It's been a rough couple of weeks.

I find myself staring at my reflection more and more often, willing myself to go on. Go on doing what though? Living, I suppose. It's all just a blur really anyway.

Breathe.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

My doctor decided that the cocktail of pills I'm on right now isn't doing the trick anymore, and maybe never quite did do the trick for me. Apparently my lack of coping has been becoming increasingly more obvious over the years, despite many skipped appointments to try and avoid answering the questions.

Wonderful to find out that after 9 years of thinking I was barely hanging on that I was apparently never really hanging on anyway. Something about a chemical imbalance or whatever she went on about for way too long. My focus was on a chip in the wall above her head and I couldn't hear a single word she said after I noticed that little flaw in the paintwork.

She made me sign a declaration that I would have someone with me 24/7 for the first 72 hours, just in case I try to harm myself.

Sure, of course. Whatever you say, Doc.

No fucking way.

So now I'm not only dealing with the withdrawals from coming off my old pills, I'm also dealing with all the side effects of my new ones. Oh joy. The night sweats are my absolute favourite. Oh, wait. No. The constant trembling is pretty fucking amazing too.

For about a week now my diet has consisted almost entirely of black coffee. Black coffee and the occasional cigarette to stop the trembling in my hands. I don't even smoke usually, but I do this week – something to do I suppose. I have no appetite or desire to try and force anything solid into my stomach. If I could work out a way to get coffee through an IV you better believe I'd do it.

I have the occasional whiskey or bourbon to take the edge off too, but not beer. Never beer.

Beer tastes like regret and broken promises. It reminds me too much of the way Hannah's mouth tasted the only time I got to kiss her.

Beer is one of those things that my psychiatrist thinks I should stay away from. She calls it a 'trigger'. Add to that list tootsie rolls, skittles, the smell of the disinfectant the janitor used to clean the school hallways, the smell of popcorn and anything vanilla (because Hannah always smelled like vanilla). Experiencing any of these can trigger an episode. Trigger, really? Like on a gun? What a load of shit.

On the other hand though, I haven't been able to step foot inside a movie theatre – or a gymnasium - in almost a decade so maybe she is on to something.

I don't sleep for the entire week. Not at all. I don't even go to bed. I find myself just staring into space for hours at a time, my head full of dark thoughts I usually work hard to keep at bay.

My work is slowly slipping. It's been a downward spiral for the past few months but it's gaining momentum and I'm just barely hanging on to my job. Not that I really care anyway, but I need the job to pay for the apartment that provides me the only independence I have in my life.

I have a constant throbbing behind my left eyebrow that is my sole focus for almost three days.

Everything is just turning to shit.

Plus I'm almost certain that I'm heading for a total breakdown because today I saw Hannah.

I saw Hannah Baker.

Not as 17 year old Hannah either – I saw her as she would be now, if she hadn't died. A few years older but almost exactly the same as I remember. But it couldn't be. Hannah died. She died.

Get your shit together, man.

It's the only time I've seen her as an older version of herself. Sure I've thought of what she might look like now if things had been differently but all the times I've seen her are the way she was in the few months before she took her life.

She wasn't bleeding like last time either, and she wasn't looking directly into my soul like she normally does.

She was crossing the street right in front of my car and as quickly as she was there, she was gone again. Not vanished into thin air like she typically does, but she disappeared into a crowd of people at the end of the pedestrian crossing and disappeared.

I dove out of my car but was quickly jolted back into reality by the insistent beeping of the cars behind me because the traffic lights had changed and I was holding up traffic.

By the time I got home I'd convinced myself that I was having a breakdown, or that it wasn't even Hannah – just a look-a-like - anyway which also meant that I was having a breakdown so lose-lose for Clay Jensen.

Why, after nine years, am I finally really losing the plot?

Why now?

The constant battle in my head ensues and I allow it. I allow it because I don't have the energy to stop it.

Because she's been dead for almost a decade.

Because you miss her so much that it's consuming you.

Because she isn't coming back.

Because she's gone.

BECAUSE YOU KILLED HER.