Hear me out.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of suicide.
I think there are many different kinds of suicide. There are the kids who are tormented to the point that they feel alone. I don’t want to talk about them, because their reasons are fairly straightforward. They didn’t kill themselves, the world killed them. There are the people who feel the need to take a lot of others out with them. I’m not going to pretend I can understand them. There are the adults who feel so trapped and bored that one day, something snaps. Everyone is different, but their motives are also fairly easy to understand. Then there are the people you don’t expect. The people who seem bubbly and lucky and happy. The people who have a whole lot to live for. There are probably more, but I’d like to talk about them.
Everyone says it’s selfish. It hurts the people who care about you, like your family and friends. Everyone says “Oh, if only I had known, I could have done something about it.”
That’s probably true in a lot of cases. Go find your friend at 3 AM, tell them everything is going to be okay. Hold them when they wake up screaming in the middle of the night for no goddamn reason. But who thinks to do that on their own? Probably no one. Because nobody knows what happens in your head when you’re alone in the dark. The world itself is often not unbearable. The world inside your head is what kills you.
So what about these people who really can’t escape? What about the people who know there are people who will care, who know that this will hurt others more than it will hurt them?
I don’t think they’re looking to hurt themselves. I think they’re looking for a way out. Because no matter how many people sit with you, and hold your hand, no one can get inside your head with you and help you fight.
I guess the drugs would help. But who wants to live their life trapped on a constant sea of medicine created to keep them around for other people?
It seems really selfish to me. To expect someone to keep living so the other people in their life can survive. It’s selfish of all of those people not to take a step back and think maybe you needed to leave. Maybe you weren’t meant for us. Maybe it’s better wherever you are. Maybe the screaming and the shaking have stopped for you, and it doesn’t hurt to wake up in the morning. Some pain doesn’t pass, some pain is always there. Time doesn’t heal wounds that it creates.
The odds of me killing myself properly are very slim. I would end up in a hospital or worse, back at Montevista. People would yell at me. But the very worst thing would be when I wake up, and question my motives. Why didn’t I do it right? What went wrong? I’m afraid of coming to the realization that I did it for the attention. What if I just wanted to be different, I wanted to prove I’m not like everyone else? That would kill me all over again, and I would be dead inside.
I’m writing this while smoking, and since I don’t do it too often, I feel high as a fucking kite. The smoke cuts off the oxygen to your brain. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, because it numbs everything. Everything is beautiful and it can’t hurt me. I think it’s better than pills. I would hate myself if I went on the pills.
The worst part is, I don’t want to leave for two reasons. I am currently hired to a show, and I don’t want to disappoint everyone by not seeing it through. It would screw up a lot of things for a lot of people, since we’re starting rehearsal on Monday. They’d have to find a new stage manager. It’s calming to type the same 30+ names over and over again. There’s a weird, yet lovely rhythm to typing out sheets I’ve created so many different times.
More than that though, I crave the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night to someone I care about and trust telling me everything will be okay. If I were to die, I could never have that. It’s a lovely feeling, waking up next to someone and knowing that they’re there and that they would wake up if you needed them.
That’s what I need, more than a new therapist or doctor or pills. I already know those won’t do me any good. So it becomes a waiting game. Waiting for someone to come along to trust.
I picked up guitar again, mostly because I need to be doing something with my hands at all times. The muscle memory scares me. I haven’t played some of these songs in over a year, and yet they come back like a torrent of rain, seeping into my fingers. It’s easiest to play when I’m lost, because my fingers can do what I can’t tell them too. But that’s terrifying, because it means they remember how to do other things as well.
Don’t ask me to take up religion. I believe in a lot of things, but a God in the traditional Christian sense isn’t one of them. That won’t help me. Sometimes I wish there was one, someone to blame everything on and to ask things of in the future. Something to wish on, as it were. It won’t do any good to blame everything on something outside of myself.
I wish I could follow advice. “Let yourself cry in the shower, but when you get out, stop wallowing.” I don’t think it’s wallowing if it hits you with no escape. I wish it was that easy. But it’s not. So that doesn’t help either.
They all told me that asking for help made me strong. And trying to get better was brave. But I don’t feel better or brave or strong or courageous or any of the other things they tell you. I just feel empty and a little broken.
I think I’ve spent over an hour now writing this post. That’s a little excessive for something that no one is going to read. I’m still not even sure if I’ll post this, or if I’ll delete it after I do. Then again, if no one will read it, what’s the harm? I almost just set myself on fire on accident, trying to light a new coal. The bowl won’t stay on. I’ll have to wait until it cools again, and in the meantime fight a return to my normal mental state.
I keep sleeping whenever I’m not at work or working on something, because it’s the only time I can feel better. I think sometimes I’m beyond saving, because I’m the only one who can save myself from thinking. But there is only so much sleeping you can do before your body refuses to sleep anymore. And the problem with sleeping is it’s often worse than being awake.
Did you ever see the critically shat upon movie Sucker Punch? I’ve always wholeheartedly loved that movie. It’s escapist. If you’re old enough to watch it, you’re probably beyond escaping into an imaginary world in which you’re the hero and fantastic things happen. You can’t identify with it at all, and it’s stupid. I just never grew up.
I feel as if I’ve run out of things to say at this point. Everything else is feeling, the kind you can’t put into words.
Maybe I should just be committed for the rest of my life.
