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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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.
I’m a ghost, haunting on stolen time
I’m surviving tonight
I’m training myself on inhibition defeat
How much drugs to kill the resistance?
My thoughts are not really mine but they are internalizations of all the things others have said, even without always directly saying them.
Such joy to see you returning so healthy and happy! With a spring in your step, no less, and a sparkle in your eye, holding care and forgiveness in the firm grasp of your hugs.
Granting acceptance with your presence, you return the missing to the damaged.
Everyone you touch finds themselves at least a little more whole for it.
This war will only quit when I do. It’ll only fall still when my heart insists on the same.