It

I'm not scared of It anymore.

It is not a mythical beast sent to conquer.

Don't get too close.  It might be the end of you.

You are too close to It's risk.  A sad statistic.

You are just like them.  It will snatch you soon.  He whispers this our one last time.

His familiar heaviness makes It real.  The forbidden rhythm numbs the pain. 

The only tears I cry are as his life drips with sticky shame.

Just like that.  They are gone.  It pulled them under.  Freshly gone; we are left. 

Like daggers he speaks.  I have you all.  To myself.  Just like we always wanted. 

Together; until It soils you too.

How might you do It?

Different than they.

Take my belt.  And when you do It.  Feel my final hands remove the life that only I could give.

I still have the belt.  Well worn.  A staple of my life. 

The gatekeeper of his piercing. 

The weapon fashioned making skin so raw.

Crammed away I hear It taunt.  It teases with It's destiny.

I remain after him but his hold lives on in leather form.

Too afraid to touch It.  His belt is my own It.  The last connection.

My pieces.  Myself.  We beg to throw It away.

That belt.  It.  His final grip.

I can only hope that courage wins to turn It over.  To will It gone.  Forever.

Until It is just a distant, formless it.

Questions

Is this the last time you are going to feel like this? 

Do you think you will feel better by the weekend?

Holy fuck.

How do I answer those kinds of questions?

I keep telling myself that this is hard on him.  I know it is. 

I know it is.  Because I've lived in a house with a ranting suicidal maniac.  But I'm not like that.

I'm just quiet.  Writing here these past few days is the most I have ever talked about feeling this bad.  But I have yet to scream and yell; throw things or make threats. 

At my mother's worst, she showed up on the door step of my apartment and slit her wrists.  She lived that time but it was fucked up to say the least.  It also made suicide real to me. 

A person.  Distress.  Blade.  Blood.  Tears.  Anguish.  In a way it began to desensitize me.

My sister.  I saw that through to completion.  It's hard to look at someone so beautiful with half their skull gone to relieve pressure without euthanizing a piece of your soul. 

Yesterday I went to the apartment where my mother slit her wrists.  I went to the door step without knowing what I was supposed to be looking for.  I stared for a minute and then I left.

I then drove to my sister's old townhouse.  Where she ended her own life.  I looked out the window of my car searching for a hint of lingering.  I didn't see her.  The porch had pretty pots full of pansies.  Someone who lives there is happy enough to care about flowers.  I pretended the flowers were for my sister instead.

I stopped short of going by my parent's house where my mother ultimately succeeded.  That was probably a good idea.  Lots of other bad things happened there too.

It is probably morbid to do these things.  I'm probably not supposed to even think about them.  And I bet writing this in black and white is even worse.  But I wanted to see what it felt like.  As if they had a disease that was catching.  And I want to know what makes me immune.

So to answer his first question; is this the last time I'm going to feel like this? 

Yes, has a certain finality to it.  And probably not the answer he really wants even if he doesn't realize it.

No.  Well, I don't want this to be the answer because I hate feeling like this.

I don't know is really the only answer I can give. 

I try to do the right things; I go to therapy, I see a shrink, I take my meds {mostly}, I write, and I would like to think that I am getting better at actually verbalizing what is in my head. 

So I don't know if all the right things add up to erasing suicidal thoughts forever.  My other thought is that I think far more people think about suicide than will admit to considering it as an out.  It's taboo right along with admitting to struggling with a mental illness.  But I can't be the only one.

I sincerely hope to push past this.  It's an exhausting way to live.  I just said that word again... hope.

And to answer his second question, sure.  Which falls under the category of if you ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer.

I keep telling myself that this is hard for him.

Air

I think about suicide every day.

That's what I told my husband last night.  It's probably not the best way to qualify how I'm feeling right now but I needed him to understand that these struggles and thoughts are not out of the blue.

He did a stint in a mental hospital 10 years ago because he hit a bottom and had a plan and the materials to carry it out.  He called his mother and off he went to the hospital.  He stayed there 7 days, got on meds, had some therapy and straightened his thinking out.  He did outpatient therapy for three months afterwards and discontinued his meds 6 months after that.  And then he was all better.

So that's where he is coming from and he doesn't understand how I can feel like this all of a sudden when I'm on medication and already in therapy.  I tried explaining things to him and he still didn't get it.

Finally I was over trying to make him feel better because I hardly think this is the best time to have to explain my feelings.  They just are and they suck.  So that's when I blurted out what I think about every day.  He was shocked.  So I described it like this:

His depression was like a brown paper bag.   Sure, it gets a little dark sitting at the bottom of the bag but it's not stifling to exist in there either.  He eventually wanted a way out and he figured it out with some help.  He got out and the bag left in the wind. 

My depression on a good day is like living in a straight jacket.  I might be tied up but I can still walk and function in a limited way.  And because I've lived like this for so long, I've grown accustomed to it and I can even free a hand or an arm on a good day.  No, it's not pleasant to live like this so yes, I have thoughts of what it would be like to be free.  That seems pretty normal to me.

But when this hits it is like being thrown in a trunk and buried.  Still with the straight jacket on.  It's dark.  I can't move and the air begins to wane.  I twist and fight but then I feel panicked and then I really can't breathe.  So I get still and almost peaceful.  That's where I am right now.  That's also when I know that I need help.

That help doesn't include explaining the why's that support my feelings because those got buried along with the fucking trunk.  I'm still trapped and need that last bit of air to free myself.  Maybe then I can figure all this out.

Because it's a lot easier to breathe in just a straight jacket.

Joke

Hope doesn't always float.  Sometimes it drowns you instead.  I feel like shit.  The fuck-I-woke-up-again kind of shit feeling.

I despise people who throw these kinds of feelings around like they are nothing.  I grew up with a mother who threatened to kill herself at least once a week and it sucked.  And then my sister actually did.  And then my mother did too.  And all that really sucked.  So I don't write these things without carefully considering how I really feel.

But with all that being said, because I know how bad it hurts to remain on the living end, I feel stuck with no options.  And little hope.  What if this is all there is for me?  This vacillating between flat and the place I'm in now.  It hurts almost as deeply as the shit done to me that got me here in the first place.

When I wake up and it's disappointing, I know I'm not on the right track.  But when I wake up, take my daughter to school while thinking the whole time how everyone would be better off without me; that's when I know there is no faking my way out of this pit.

This morning I left for work without even drying my hair; I didn't feel safe alone and that scared the shit out of me.  All of my typical reasons for not hurting myself were not working and that's when I knew I had to say something.

I called my husband and made the other appropriate phone calls.  I promised to be safe.  And because I keep my promises I will do just that: be safe.

But what will "safe" cost me?  More disappointment... even more pain... devastated hope... an ever deepening loathe of my brokenness?  Or the worst; revealing just how weak I really am?  I hate this and how unjust it feels.  If someone lives through abuse isn't that enough?  That is the cruelest joke.

I'm so scared that this is as good as it gets.  I can tell myself to keep going.  To keep fighting.  To hope.  But I also have this nagging feeling that the joke is ultimately on me and I suddenly find myself very, very tired.  Sometimes all the self pep talks in the world aren't enough to make this spinning descent stop.

Just a huge joke that stupid, miserable people hold on to in an attempt to feel better.  What if that's all hope is?

What then?

Sleep

I am tired.  I live in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation.

get more sleep... that's the recommendation. 

Sure.  No problem.  As if I enjoy defying sleep patterns.  I don't stay up all night having a party by myself.  I stay awake because it's terrifying to sleep.

I close my eyes.  I feel my head on the pillow; my hands touch the sheets.  It's dark and my heart starts to pound.  The bed begins to spin.  My head screams and my chest aches as I wait.  Wait for nothing.  I am waiting for a dead man who lives on so vividly in my mind.  Wait for the night where he does not appear.

I know that a few hours a night isn't good.  It's also not good to sleep in the corner on the floor.  I do both with freakish mastery. 

I go through periods of time where I can tolerate sleeping in a bed.  But I can't stomach it right now.  So while my anxiety is racing, I wait for my husband to fall asleep.  And then I move.  Corners are safe.  And the floor isn't a bed.

Bad things happen on beds.

After a few hours of hard fought sleep my corner is awake as he approaches in the dark.  I stand and slip out of the room where my husband never wakes.  I turn on the lights as the dead man begins to fade.  He wishes me good night and with a wink he tells me he will see me soon.

I clean.  I read.  I write.  I draw.  I make my husband coffee and pretend that I haven't been up all night.  The early light melts the terror as dreadful relief lets me know another night has passed with a new day on the brink.

My eyes are clouding with that familiar ache.  A dark periphery is depression's single warning.  I fight to keep my eyes open; to keep my vision clear.  But heavy eyelids pull the sadness in as I contemplate the Sleep.