Ash drove me to school this morning.

I was surprised that she offered. Ash has a kind of edgy, almost heartless demeanor. I'm 23 now, and really, she and I have known each other since we were kids, but we've never been close. Ash and I went to the same junior high and we were kind of both in that gloomy clique.

I don't understand why she is at U of H, instead of at some fancy school out of town. If I had to guess, I'd say that Ash is in college because this way, her parents support her. Or maybe it's more complex than that. Maybe they want her to go to college because they can't abide having a daughter that isn't following the rules.

She rummaged through my music while I finished getting ready. My CDs and tapes were relatively well organized. But Ash made a mess while going through them.

She said something like how all the music I had was stuff to listen to while slitting your wrist.

But she found one tape she liked and held it up for me and said, "I'm taking this."

I hadn't ever really gotten into that album. One of those instances where I knew other people admired the band, so I bought the cassette tape, played it once or twice, and didn't love it. The band makes songs with high energy, raging, almost spastic distorted vocals and beats, and lyrics that make almost no sense, just describing violence and destruction.

That stuff doesn't appeal to me right now. Just like two years ago, man, I was all about flamboyant nihilism. And now I try to avoid that. Because at this point, suicide is not just a thing to daydream about. If I point my mind in that direction, I'll likely do it.

I've cut contact with everyone that I used to talk to from that chapter of my life. Moved away too. They said when I went through the treatment program how I needed to disconnect with people from that life.

And sure, from some perspective, I'm a success story. I've been clean and sober for almost two years now. I pay my fees. I'm working. I'm going to school. I'm going to be a productive member of society.

I think that’s part of why I’m so lonely. The misery is back now but I'm not getting high to deal with it. And I don't have any other self-destructive friends that reassure me that I'm not all alone feeling like this.

It's just really sad. I picture other students are laughing and dancing around at some house party while music blasts. At the same time, I'm here, alone, in this dark apartment, sitting on this green carpet floor, and I'm praying not to be so fucking lonely and unhappy.

OK, back to what happened with Ash though.

While we walked out to her car, I said she could have that tape if she wanted. And she replied something like "Yeah, that's what I meant when I said I was taking it."

Ash is a terrifying driver.

That's what I found out today.

There's two ways to get from my apartment to the university.

One way is that you point in the direction of the campus and zigzag for about six miles across the sloppy grid of side streets until you get there. That's roughly how the bus goes. It's a ton of stop and go traffic and there's potentially two places where you can get stuck waiting for a train.

The other way to get to school is the highway. You gotta go in the opposite direction to get on the freeway, then you zip above the city.

I love the meandering zigzag approach. But Ash took the highway. So yeah on the highway we must have been going close to eighty miles per hour.

She popped in the tape, pushed in her cigarette lighter, and then started talking and searching in her bag, and while swerving across the six lanes.

I thought about how ridiculous it would be to die at 9:30 AM in a freeway car crash.

She talked about after she got out of the hospital while she drove us to school, swerving across lanes in the massive highways.

I don't know why, but she opened up this morning. Maybe she picked up on my mood.

I remember how she steered her car while she talked. She cut across three lanes of the highway while speeding way too fast. She said, "When I got out of the hospital, I didn't feel anything. I was on so many pills that I would just stare at the TV and after whatever show just finished, I couldn't even tell you what had happened.

"I was a zombie. It was like they couldn't get me to embrace their religion, so they destroyed my personality instead."