I look at him, I raise the pen between us so I can’t see all of him. “I want to die.” I giggle at him a little. “I want to die.”
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Today, everything feels different. A bit muted or muffled. Closer to “normal”, manageable. When things are getting out of control, everything feels so big. Extreme. Like a catastrophe, the strength of some kinds of bad feelings that are hard to pinpoint and describe. I’m starting to recognize the “healthier”, or more balanced kinds of days. I imagine the way things feel on these days is more like what normal/healthy people are feeling. For a broad example, thinking about all the unknowns and inevitable losses of future decades — in bad times, this feels so horrendously unmanageable, it’s a physical sensation I can’t describe and a near-terror level of fear that I will become “stuck”, unable to manage whatever happens or ending up in some miserable situation I can’t reverse. Sometimes to near panic levels of fear, dread. That, or awareness of my difficulties with connections/socializing/whatnot feels like something I just can’t get past. I think this gets into that “trance”-like territory I talked about before, that suicidal people describe when they’re in that moment. Once they get into that, it takes time for it to pass and the further into the trance you get, the less the conscious strategies work…
“You’re my best friend.” she repeated, for the hundredth time if for the second. “You’ve come so far in two years, but there’s still so far to go. I just wish…”
I’m on a train.
I like the rumbling, the shaking and swaying.
Back in my high school days, you sat with me on the bus once or twice. We must have lived near enough to each other, then. That route wasn’t very long.
Quiet fellow, I can’t remember for the life of me what we talked about. Maybe nothing. Maybe we just sat in silence. I’m pretty sure you were in the same year as me. You were always so quiet, seemed so alone, you were like background scenery that no one ever noticed.
I’ve been out in the world and here at home and surely annoying everyone even as my heart dissolves into hot steam and I still question everything and I still need and I still need things I can’t say and I’ve been trying to write but I’m still alive anyway and the other side feels so strangely home today like a black hearth that’s still just warm enough that I can’t feel any chill but I survived one more day and I’m alive.
I had a little flash of clarity a moment ago.
My mind wandered to the future and tried to think about 2027. It’s still a black hole, like it doesn’t exist. I feel myself pulled towards that reality, or rather, lack of reality, still. However, I’ve noticed that it:
I realized today that I can disappear in small increments.
Instead of doing it all at once in one big, difficult, dramatic exit, I can instead just die quality, one piece at a time.
Self-erasure will be my salvation.
Less and less of me, quietly disappearing, retreating into hiding.
I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner, especially once I realized that the more I retreat, the more I am accepted — further proof I don’t belong in this time.
I don’t feel right somehow. Like I’ve been partially scattered to four winds. Teetering on a tightrope between panic and apathy. Heart hiding in different corners. Torn beliefs. Feet on shaky ground, or maybe more like feet used to the rocking of the sea from the deck of a ship but when they step onto land the unmoving earth feels like it could never feel safe, and comfortable, and home.
You, too, can take advantage of this neat little trick! All you need to do, it turns out, is just…