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…
Here, today I stayed
I stayed angry
But I stayed
…
Waves still rise and fall
Anchors begin dissolving
I begin to drown
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 watch her pick up handfuls of my shards from the ground at her feet, over and over while parts of me are still collapsing, turning in on themselves, tearing at their frayed edges before joining the growing heaps…
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.
The year grows tiny:
Regrettably not the last
Time I close my eyes
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?
I want to not be like this. I want to be able to accomplish and explore. I want to be able to feel real connection. I can’t connect with others. I can’t balance my life. I can’t reach goals. I can’t keep my thoughts straight. I can’t I can’t I can’t. I don’t want to be this person. My brain doesn’t work properly. I know I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not meant to be here.