It's been a long day. Fatigue has taken over your body and all you want to do is walk out the door get in your car and go home, but of course you can't. Even though you can feel your cool sheets against your skin and smell the fresh scent of your comforter you can't actually touch either of them.

"Keep your eyes open," you say to yourself in a desperate attempt to stay awake. "Only a couple more hours."

You stare at your wristwatch and when your eyes focus in on the second hand you swear that it is moving backwards. Time is ticking in the wrong direction. You tap your watch a couple of times with your index finger, but the second hand still moves counter clockwise so you figure your watch is broken or maybe it's just you that is broken.

Your wrist drops down out of your focus and you lean your body further down your chair. You've forgotten what you're doing here in the first place. There was a reason, wasn't there that you were called in to work?

Music plays from your computer and you hope that no one walks by your space to hear it. There's a song playing that isn't work appropriate but you don't feel the need to turn it down. The words coming from the singer's mouth mimic the words you wish could come out of yours. Your right foot starts tapping to the beat of the song and before you know it your torso gets in on the action.

Dancing in your chair seems to lift your spirits for all of the time it takes for the song to end. The music brought life back into your body but now you're even angrier that you're stuck here. There's no reason for you to be there. You've taken care of one thing and you didn't need to be called in for it. There were other people around here as qualified to solve the issue.

So you've decided you're done. You've decided that they can't keep you here. You begin shutting down your computer and gather up a bottle of water that's been sitting on your desk that you weren't quite able to finish or weren't quite able to even begin.

You make your way to the exit and even manage to get through it before someone asks where it is you're going.

"Home," you tell them. "I'm going home."

There's no point in waiting for their response. They seem to think the small problem you were called in for meant that the world was ending. You count yourself unlucky since you know it isn't.

They seem to think about telling you that you can't leave, but they won't. They don't have that kind of authority and you're happy for that, because you don't want to almost get caught leaving before everything is deemed normal.

But almost doesn't count.

You make it to your car and make it to your home and you walk in the door. For a split moment, you're happy to be there. You have visions running through your mind of tearing off your clothes and jumping into bed and sleeping. That's all you want to do, is sleep.

Just sleep.

You don't want to check the messages you've gotten on your machine. You don't want to talk to your friends or family. You don't even want to eat. You want to go to bed and stay there and not move.

That's it.

No interaction with the world around you. No watching the news on television. No watching anything.

Just sleep.

That's it.

That's all you've felt like doing for a long time. You're tired. You're just so very tired. You're tired of everything.

You're tired of work. You're tired of your family and your friends. You're tired of watching television. You're tired of the air you breathe. You're tired of mundane conversation. You're tired of even putting gas in your car and tired of eating.

There's nothing more in this world you rather do than to stop, completely. No more work. No more family. No more friends. No more air. No more mundane conversation. No more putting gas in the car and no more eating.

The doctors say you're clinically depressed, but you don't think they know anything. How could they? They've never been clinically depressed. They've never lived through what you've lived through. They say all these fancy terms that they know the definition to but don't know what they mean. None of them have a clue.

Still, you're standing just inside your home, just in front of the door. The bedroom seems like five hundred feet away and your body too heavy to move. It's cold in there. It's so cold and since you forgot to leave a light on when you left, darkness surrounds you.

You find the darkness more than appropriate.

What got you here in this moment, in this state? That's what you want to know. What got you to be this person? That's what you need to know.

She died. That's where you think it started. She left you alone. She left everyone around her broken.

But you continue thinking about it and realize that it didn't start there. It started with the fights you had with her about her drinking. It started with the resentment you built up about her irresponsible behavior. It started with you wanting nothing more than to leave her and to never come back.

Abandon her. Leave her to her life and get on with your own.

Your decision was made, then. You packed your bags and gave her fair warning that you were gone forever. You told her to lose your number and you did walk out the door. You said it was over and that you were through because you were tired.

Life went okay for you, for a while. The days passed on and you started to smile more. You started to be happy, but then your phone rang. It wasn't her. It was someone else. They said you had to come back and you listened.

You ran back into the same situation you had decided adamantly to run from, but you didn't get there in time. If you had been given a few more minutes then you would have been able to hold her hand and listen to her apologies. If you had made it just a little bit earlier you would have been able to tell her that you loved her for always.

You almost made it.

But almost doesn't count.

So this is where you are now. You're tired. You don't want to participate in anything. You have too much guilt and too much anger and sadness and regret. There's something you think you could have done. There's something you could have said to make everything better. At least, that's what you think

Finally you step further into your home, your own domain. You've decided that you're done. You can't put up with any of this anymore. You're finished. There's no reason for you to even exist anymore.

You walk to your kitchen and pull out the sharpest knife you have. You roll up your shirt sleeve and put the blade to your wrist. You're going to do it. You've finally convinced yourself to do what you've been thinking of doing for a long time now. You finally are going to end it all. You're going to do what you thought you would do when you were having your fights with her about the alcohol and saw her slowly disappearing into an addict.

You've been tired for too long.

You can feel the blade almost cut into your flesh before you drop the knife to the cold tiled floor.

But almost doesn't count.

You reach for the cell phone you've stuffed into a pocket and pull it out. You flip it open and decide you need to call someone. You need your family and you need your friends. You dial a number from memory and the person on the other end picks up immediately. It's as if they were sitting next to the phone just waiting for you to call.

They tell you they'll be over soon. They say everything will be okay. They say a lot of things that you don't bother to hear. You're still staring at the knife on the floor. You can even see that a tear from your eye has fallen onto the blade and is reflecting back up to you.

You close your eyes and the only thing you see is her face. You see her asking for your help and you see yourself turning away.

At one time you almost decided to help her.

But almost doesn't count.

And that's what you have to live with. That's what you can't change. That's what those doctors don't get, can't understand, and don't know.

Almost doesn't count.