I was mildly put off by the fatalistic tagline, but I was also desperate. The past week alone in the apartment had felt like a year. The days I’d tried to spend writing dragged on with no productivity. I was constantly aware of Anna’s absence, each time I sat down on the couch and she wasn’t on the other end, or ate takeout for one at the kitchen table, or when I crawled into bed at night, now at a reasonable hour, since I no longer DJed. I could never fall asleep, so instead I’d watch reruns of shows I’d already seen dozens of times. Anything that entailed minimal thinking. I couldn’t resist reading through the emails she had found, cowering in embarrassment, imagining her reading them. Soon I began taking pills to numb the pain—I’d gotten the number for a notoriously irresponsible psychiatrist whose contact info had made the rounds among my coworkers at the club. He put me on a cycle of amphetamines during the day and Xanax at night, to come down and get a bit of sleep. The uppers had the added benefit of stripping away the need to nourish myself, my appetite for food entirely diminished. Soon I was stick-thin, almost back to my pre-recovery weight, which provided a comfort akin to an old friend and a semblance of control. Each day I woke to an excruciating crash, the pain-numbing meds no longer in my system, and thus the cycle began again. I wanted nothing more than to escape my life.

In an attempt to do so, I went out every night, sometimes with friends, often alone, situating myself on a bar stool, pushing my chest forth as I scanned the room in the hope that I might meet someone, anyone—for love or for sex, either would do. I revived every flirtatious email chain, but no one wrote back—not one bite. I needed a distraction. I regretted quitting my DJ gig so early in the summer, and I tried to undo the mistake. But when I went to the club to ask for my job back, or at least a few shifts, the owner told me that he’d already hired someone else. Apparently I was easy to replace. By the time I got home I felt suffocated by depression. Desperate, I turned to the internet.

I clicked through the various pages on the Ledge’s website. The place was in Bowling Green, Kentucky, a two-hour drive from Louisville. That was one of the few concrete things I came away with; the site was rather cryptic—what exactly was this place? Healing, how? I clicked to the “Contact Us” tab, where an email address and a phone number were listed. I began to draft an email, then decided it was easier to just call. It rang four times before someone picked up. “This is Nancy,” said a strikingly upbeat voice on the other end.