Suicide Notes

by Michael Thomas Ford

Then suddenly everything changed and I was falling through the stars. I used to wonder what it would be like to be a meteor.

Now I know. You fall and fall and fall, and then you’re surrounded by clouds and your whole body tingles as it starts to burn up from the entry into the atmosphere. But you’re falling so fast that it burns only for a second, and then the ocean comes rushing up at you and you laugh and laugh, until the water closes over your head and you’re sinking. Then you know you’re safe—you’ve survived the fall—and as you come back to the surface you blow millions of bubbles into the blue-green water.

That’s where I am now, floating in the ocean like a piece of space junk and trying not to throw up every time I breathe.

I wasn’t going to go, but I figured if I show everyone how completely sane I am, they’ll have to let me out.

Then again, I didn’t do it; I can just imagine doing it. Maybe that’s the difference between crazy and not crazy.

Actually, I just kind of settled into this warm, foggy place where everything faded out and voices sounded like planes flying somewhere way faraway. I knew people were talking, but I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t interested in anything anyone had to say.

It was just this stream of words and half thoughts, like there were a thousand different channels in my brain and someone was flipping through them one after the next.

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.

This single quote just sent me into a crying fit

I’m tired of people thinking they’re doing me favors.

“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.

I’m stuck in this pit. 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.

The idea of everyone feeling sorry for me made me angry.

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 usually just because there’s something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?”

I swear, sometimes it feels like there’s this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me.

Something totally weird just happened. I’m not even sure I want to write about it, but if I don’t I’m afraid it will just stay in my head, and I don’t want it in there.

No one ever tells you that when your heart breaks, you can feel it. But you can. It feels like something has crumbled inside you and the pieces are falling into your stomach. It hurts more than any punch ever could. You stop breathing, and for a while you can’t remember how. When you finally do, it feels like your throat has closed up, like you’re trying to suck air through a straw.