Suicide Attempt

Esther had already tried to kill herself several times. The first time, she tries to slit her wrists. She practices on her leg but she just can’t do it. Other times she tries to hang herself but can’t find someplace to do it, she tries to drown but the ocean keeps spitting her out, and finally she swallows a bottle of pills. When she swallowed the pills, she actually almost died. She took the pills when she was in a crawlspace of her house.
She is found and is rushed to the hospital. She does not die, but is sent to a psychiatric ward.
Esther has been through a lot in just a couple months. In New York, she finally realizes that she doesn’t know what to do with her life, she almost gets raped, she fails to make connections with people – when she gets back she gets rejected from the English program she wanted to get into, she finally mourns for her father, Buddy falls in love with a nurse, she can’t sleep anymore, she can’t read, and finally she can’t write. Everything has just been piling up on her and finally the load was too much for her to bear.
I think one of the reasons she tried to kill herself was because she couldn’t see a future for herself. She already felt like she couldn’t really do anything, like cook or write shorthand, but now she realized that she had no idea what she wanted to do. She imagined herself sitting in the crotch of a tree. Each branch was a different future, and she couldn’t decide which branch to choose. She waited so long that they all crippled and fell off.