Preheat your 1950s oven to 375 degrees. Open the door. Insert your head. Take deep breaths. When you no longer notice the smell of the fumes, keep breathing. You will see stars and then darkness.

Go for a long walk. When you come to a major urban thoroughfare that leads to a bridge, continue along the shoulder. When you reach the apex, scale the chain link fence along the side. Jump.

Run a hot bath. Dry your hands on a towel, then reach for the toaster you left plugged in beside the sink. The water rushes down your legs, leaving patches of foamy bubbles scattered across your hips. Is this really life or death for you? If yes, sink back into the water, with the toaster clutched between your palms like a yoga block.

Take your medication. All of it, at once. Would it be so bad to do what they want for you? Incubate some cells until they form a separate being from which you would never be free. Your life, your independent existence–that’s over in any case. There is time for second thoughts for a moment. Then there isn’t.

Call your friend. The one who knows someone who might be able to help. Some sort of nurse with different pills maybe, if you’re lucky. Or a good samaritan with a coat hanger if you’re not. He’ll ask about the father. The father? How awful to be a woman, always subject to the consequence of others’ actions.

Take a vacation. If you can spare the cash and the work days, travel somewhere with a way out. Spend time at a clinic by the beach. It might be nice to see something different, to experience another way of living. At least, if you had the money, or the vacation time. You could sell your car, but then how would you get to work? Without work, how will you pay your rent or buy food? How will you live?

Throw yourself down some stairs.

Have the baby. Then throw yourself down some stairs.

As a last resort: acceptance. Embrace the idea that you inhabit a place where your body is not your own. Where others have invented ideas from old scripture about what constitutes a life, and why that life supersedes yours. They would prefer to see you die in service of their beliefs, than to live for your own.

They want you to think you don’t have a choice. That your desires spring from a poisoned well. Haven’t you always known to trust the well, to see that your desire is as right and good and human as anything else? If you can sell the car, there is still some hope. That is always worth the fight.