What to do
When you’re empty
And alone
Just skin and bones
Willing to be reduced
To less.
I confess,
I feel useless
The grave
Speaks to me still
In words only I understand:
“Take my hand,
Rest a while.”
And I smile
At promises of peace
That leave me
Uneasy.
The pain in stranger’s eyes
Calls to me
In languages
Only we can utter.
Opens passages
To worlds
Only we
Have ever known.
I feel nothing. I only hear.
I hear the bored world telling me
I’m nothing special.
I hear death, charming and strong.
It tells me to come…
Beckons me with its fingers
The whisper, so close to my ear.
I shiver.
My heart beats faster as Death begs it to find peace.
“Come.”
My body longs for it,
My mind tingles.
Let me lie with you.
I come for death.
I rest at last.
I will not let your love touch me.
I’ve been touched before.
I will not let your words soothe me.
Up became down.
I will not believe your promises.
My own blood drowned me.
I cannot be yours.
I am not even mine.
I so badly want to feel beautiful when I have clothes on.
So badly want to feel appreciated when my mind is undressed.
But how can I, when I’ve learned only to part my lips to give you pleasure?
I tried to kill myself. It didn’t work. I keep wondering… was I even close?
Why is it up to someone else to determine what is right for my life? Why is it up to others to tell me that it’s wrong for me to want to die? It’s a conflict of interest when family says it’s selfish for me to try to kill myself. If I’m in pain, isn’t it selfish of them to ask me to stay, to spare them from pain?
Mine is only one life. I want to go out as inconsequentially as a candle. People who don’t speak to me or spend time with me in my painful moments tell me I have to stay. It’s what they need, it’s what they want… but if they aren’t interested, they can’t be bothered to give their time to me, would they even notice if I was gone? This reminds me of my incessant need to shop and inability to throw away purchases I’ve never used.
I’ve heard it said that people who think about suicide aren’t necessarily going to kill themselves. When people decide to kill themselves they are often calm or at peace. This is what I felt. A sudden peace, knowing that this is what was right.
Afterward, I only regretted it not working. I may have been at peace or perhaps was so detached from the event that I had very little feelings toward it. Leaving this world was going to be harder than I thought.
I didn’t want to face my boyfriend. He kept asking to see me and I kept making excuses. When I tried to cancel on him for the millionth time in the course of three days, he called me out. I let him come. I left the door unlocked and lay in bed. When he entered my room I looked at him, emotionlessly.
I couldn’t bare to hold the weight of his pain. I rolled over uninterested and detached from his feelings. Why didn’t how I felt matter.
He climbed into bed and held me and cried.
It took me a few days but suddenly it hit me. If he had tried to kill himself, how would I feel?
I got off the antidepressants about a year and a half after starting them. I was angry to have been put on bipolar medication with so little analysis and counselling. Though several friends I had confided in had agreed that it was a correct diagnosis, I denied it.
I didn’t need the medication anymore, I’d found the key to the happy hormones I lacked: sex.
After 20 years of having no interest in physical contact I joined Tinder, met a stranger and lost my virginity to him on our third time meeting. I’ve heard that people who’ve experienced trauma end up forcing themselves to relive it over and over again.
Sex became something I needed. Without it I would spiral into depression and experience wild mood swings. Yet, I did not remain with any of my partners long.
Death is calling to me
As giggles roll through my body,
As I fail at something new,
As I look over at the nobody
That fills the whole room.
He whispers to me,
While busyness unfolds into nothingness,
And too much noise shuts the doors into silence,
My reflection growing more grotesque
As I transform from plaintive to violent.
Death sits with me,
Watches my dreams,
And I sleep in his arms,
He says we’re on the same team—
I fall for his charm.
I can cry silently in a room full of people,
Write about suicide in buildings with steeples,
Fear the highs because I anticipate the lows,
Consumed by this Giant, as the madness grows.
Death counts with me
As minutes barely pass.
Then suddenly weeks are lost,
And he’s been counting down till I crash,
And I’ve been double-crossed.
~Inspired by In My Blood by Shawn Mendes
A sudden flame of anger burns
Me up, and never dies.
The daggers that are stabbing
Me, escape me through my eyes.
A fear that freezes till I’m shaking,
I can’t steady my voice.
Fight or flight? I’m frozen,
You act like I have a choice.
Deflated lungs that represent
My heart, my mind, my soul.
I’m all warmth and smiles outside,
But inside, I’m corpse cold.
Murmurers mumble that it’s all for show,
But my heart can’t pump this mud.
How do I battle an enemy
That’s living in my blood.
I poison it with alcohol
And feel a moment’s rapture
But my guts will punish me
With physical torture after.
I soothe it with medicine,
It supplements the villain,
Puts my mind to sleep
So my enemy can settle in.
Speed up my heart with natural cures,
Like sex, adventure, friends
But I just feel more alone
When the superficiality ends.
My greatest nemesis
Overcomes my veins by flood.
I haven’t given in yet;
It isn’t in my blood.
Is happiness so elusive?
I went to a counsellor a few years ago, after my family Doctor’s intern tried to send me to a hospital. I told the counsellor: “I don’t believe anyone is happy.”
From there, I was sent to a Psychologist. I waited for 30 minutes past my designated appointment time, in a room with people I deemed crazy and thought, am I one of them? After speaking to me for 2 minutes I was diagnosed: Bipolar Disorder. He added the medication to my antidepressants and sent me home.
My mother had emailed our Doctor to tell him I’d had a manic episode. I’d gone from hours and days of sitting on the couch staring, unresponsive at the wall, to cleaning the house, making strange jokes, and being filled with unexplained energy. I hadn’t explained it for a reason.
In a house of contained emotions, stifled sexuality, and painted on perfection, I’d discovered release. I had to keep it quiet to keep it safe.
As a 20 year old woman who’d been ‘outed’ to her Family Doctor, as a psycho, I felt betrayed once more by my mother. Creating mountains out of mole hills was her way of ‘showing she cared’ but it made me want to drag those mountains on top of myself.
“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move”
Matthew 17:20 ESV
Absently Searching 