tw: suicide

I wrote this a few days after my attempted overdose, after being on the wagon for 3 years. It’s too personal for me to submit anywhere, so I’m putting it up here instead.

by the twelfth time you’ve tried to move on, you’re sure that

nothing will ever feel this bad again. it’s easy to claim, easy to believe

that this was your lowest moment. rock bottom, you know

better now. twelve times swallowing pills, balancing on ledges, twelve

promises that were lies falling from your lips.

maybe you lost count somewhere along the way –

they all start to blur together, ethanol and medication

setting your skull alight, twisting the world dizzy round you

sunsets into sunrises blurred and stained with blood.

you tell yourself, there’ll never be a thirteen. you learned

your lesson, in chalky aftertastes the morning after and the scent of

bleach scorching your nose and throat. besides, by now

you must be immortal, to want death so much and yet never quite –

it’s never quite enough.

thirteen comes unexpectedly, over the smallest, stupidest thing

you can’t really trace the thought to the action to the consequence, and

in retrospect, you really don’t know what you were thinking. You

don’t. your mind slides over it when you try to interrogate – – –

you know that you tried to kill yourself yesterday. or the day before

something along those lines. sunsets into sunrises, and

it doesn’t occur to you right away to worry. It’s only when you rise

and stare into a mirror that’s forgotten the lines of your face

that you ask yourself –

“what did I lose this time”

the clocks strike thirteen. you might have lost count

but your lungs – heavy with breath – remember.

your body aches with all the weight that you can’t see

“nothing will ever feel this bad again.”