he could forget about all of the bullshit and stress of being a superstar.
He pulled his razor out of his bedside table and dragged it along the skin on his leg, hissing in pain as cold steel cut through warm flesh. He watched the blood form in droplets along the line he had cut, and he did it again, and again.
Finally, James felt stress-free and he washed off his razor and tossed it back into his bedside table, only to pull out his baggie of assorted sleeping pills. He had gone to multiple doctors, each of them prescribing a different medication for James' "insomnia". He pulled out seven, the lucky number, and tossed them into his mouth, throwing them back with a shot of whiskey.
After a few minutes, James wasn't winding down the way he wanted to, the way he usually did. He started having trouble breathing, and suddenly he was nauseous. He ran into the bathroom and vomited violently into the toilet, his body rejecting the poison. When his stomach was sufficiently emptied, he lay on the cool tile floor, sweating. He felt faint, and he knew he was going to pass out. The cuts on his leg were deeper than usual, torn open from getting up and moving so quickly to the bathroom. His breath was coming in short, heavy bursts now, and he was seeing stars. His leg and head were throbbing, and his eyes were slowly staring to droop closed. Soon enough, James couldn't breathe at all, and his world went black.