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 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?
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.
Absently Searching 