I don’t want to be here. I’m not sure I ever did. And when I say here, I mean on this planet. My world is a nasty place
I do not exist. The man I am is irrelevant. All the love I give is consumed by hungry mouths that eye my face as soon as I stop feeding them. The people I love erase me. Anytime I displease them, I lose all value. This is my mother, father, sister, partners, community. They are all willing to do me great harm over the slightest of slights
I do not know why my world is like this. I only know I don’t deserve it. They keep telling me I’ve got to learn to love myself first, but if the mirror is all I’ve got, I’d rather not
I’ve accepted that I will live most of this life with death curled at my feet. But the purring isn’t usually this loud. Last August it got so loud. So loud I had to take medical leave. I was bedridden, couldn’t function, couldn’t sleep. I was just there, and not wanting to be. I managed to get back to work eventually, but I never fully recovered
Since then, I’ve been drifting in and out of the planning phase. That’s when you’ve pretty well decided to make your exit and all that’s left is the details. The planning phase is pretty scary. Not when you’re in it, when you’re there it’s calm, relaxed even, but when you come out it’s like Ah Fuck. So far, I’ve decided the location, the method, what to do beforehand, what to leave behind, etc. All that remains is when
“Instead of ending your life today, pick another day”
I keep picking another day. Make it to 2025, make it to sober birthday, make it to Chicharra, make it to summer. Picking another day has worked for me countless times. It wasn’t enough this time, so I had to go all in
“Quit your job, end that twisted relationship, talk to the human who makes you speechless, move to someplace you’ve never seen, and do something you’ve never done!”
I gave that advice to a suicidal friend twenty years ago. I was also suicidal at the time. Neither of us followed it then, but I have followed some version of it a few times since
That’s why I left Denver. I took a job in California in the hopes that the big move would shake something loose. There is a way in which moving is a little death. Perhaps that sacrifice would be enough to appease the gods
It was not