Suicide Notes

by Michael Thomas Ford

Only then your head breaks through the waves and you suck in great breaths of stinking air and you want to die, like babies when they come out of their mothers and find out that they should have stayed inside where they were safe.

It’s a really crappy feeling to realize that your entire outlook on your life can be controlled by some little pill that looks like a Pez, and that some weird combination of drugs can make your brain think it’s on a holiday somewhere really sweet when actually you’re standing naked in the middle of the school cafeteria while everyone takes pictures of you. Metaphorically.

How come someone always saves the people who try to kill themselves and then makes them tell everyone how sorry they are for ruining their evenings? I keep feeling like everyone wants me to apologize for something. But I’m not going to. I don’t have anything to apologize for. They’re the ones who screwed everything up. Not me. I didn’t ask to be saved.

“Do you really think he doesn’t love you?” I asked her. She shrugged. “How do you really know if anyone loves you?” When I didn’t answer, she looked at me. “Really, how do you know?” I thought about it for a minute. “I guess you just assume they do until they tell you they don’t,” I said. Sadie shook her head. “You need a better system than that.” “Maybe you ask,” I suggested. “If you have to ask, the answer is probably no.

And just because your life isn’t as awful as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You can’t compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn’t work. What might look like the perfect life—or even an okay life—to you might not be so okay for the person living it.

But killing someone is wrong, and I don’t think suicide is. It’s my life, right? I should be able to end it if I want to. I don’t think it’s a sin. Everyone seems obsessed with it, though. I mean, think about it. We keep people alive on death row just so we can kill them later. We put prisoners on suicide watch so they can’t do themselves in before we get the chance to put them on trial. That doesn’t make any sense. Why is it okay to put someone to death, but it’s not okay for those people to do it themselves? I’ll tell you what I think. I think it pisses people off when you kill yourself because it takes away their chance to control your life, even a little bit. They don’t like it when you end things the way you want to and don’t wait for the way it’s “supposed” to happen. What if suicide is the way it’s supposed to happen? Do they ever think of that?

That’s what people do, kill the things they’re afraid of.

Everyone was looking up at the top of the building as though Jesus Christ himself had appeared and was tossing out chocolate-covered salvation, like just because some crazy glitter ball

But right now I feel like I don’t know my parents at all. I guess when you get down to it, I’ve never really thought about them as people. They’ve always been my parents. Now I have to think about them as people with feelings. What a pain.