Have you ever cried while eating your first meal all day? Body-wracking, silent, gut-wrenching tears trailing into your noodle soup, alone, in the middle of your living room, psychiatrist office-type glare from the light hanging above? No? Just me?
I feel gutted that this emotion flows out of me so easily in front of something so inanimate, so disingenuous, so comforting. I can’t taste the soft, almost too soft, noodles soaked too long in day-old broth. I don’t notice that I’m shoving every bite down my throat, like I can plug up the tears the way I plug up my feelings.
I haven’t been eating very much lately. I suppose the spiral always starts here.
I fight the urge to find a knife. To me, that was always comfort. Not food, not alcohol, not weed, not plans and quality time.
“I want to run through a pair of scissors right now,” I told him.
The cinematic arrival of birds, so lovely and serene, landing softly. I am malfunctioning.
The air is still, with death hanging like a corpse from the ceiling. I left the knives out in the kitchen in my new home. They’re not supposed to bother me anymore, but they do. It takes everything to sit still as the air, hanging like a looming, lifeless corpse.
So I keep staring. An hour has passed but it doesn’t feel like an hour because of the theatrical release performing in my head.
He asked me what’s wrong.
How the fuck am I supposed to know? How the fuck am I supposed to know what’s wrong with me?
I sit now at the edge of the bed but I can’t see anything. I would be shocked if the blood was flowing my body anymore because I can’t feel my heartbeat. I think of all the things I’m supposed to be doing but nothing is feasible.
Nothing is real.
This world is just a cruel joke laughing with death hanging like a corpse from the ceiling.
He holds his hand out to me, and silently, he runs the shower. I haven’t showered at all this week.
“Just go and let the water run over you. I’ll go make you tea, and then I’ll be right back, okay?”
I haven’t cried in the shower in years. And I realized.
Today, there is someone sitting in the pits of hell with me.
And I realized.
The biggest difference between then and now is that there’s someone standing between me and the knife I so desperately want to hold in my hand.
We sit in silence as he balances the cup of tea on the bathtub ledge.
Mundane things. Black and white. The world has no color except for the person sitting next to me.
The water is cold now, but I’m still sitting.
That was only five days ago. He is not here tonight, and I have to do it myself. Tonight is the ultimate test, and I don’t think I can do it.
I think I am going to relapse tonight. I don’t really care what you think, because I’m not asking you for permission.
There’s this script that reads in the back of my mind, and it was only recently that I figured out that the stream of consciousness in my head is the broken record of voices I hear all the time. There is someone narrating my psychosis.
It gets harder with every passing month.
Next month will be three months since you died. Next month will also be one year since he died. So many people dying. I just want to rest.
Doesn’t grief get easier with time? It hasn’t for me. There is nothing I could scream to the devil that will explain to you how my heart breaks every time your name crosses through my mind.
My heart didn’t even break this much when killing myself the first time didn’t work.
All these mundane, stupid things, they don’t matter. Nothing matters, because no matter what I do, you’re never coming back to me. He’s never coming back, neither of you are going to answer my calls, my texts, my questions about how you’re doing.
Even in solitude, I can’t bring myself to take up space with my tears. I want to shrink into the smallest corner possible and die.
Who am I hiding my tears from now? I don’t even live with them anymore.
Is this what 25 is going to be? Is this the year I learn to live with loss?
I wish I could mold my heart like clay the way I used to. Crush it, walk over it, trample all over it and somehow, it would manage to keep beating. It’s not so easy anymore, and I’m not quite sure what changed.
Because I’ve come too far to ignore all this pain and all these feelings that exist in me. I am a complex individual, half woman, half child, half feeling, half seeing, half full but never quite fulfilled.
He tells me I can. He tells me I always do. But today, tonight, I can’t pretend that I can.
I spend so much time asking myself what the right thing to do is, because I know that it’s never going to align with what I want to do.
Because what I want to do is drastic.
When Verona died, I wanted to sledgehammer my house. I wanted to tear myself open, jump off a bridge, set a building on fire. When Jordan died, I wanted to carve my heart out and bring him back to life, if only for a chance to talk to him one more time.
It took a while for these feelings to settle in, but when they did, they were unbearable.
I wish I could make it go away. I wish I could shut everything out like I used to, just keep trudging forward, waiting for either the bottle, irrational decision, or impulsive outburst to kill me.
Sometimes, you just don’t want to do the right thing. You want to forsake therapy, the growth, the progress you made. Sometimes, picking yourself up again is just a little too much to ask. I’ve never given up. Never. And I know I probably won’t, even though right now, I would give anything to be able to.
I relapsed tonight, and I learned something new.
I learned that it wasn’t ever about the hatred. Sure, I hated myself enough. But it’s not quite that.
It is apathy. It always was. I used to think it was this sick sense of control, that for once in my life, even if it was hurting myself, I was in control.
But no, it’s not quite that.
It was apathy. I’ve grown soft in my recovery. I’m not sure if these cuts will draw all that much blood. Or maybe my knives are no longer sharp.
The old, familiar sting is there. To be honest, it feels quite nice, but I don’t feel as sorry for myself as I used to.
I feel the raised bumps in my skin. It really has been a while, and I hate to admit this aloud, but I almost missed this.
The scariest part, although not scary to me right now, is that I want to keep going. I’ve torn my skin open, so why not go deeper?
Therein lies the true ethical dilemma. If I stopped, therapy, the ones that care about me, most people would say that it’s because the reality shock of the cutting would bring me back to life. Normally at this point, I would feel regret, or I’d be so fucked up it wouldn’t matter.
I’m only one glass of wine in, and frankly, I don’t really care.
I think my knives aren’t sharp enough. I tried digging the tip of one into my forearm, and it didn’t go very far.
Is it worse to be self-centered and know or be self-centered and not know?
Because all I’ve done today was think for myself, and I didn’t quite enjoy it. Not the part where I got to do whatever I wanted and say whatever I wanted and not care. The part where I did whatever I wanted…and I still feel abject and abhorrent inside.
It’s a pity that when I am truly my most unhinged self, I am always alone. I think it’s on purpose.
I get this vision from a few years ago. I was in the middle of an episode, or maybe I was not, I really don’t remember. I was at home, probably trying to drink away whatever I was feeling in the middle of the day, or maybe I was triggered and went home to be by myself. I really don’t remember. I just know that I had to give a tour at 1pm, and at 12pm, I was still in front of the mirror, wishing I didn’t exist. I remember picking up the scissors, knowing full well I had to give a tour in a short-sleeve T-shirt. I remember I didn’t fucking care. I just had to do it. I just had to cut.
So I did. I did, I did, I did. And I still gave that tour, and I remember the blood trickling down my arm. I remember a kid raised his hand and pointed out, “Hey…you’re bleeding. Your arm is bleeding.”
I remember pausing, I remember looking at them, smiling, and saying, “I’m so sorry! My friend’s cat got me earlier, and I guess I must have re-opened a scab.”
I remember lowering my arms and reminding myself to keep them as close to me as possible, so no one would see.
I remember that time because of how strange it was. I kept the drinking, the cutting, everything secret. I didn’t even want people to see the scars on me.
But in that moment, bless the poor kids who had to see me, I didn’t really fucking care.
I don’t know why that memory is so profound to me. Most of the memories during that time are a blur, because I was either too high or drunk to remember, or my trauma doesn’t let me.
But that one, for some reason, I always remember.
I don’t need to be here anymore.
Isn’t it crazy that in just the flip of a switch, someone can go from being so full of life to being completely lifeless?
It’s not crazy to me, because everytime I spiral, I ask myself why I didn’t kill myself the last time I tried? This happens more often than you would think.
And I don’t care if you tell me to think differently. If you tell me that people love me. If you tell me that this, too, will pass.
I don’t fucking care.
Because right now, it doesn’t matter. In my psychosis, all it takes is just the flip of the switch.
And the only one holding me back is me.
I didn’t stop cutting because I needed to or that it felt right.
I stopped because I don’t have the energy to.
Before, it was fueled with trauma, anger, lack of understanding, self-hatred. Now, I love myself more than I ever have.
And even though I love myself, I couldn’t stop me from hurting myself. And the only reason I stopped was because…I didn’t have it in me to continue. Trust me, I wanted to…but,
I don’t care so much, that cutting doesn’t mean anything to me anymore either. There is no true pain associated with it.
And I hate the excuse that this isn’t what they would’ve wanted for me. Does it matter what they would’ve wanted for me?
Because they’re not here. That’s the real fucking tragedy. As much as I want to honor their deaths, as much as they could’ve, they still would be here today. And they’re not.
And you’re right. I know. It does matter. It all matters. That’s actually all that matters right now because that’s all we’ve got to keep going.
Everybody has pain, everybody hurts, everybody cries.
But that doesn’t make this any less visceral. This doesn’t make these new scars sting less. It doesn’t make Verona or Jordan, or my great-grandma, and everyone that’s nurtured my growth come back.
It also doesn’t make the inner child that died inside me a long time ago want to venture back or consider resurrecting. I thought maybe she did, but after tonight, clearly, she’s still finding her way back.
The current state of affairs is that for every inch of progress I make, my depression, my trauma, my sadness takes me a foot back.
The current state of affairs is that I am absolutely fucking gutted that I lost two people who deserve to be here more than I do last year.
The current state of affairs is that I am nowhere near my best self, nor have I been lately. The truth is that I’ve just been skating by, and I’ve just been hoping that my negligence doesn’t affect too many people around me.
The current state of affairs is that
I wish I died instead of Verona. I wish I died instead of Jordan. And I don’t care how many times people tell me that isn’t how fate, life, or the timing of the universe works.
None of that matters, because if I could, I would give every part of me to have either of them here with me again, and the fact that I cannot, makes every breathing minute so much harder to bear.
Tell me how the script of the universe doesn’t work that way. If anyone were to know, I would. I know. I know it isn’t fair.
But the real unfairness lies in the fact that as someone as non-redemptive as I, I could still scrape by with life whereas someone so vibrant, so full of life, so….not me…
Had their breath taken in a single instant.
How’s that fair? Life’s not fair.
But fuck cliches and fuck logical thinking.
I need to figure out a way that makes living bearable, because right now, it’s not.
I would offer a viable solution, or some grand reawakening. That’s what I’ve always wanted with these pieces, to be a great cohesive, well-thought-out piece of art.
But it’s not. These pieces, these words, are just the collections of the fragmented pieces of my brain, and it’s only so much now that I can do to stay afloat.
Ellamental Thoughts 