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"There's never been an endeavor so strange as trying to slow the blood in my veins..." -ani difranco, Studying Stones
We all get to that point. You know the one, where we perceive everything in our lives to be going to shit, that we're doing everything wrong, that there's hardly a reason to even get out of bed and breathe.
There's always that point. That crushing, suffocating point where you cannot see the forest for the trees, and the only solution that seems logical is to not be. To disappear and pray you're reincarnated as something that does not have feelings or rent or breasts.
I was there very recently.
Every solution I thought up to my myriad of problems seemed stupid and un-doable. Life became this super-gigantic chore that I hardly had the energy for. I laid on my couch listening to my stomach grumbling and refused to feed it. I had to pee, felt the pain of my bladder & kidneys SCREAMING for relief and I refused them. My lips were dry from thirst and I only eyed my water bottle with disdain.
I wanted to refuse my body every request it made of me, no matter how dire or necessary that request became, because I wanted it to stop feeling, stop doing, stop BEING.
Almost an entire day I spent like that, fighting natural instincts the human body had developed over centuries of evolution, hoping against hope (because I'm a closet scientist and I know for a fact this wasn't going to work) that I'd just die.
My head was throbbing, I was dizzy; my vertigo was kicking in big time for lack of food and water and relief and even the slightest movement was really at my own risk. Eventually I really felt as if I'd gone mad, and in only a few hours, too. I really began convincing myself that this was going to work, that I just wouldn't eat or drink or use the bathroom and before sunset it would all be over.
Then my eye caught sight of Grandma's picture, tacked to my bulletin board, looking back at me. All of a sudden I felt so ashamed and embarrassed that I would sully her name by leaving behind a messy house. Stupid, right? So I got up to clean but I was so dizzy I fell on my ass right back on the couch. The impact triggered my strong urge to urinate but I didn't want to ruin my sofa... my beloved sofa that I'd paid for with my own money. So I ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before I let loose such a stream with an uncontrollable sigh of relief escaping from my lips.
And as I washed my hands afterward, nothing looked so inviting as the water pouring from my faucets. I wanted that water so bad that if I had to, I would have killed for it. So I drank it until I was gorged on tap water and some had threatened to come back up through my nose.
When I looked up into the mirror, my face... god my face was so sad. Just the saddest eyes and mouth I'd ever seen on another human being ever. I cried right there on the floor in front of the sink at this sad, sad girl I'd become. I didn't know this girl. This wasn't who I set out to be yet here I was: depressed & suicidal.
There were no pills in my cabinet and I dared not draw my own blood. My apartment is only on the second floor and traffic by me was not the kind one can get killed in. I wasn't even successful at death.
What was there to look forward to? More days like this? Unable to even take my own life? Failure upon failure upon failure?
But as my mind wandered, as my mind is wont to do, Sean Paul came on my iTunes and I thought, "I wonder if he'll sing song this at Wingate this summer?"
Isn't that always the way? Just a simple question that demands an answer... sometimes that's all it takes. That's all it took to get me off the floor and in front of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and a tall glass of milk.
*smooches...in a much better place today*
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how are you all feeling today? everyone ok?
Suicide Attempt #2 by Raquel I. Penzo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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