waving not drowning

What I did was promise my little dog I’d always come home for him. It didn’t cure anything. And I still want to—I won’t say die, because dying is messy, and scary, and painful and ugly and terrible.

But I don’t want to be around any more. If that makes sense.

Unfortunately, since there are few other options for “not being around anymore” (unless cryogenics has advanced past preserving Walt Disney’s head?) I think I should probably cut the shit and just admit that I’m suicidal.

I’ve been arguing about it. The therapist asks, “are you suicidal?” and I scoff. Actual scoffing, with a scoff-face and scoff gestures and scoffing my head all around scoffingly. “Pfsh,” I say, which is a scoff noise. “No. Geeze. I just—you know. Want to be dead. But not die. That’s totally different.”

“Okay,” they say slowly, gently. “Okay. Well. Do you have a plan?”

“Pfsh,” I say. “I would if I wanted to die. But I don’t. See?”

“Okay,” they say nodding, pursing up their lips, wrinkles forming on their forehead that I want to smooth down for them. “Do you feel safe?”

That always makes me think of Gandalf. IS IT SECRET? IS IT SAFE? But I don’t laugh because this is a very serious conversation.

“Yes,” I say.

Which is true. I feel safe from imminent death. And I also feel like that’s a bit of a disappointment.

Mostly I feel sad, and exhausted, and broken into shards that are too sharp to touch, and rubbed thin, almost transparent. I feel sick and anxious and thick with dread. I feel stuck. Unsaveable. That this is the how it is and this is just how it goes and my voice is too small and weedy to shout it all down.

Shouting is hard. Right now I’m not super good at hard things. Which includes planning to die and then the actual dying.

I think, though, that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to wish I were just not around. I don’t want to give in, and every day that I don’t is a really good day, a non-zero day, and that’s something.

Sometimes I resent making promises, even to a dog. It doesn’t seem fair to be beholden, because who knows what’s going to happen and maybe there will be nuclear war and I’ll be horribly radiation burned and—I don’t know. The metaphor doesn’t seem funny any more.

This isn’t a cry for help, or a bid for sympathy, or a notice, or a warning. I think I never really process anything until I talk myself through it with my fingers on the keyboard and the words showing up on the screen, sometimes surprising scary ones and startlingly deep ones and deeply, deeply stupid ones.

I didn’t expect to write this. I am hesitating about posting it. But you can’t deal with something until you look right at it, is what they tell me. You’ve got to stare it in the eye before you can punch it in the face, set it on fire, stomp it out. Eventually. Baby steps.

Naps. Reeses peanut butter cups. Breathing, not dying. I can do that.