I can hear the swish of my pulse in my ears, like purple banging inside of cast iron.
I wonder how many years I have to keep asking myself the same questions. How many times I have to drag myself out of this same pit, piece by piece.
The other night I sat in my bathtub pondering the world without me in it. Me, forty two years later, still wondering which people would really be affected and how.
How haunting it is that this evil and
manipulative creeping thing
would lace itself into my generations.
I made a list. The warm water, though comforting, stifled my clarity. My senses were askew.
I have never really wanted to truly kill myself. However, images and visions of it happening float in my mind on the occasional wind of self deprecation. Fight or flight is always tattoed on my inner monologue. Obviously, forty two years later, fight wins. But flight seems so inviting. The shock of the so simply comfortable thoughts like these never seemed so terrifying until my own children began to have them.
Then I realized how terrible my life would be without them—how terrible it would be—without me.
How haunting it is that this evil and manipulative creeping thing would lace itself into my generations.
But it is so hard to walk in a world so crowded that I can’t breathe. To feel so over stimulated that I can’t feel. So difficult to function when my voice is taped over with everyone else’s needs and ideas and wants and shit. So hard to be a friend when I feel so very alone and invisible.
Fight.
I work so hard to not lose. I know I want to be a good person. I want to have a family and really close friends. There is that piece of me that wants her laugh to fill the room and really desires to be enough. So many times I let it loose. The real her. The one she is. And then…she is offensive, rude, intimidating, overwhelming, distracting, but oh so funny, but please don’t—not here. And I realize that perhaps she isn’t the one they really wanted to know. She really shouldn't be here. And sadly, I put her right back in that glass jar that I have been trying for 17 years to free her from. The lid works now, so at least she isn’t totally trapped. She is more than enough: she is too much.
And I lay here in my bed, in the dark, trying to sift through the week I have had walking through life as it flew past me. Zombie eyed, overwhelmed me that wanted to hide for five days and teared up over and over. Wondering what it was that happened that could have put me in that place, alone and so very desperate. I just really don’t know. I guess that’s been the problem all along. I guess that’s why I am still here. Fight.
Ending your life is not an option. Depression and anxiety are just a pause; there is more to your story.
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