The following is a collection of journal entries and personal reflections assembled over the final days of my life.

Thank you, with all of my heart, to everyone who has made this life of mine so beautiful.

I love you all.

Thursday, 16 November 2017

Silhouette

There is no thought so daunting and frightening as the realization that life is finite.

It can strike at any time, anywhere. Maybe it’s seeing yet another mass shooting-related news chyron, or maybe it’s the stink of a rotting, half-flattened raccoon on the side of the road.

Maybe it’s losing somebody close to you.

Maybe it’s the suicide of a celebrity.

Regardless, I don’t think our brains are very good–or capable at all, in fact–of wrapping themselves satisfactorily about the concept of non-existence. Seems simple enough, right? Of course it’s a paradox, we can’t think about not thinking. We can’t call upon our senses to imagine the “sensation” of not sensing.

But it’s more than that. The barrier between life and death can only be crossed once (we’re talking true bio-death here), and in one direction (so far as we know, of course), and so the concept of being dead is one that carries with it all the accumulated fear and uncertainty that stems from things unknown.

And, for some of us, the call of the voices beyond that veil haunts every waking moment.

I don’t mean to say I obsess with death to the point where I think about nothing else. I have hobbies, I have friends, I have a loving family and attend a great university where I am an active and thoughtful student. Not to mention a very vocal one. Funnily, I seem to have gotten so good at this role that strangers assume I am not only not depressed, but am a “happy” person (I put ‘happy’ in scare-quotes because I firmly believe that happiness is by and large performative. Some people may be more laid back and inclined to be generally satisfied with life, but I don’t think it is ever an inflexible state of being).

That’s so weird to me.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt truly calm. Certainly it was before my suicide attempt in Cambodia. Probably a bit even before that. A while back, I found the perfect description of my baseline state:

That’s exactly it. And it’s exhausting. Add on top of that chronic pain and chronic self-loathing and a tendency to self-harm, and you’ve got a pretty picture indeed.

When I close my eyes, I see myself dead a thousand ways.

I’m always imagining how I might kill myself with the items in my immediate vicinity.

I cry almost every time I take a shower because of how ugly and fat I am.

I feel like an absolute cretin every time I open my mouth.

All my dreams are nightmares and

I can’t escape Cambodia.

I can’t.

I’ll write more about that later, but for now suffice it to say:

I am going to die.

It might be just a few days hence, it might be a week from now, it might be a month from now. But I finally, finally have taken the steps to put everything in place and prepare my final goodbyes. And that’s what this is for. To make notes, copious notes if I can manage, documenting the final days of the existence of a stupid narcissistic girl whom no one cares about, but who might, if she’s lucky, spark a passing interest in the treatment of mental illness that lasts long enough to save another’s life. That’s the hope, I guess.

And to have my moment in the spotlight because, as noted above, I’m a fucking narcissist.

The title of this little entry is taken from the song “Youth”, by Daughter. In hospital in Thailand, when my mom had gone to bed and the pain kept me awake and the IVs in my arms and legs would not stop beeping and burning and pinching and bleeding and I stared up through the shadows to spend hours memorizing the ceiling, I passed the hours by reciting poems and singing to myself. My larynx was shredded by the intubator to I could not be louder than a whisper, but I spoke and sang all the same. It made me real again. And this was the song I sang the most.

Well I’ve lost it all I’m just a silhouette

A lifeless face that you’ll soon forget

And my eyes are damp with the words you left

Ringing in my head, when you broke my chest

Ringing in my head

When you broke my chest.

Friday, 17 November 2017

Secrets & Promises

Today began with a bit of a hitch in the proverbial get-along: My parents found my helium cylinder receipt.

I had borrowed my mother’s purse because it matched the outfit I was wearing to uni that day, which also happened to be the day I took a bus into Ballard and bought a 40 CF bottle of everybody’s favourite party gas. I tucked the receipt into my purse, and promptly forgot about it; it was considerable work to get the bottle out to the street, as I had left my wheelchair and travelled to Central Welding without any support to my ankle. I already was going to look out of place in a welding supply store, I knew, and if I looked crippled or in pain I was concerned employee assumption would shift quite easily from “fiscally responsible party shopper” to “committed destroyer of self”. I got around the corner and took a car back to my apartment, and whilst Mustafa the Lyft Driver did ask, “are you okay? You know, with the bottle?” he didn’t push the issue. Given that the decision to die is a pretty weighty one, the receipt fell out of my mind. Moreover, my mom and brother have been in Paris for the past two weeks and I had grown accustomed to being able to come home to Poulsbo without worrying about having my belongings systematically shuffled through. Alas, she was back, and instead of just dumping my shit out of her purse (which she never uses anyway) she read through everything…and here we are.

My dad covered for me, saying I had been with a friend who was welding and had ended up with the receipt. He sat me down to talk and I worried for a moment that the game was up and I would have to resort once again to a messier and more painful means of dying…I mean, let’s be real. Death sucks no matter what, but suspension hanging or overdose or jumping or a bullet to the head all all absolutely hideous. Trust me on this. I’ve attempted the first two, have accidentally fallen from a high place, and have sat in front of a mirror with a loaded Glock to my head, safety off, for fifteen minutes or so. I’ve got more first-hand experience than the average person.

Fortunately, anyhow, I was able to convince my father that, given my compromised physical state, I had simply paid for the cylinder to ensure it would be in stock when I needed it and was planning on picking it up later. I also stressed my exceeding frustration with all the goddamn mathing involved in this method, and my concern that I would fail if I didn’t have all the ideal supplies.

He doesn’t know about my combination regulator and flowmeter, about my meters of 0.175 ID tubing that has been softened in hot water on one end to fit over the regulator nipple (and sealed in plasce with duct tape, just to be safe), about the exit hood constructed carefully of drawstring elastic and oven bags and porous paper tape, about the calculations I’ve written out again and again to convert readings from my meter (intended for Argon) to accurately represent Helium CFM, about the pages and pages of notes I’ve taken and articles I’ve read.

So I feigned comparative ignorance, and shared with him some of my (answered [but no one known that]) questions:

what holds helium best? How do you get it from the can to your lungs? How much do you need? How fast should it flow? How should everything be secured? How do you regulate it? How long does it take to die? Do I need pills? Is it loud? Is it cold? Is there a chance I could survive, and if so how high is that chance? I tried to be as honest as possible. After all, the best lies are mostly truth. I think I managed to seal his conviction by telling him I had told Alvin about the purchase, and that’s why he stayed at my place until 0130 or 0200 night before last. To comfort me, you know, and make sure I would be okay. Never mind the fact that I could not get it out of my head that Alvin was sitting next to me a mere meter from the supplies set aside for my Exit. And I never once considered telling him.

My dad did ask me, “Why would you leave the receipt in the purse if you didn’t want it found?” And, though I am relatively certain it was purely the result of lack of foresight, I won’t discount the possibility that some part of me wished, or wishes, to be dissuaded. To be helped, and cared for, and saved. To be given the opportunity to live and learn and love and do all that stupid shit that appears referenced in whimsical font on coloured-background Tumblr posts with silhouettes of birds flying across them. But the thing is, that’s not a thing that can be “given”; it is a thing each person must actively do for themselves. And I’m just not very good at it, I guess.

The most unfortunate thing about this whole interaction is that I may well have to push my death date up a bit. Or a lot. If my parents want to help me move furniture into the apartment–or, rather, were to use the “furniture-moving” excuse to search the place for a very large and conspicuous bit of suicide equipment, or if they were to request a copy of my return receipt for the helium I swore I didn’t bring home, I would have to start from scratch. Not so much in terms of purchasing the necessary components, which I know I can manage, but in terms of being able to feel like I can die comfortably without my family sweeping in at the last minute to cart me off to another multi-week stint in hospital and psych ward, with Lord only knows what sort of damage to brain and body this time around. I don’t want to be furtive. I don’t want to be nervous. I want to die comfortably and on my own terms, and this now bring me to…

A Brief Missive on European Euthanasia (Long Live Dignitas)

Before I decided to die via inert gas inhalation, I had toyed on and off with the idea of doing the Suicide Haj to Switzerland, the only country that permits foreigners to participate in voluntary euthanasia programs. It would be a long process for me, particularly because my primary desire for death is rooted in mental rather than physical pain. I would need to spend months talking to Swiss doctors and psychiatrists and whomever else, would need to go through numerous tests and assessments and fill out a metric fuck-ton of paperwork before they gave me my Nembutal cocktail. Also, I just don’t want to die so far from home and the people I love.

All that said, I think Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) is one of the best things in the world, and it needs to be more readily available everywhere. I don’t mean to say there ought be a Futurama-style suicide booth on every street corner. Rather, with the proper system in place, PAS could validate those of us who feel stigmatized for our dark urges and could, by making death accessible and relatively pain-free, provide the suicidal with a sense of security that in practice encourages them to keep living. I’m wording this poorly. Check out this video of a girl, scarcely older than me, who was going through the process of being approved for PAS in Belgium:

24 and Ready to Die

She and her doctors explain it all quite effectively.

There is a lot of talk in comments and from bloggers about Emily’s self-absorption and her unwillingness to look beyond her own concerns. Maybe it’s just because I feel so similarly, but I don’t see that. Yes, it hurts the people around us when we die, but mental illness is illness. A terminally ill cancer patient can be approved for PAS right here in Washington State and few would bat an eye, but the invisible diseases that make us prisoners inside our own skulls warrant nothing but a few weeks in a psych ward or, if things get very bad, a longer-term residential stay or a sentence to the horror show that is Western State (those in the last category are usually truly quite bad though, from what I’ve heard. I don’t know much about it, just that it’s definitely a one-way street that takes you there).

But I digress. That’s a rant I could extend for thousands of pages, in all likelihood, but to no true end.

Anyhow, I hate the lying. That’s the part that gets me the most. I’m lying to my family, to my friends, to my professors and my doctors and to every person who has demonstrated their willingness to help me through my darkest times. I don’t want to be furtive like this. I don’t want to keep making promises and commitments I cannot keep. I don’t want all this mental and physical pain. I’m frightened, and I don’t want to die alone.

Saturday, 18 November 2017

Time Travel, Anybody?

A new day, but no new thoughts.

It would be great to wake up one morning and suddenly realize that life is worth living, or to have a world-altering tête-à-tête with God, but it’s not happened yet and I don’t imagine it will happen in the next couple of days. It doesn’t stop the wishing though!

If I am to be suicidal, as I am, and seemingly inescapably so, why must I live in a world built of such beauty?

I thought I would take some space here to take a little trip back in time, to provide a hint of context for my unhappiness. I fantasize that these entries will go viral after I die. I fantasize that they will be taken up the tragedy-fixated media powerhouses and transformed into a tool for positive change, to raise awareness and fight for treatment for the mentally ill. I fantasize that I will be a martyr for a greater cause, that I will be built into an anti-heroine in my decay, that in death I will accomplish the good I could not do in life. Maybe they’ll even make a movie, glam me up and add some good ol’ dramatic Hollywood spin. Would it be too much to ask for Aubrey Plaza to play me? I think that would be brilliant. Yo Aubrey, do me a favor and do justice to my corpse, girl.

Jesus, I’m great at digressing.

The point of all that, however, is that if my story is to have meaning (either on a fantastic transnational stage or simply to the people I love and care for, which is truly the most important group to address) I’m going to need to set the stage, as it were. I’ve been fascinated by death for as long as I can remember–I mean that!, even as a small, small child–and first attempted suicide by taking a full bottle of extra-strength paracetamol when I was twelve. Since then I’ve OD’d on sleeping pills more times than I can remember, sipped at antifreeze, attempted hanging, shut myself in the shed with a charcoal grill to die as Plath did (only to end up with the worst headache I’ve ever had in my life), held a loaded gun to my head, safety off, whilst I can through my pros and cons list and considered my chances of bleeding out slowly on the floor or lobotomizing myself instead of getting an instant gangster-movie-head-shot lights-out.

I remember a dear friend telling me about the suicide of someone he cared about, someone who had shot himself. He took hours to die, and I will never forget the way my friend described the way the whites of his eyes turned black from all the blood leaking into them.

Black eyes, black sclera, black from all the blood.

I dream about jumping off a cliff or drowning in the ocean, of slitting my throat or leaping in front of a train (I almost did the last, in D.C. The conductor slammed the brakes and horn and the people waiting on the platform started screaming. I hadn’t even realized my toes were off the edge). Suffice it to say thoughts of death are neither new nor foreign to me, and it’s been years since I’ve considered I might actually die from something other than suicide.

I don’t want to go all the way back to childhood, though. I don’t got time fo’ that. I want to go back to Cambodia.

Cambodia is where things changed. I ran off to teach English there to escape my desire to die, and just a month later I died there. An overdose, but on much stronger stuff than one can get over the counter state-side. That was on 30 April, 2016. It’s been more than a year and a half and I have not attempted since, but something inside of me, something integral to who and what I am, shifted on the day I died and I cannot escape it. The truth is…

a significant part of me believes I’m already dead.

And no, no, this is not a Cotard Delusion or anything like that. I merely can’t shake the feeling that when I was brought back, not all of Zoë made it. Something was left behind. Not to mention I spent ten full days in a drug-addled coma, which I’ve surmised–…well, let’s wait for that. First, I want to share some journal entries from that time period. I wrote them in the Penzu online journal app, which is where I’m also drafting this. Everything is date- and time-stamped, so it’s easy to time-travel. Isn’t the online world wonderful? You can’t get away from anything.

To begin, then, let’s step back together to the early Spring of 2016…

Siem Reap Redux, Part I

In which we recall a trans-Pacific leap-of-faith, some expat humor, and The Death of Eve.

Wednesday, 30 March 2016 “San Francisco”

I am totally overwhelmed, to the point where I cannot even begin to think about what is going on in my life right now, how radically I have just changed absolutely everything that previously would have been a part of my future. I changed everything…

It would probably be easier to handle if I was rested, but I’m very far from that. Since I decided to do this, six days ago, I’ve been getting no more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night, at the outside. And last night I got to the airport at around 11:00 pm and didn’t go to sleep at all, and now it’s 11:00 am on Wednesday and I’m too exhausted to even feel tired, if that makes sense. I know that this entry will be garbled and poorly worded, but it’s cathartic to write it out all the same. I hope I can sleep on my flight to Singapore. I really, really hope I can. Because I want to be able to enjoy my complementary tour of Singapore on my 16 hour layover, and I definitely want to be capable of conversation when I finally make it to Siem Reap. What if I actually never see my family again? What if I never see my friends, my school? It’s very scary to think about, but also exhilarating. The next couple weeks and maybe months are going to put me through the wringer, but I am hoping I can come out of it a stronger and better person. I love change, even when it is frightening. And I am not yet having the faintest doubts about my decision to pack up my life and move across the world. I started setting up a blog on Blogger while waiting here in the airport, but I will wait until I know that I’m not going to die right away in Cambodia before I start prolifically posting everything that comes to mind. That, and having been awake for about 28 hours at this point most likely has not done much to help my brain function. Okay, I’m done for now. Speaking of sleep, I’m going to put my phone away, put my earbuds in, and try and nap. I have almost two hours before boarding starts, I can maybe doze off for a few…

Saturday, 23 April 2016 “Just in Brief“

Georgina: “We (Dave and I) made a visa run to Laos, and didn’t have internet so we had no way of knowing that a coup had taken place in the day we were gone. We flew back into the airport and there were armed soldiers standing everywhere…then we saw all the Chinese tourists taking selfies with those same machine-gun-bearing soldiers, and we realized, ‘oh, we don’t need to worry. This is a Thai coup.’ They did impose a 10:00 pm curfew, but when they realized it was interfering with tourist business they said we could forget it.”

This ain’t Kansas, and the neighbors ate Toto!

Tuesday, 26 April 2016 “Flirting with…“

Death. Or the idea of it, at the very least.

As much as I enjoy the romantic qualities of handwritten work, the speed at which my thoughts seem to frequently race is better served by an online option. Typing also tends not to result in blisters. Or hand cramps. I suppose I mostly just want to note that last night, I committed myself to the idea of killing myself. How many times have I thought that? How much time have I wasted, in my life, plotting my own demise and then changing my mind at the last second? There is a ridiculous amount of productivity that has been lost. Enough so that I am going to work on my TESOL course now instead of journaling…but not before mentioning, for the sake of posterity, that were I to have attempted last night I would have done so with a mixture of shitty wine, Diazepam, and Phenobarbital.

Thursday, 28 April 2016 “The Good Moments“

I just had an amazing class.

My students were telling me that they loved me, that they thought I was an amazing teacher, that I was the best, that they didn’t want me to leave…

…Vibol told me quietly that he was not happy thinking about the day when I will leave Cambodia. I almost cried in front of the class, but for a good reason this time. The support I got, the love from these people, was the best feeling I have ever had in my life.

And the circus, yesterday, with the free ticket Sothea gave me, was unbelievable. I had the thought, so beautiful and so scary, of “I can’t leave this country. I can’t ever leave this country.” In that moment it felt as much like home as any place ever has, and the beauty of it was so tremendous that I thought my heart would cave in. As Ricky would say. Vibol also said “c arom”, which I am still trying to translate into English. Difficult, since it’s modern slang. It came up because I was trying to get the class to pronounce “Seattle”.

Vibol is so precious. I know he likes me, always joking and making faces, and always volunteering in class when no one else will raise their hand. He said today, when we were discussing countries where we would like to go, that he wanted to come to America *gets quiet* to “visit my house”.

I AM IN LOVE WITH CAMBODIA.

It snuck up on me and I did not expect it, I thought I skipped the affection to cling to cynicism, but I am in love, I am in love with a place that is as broken in its heart as I am, but also holds so much beauty and vibrancy and life.

Shally is busy as ever, but during our few minutes chatting today he told me, “everyone who sees you, they always say at least one word: beautiful. And I say I know, believe me I know”.

I am glad he is my friend, no matter what.

Also, I am blowing $70 tomorrow and getting a small tattoo, from The Hidden Chamber.

The world flutters like insects.

10:00 am, right after class. Well, not right after, but close enough. I am super excited, and it’s going to be a good reminder for me when I feel down. I want to feel closer to that poem, closer to its author, closer to English…but also it will be pretty, I am hoping.

Saturday, 30 April 2016 “…always end.”

I don’t know what I’m the most upset about.

The fact that Shally is impossible to read.

The fact that I just spent all evening listening to him and his friends laugh and joke in Khmer while I just sat there trying to not seem awkward…

…or the fact that I’m pretty certain he just pulled me along so he could show he has a “pretty” white girl as his friend.

You know, perhaps it could be the way he seemed to be trying to hook me up with his friends. That might have been the worst. Or maybe it was the way they all were laughing about how jealous the wife of the one married man in the group gets when he stays out late and doesn’t tell her where he is. Oh, hilarious!!

The food was delicious, but the evening was disgusting.

Fuck Khmer men, and when I say that I mean all of them. Our dear friend Shally included. Because no matter how much he wants to be barang, no matter how much American television he watches or how much English music he listens to, at the end of the day he is still Cambodian. And even if he hides it well most of the time, that truth rears its ugly head at the moments when it really counts. I want to go home. I want to go home more than anything. I love teaching, and there is so much beauty in the world and in this country, but some of the bad things are just too much. Tonight was a nightmare, and I hated every second of it. 600 mg of Pheno will hopefully help (it’ll do something) but I am so sad and so angry. I can feel it now…maybe? I don’t know if it’s the barbs or just the alcohol at this point. But I want to get on a plane right now and go back to Seattle and go back to school and be a psychologist and make something of my life. I don’t want to fucking rot here in this nasty, filthy, morally corrupt corner of the earth that literally no other country on the planet cares about. Seriously. The rest of the god damn planet knows that Cambodia is hopeless, so why am I wasting my time and my life here?

…

This was the last entry I wrote before consuming every pill I had squirreled away in that room. I still don’t know whether I meant to do it or not.

Siem Reap Redux, Part II

…In which we are privy to the birth of Lady Switters and some bitter and self-satisfied musings on a past life poorly-lived.

Friday, 28 October 2016 “Redux“

I am alive.

I am alive.

For now, at least, I am alive.

I just got an email from Penzu and looked at it for whatever reason (I normally delete them by default) but this one said, “look what you wrote 6 months ago!”. It showed a preview of a happy entry (“The good moments”, 4/28) which happened to be written two days before I overdosed. Before I died.

The scariest bit is the first entry I saw wasn’t that one, but the one from the night I did die.

And I wasn’t trying to.

I didn’t mean to.

I have to look up exactly how much pheno 600mg is, because I can’t remember dosing off the top of my head, but I know it’s not enough to hurt. I mean, I took 200 grams of the stuff.

I think I was just trying to curb my anxiety.

I think I was just trying to calm down.

And then I blacked out, and I don’t remember anything else. I remember leaning against the side of my bed, sitting on the floor, downing pills…I remember this vaguely. I have remembered to this point that the thoughts in my head were not “I need to die” but were more like, “these will help..”

I was high.

I blacked out on pheno and diazepam and killed myself on accident.

And yeah yeah, I had been planning to die.

I had been toying with it. But it’s still important to me that I wasn’t trying, not that night. I don’t know if this new knowledge will help me in the long-term or not. It’s a bit like speaking with a ghost, so right now I’m mostly freaked out and scared, but perhaps it will shift something. I hope so. Because the PTSD is rotting my soul and I leave for Asia again in less than two months.

More on that, some other time.

Thursday, 16 February 2017 “Firstly (and what came before)“*

*I wrote this after the cremation scene in Lord Jim took me back to my phenobarb hallucinations, or whatever they were. This was the first time in months I had been forced to remember.

My tether to the earth is threadbare now,

And when I turn the mountains heave behind me.

The word ends

And it begins again

The horizon sways with every breath of wind.

I was on the wall

I died on the wall

Or so I thought

Bound at the wrists in that awful room, dark and dirty, with black shadows under gritty emerald light.

And the red ball.

And the boy who chased it.

And the knife he brought, on that last day, and set before me when I begged him cut me free.

I do not know what happened first, except that on the day the world turned I was on the wall, and so for all my confusion he must have come after.

I had forgotten.

Until I watched Jim on the screen (Lord Jim, Tuan Jim) and it all came back,

At least all of part

If that can count as all of anything.

Escaping the House of Lepers, trying to run through the streets but feeling the clothes cling to my body first with water, then with mud. The mud thickened and clung in layers, until the weight of it was such that I collapsed on the street, somewhere, somewhere in the side-streets of Siem Reap, and I knew I was laying on the mounds of garbage that line all the roads in that city but it wasn’t until my face was to the ground that I saw there were body parts amongst the rubbish, blood and flies and rot and death, and it wasn’t until I cried out for my mother that I realized my mouth and throat were choked with the same filth that had dragged my body to the street.

I do not know what hands lifted me, because when they did much time had passed and my eyes, too, had been swallowed by the decay. I went back many times to that moment, to that street, but it was only ever for a minute or two–sometimes a second, even–and I never again felt on my chest that weight, that

Took some took some

Down they go

Not to die but just to taste death

Remember for a moment

(seize the moment)

The story whispered by those shadows that maim my brain and body nightly still.

So back I go

And back and back I go

Back to the day I died upon the wall

(with no one but that boy, and his red ball)

The ghosts can’t sneak up on me if I catch them first so

Ha!

I’ll catch you, monster

I will lead you ’round

I’ll find you, grab you, toss and drink you down.

I’ll let the orbs roll back, all white and pink

So you can carve your name into their sheets.

I’ll let your truth run wild behind my eyes

I’ll lease my soul just to remember how I lost my life.

And we return now to the present day. Thank you for travelling.

Saturday, 18 November 2017, Continued

Eternal Oblivion (Maybe)

The human mind does the strangest things under stress. I just watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch with my dad, and there’s some weird satisfaction I’m getting now knowing that this movie is now one more thing that binds me to him and to my family and to the world. When I’m gone, the songs of John Cameron Mitchell will help to carry my memory. And I guess I find comfort in that because I am very frightened of not existing. Like, horribly frightened. Terrified beyond words. The profundity of the terror I attribute to some extent to the fact that I am almost certain I will succeed this time. This is not impulsive, it’s not sudden, and it’s not a low-lethality method. There is no waking up in the hospital a month later after this. I will cease to be.

The natural extension of that train of thought, then, is to think of everyone and everything I will be leaving behind. Aye, there’s the rub. That what cuts the deepest, what leaves the ragged, gaping wounds that stun my senses and leave me unable to think about anything but the inevitable death I’ve scheduled for myself, because unlike all the occasions on which I have attempted suicide in a rash moment of emotional duress I know full well that I am breaking the hearts of my family members and friends. It’s the hardest with my dad, because every time he cracks one of our silly little jokes or gives me a hug or makes a face I see how much he loves me. My mom and brother and sister love me too, more than anything, but it’s my father I’ve always been closest with. And this will tear him apart.

Daddy, I love you. I love you so so so much and there are no words for how much you mean to me and how much my heart will ache for you right up until the moment I lost consciousness. You are the best father in the world and I can’t write more than this right here and now because I’m already beginning to cry and I can’t have that now, not yet.

So for now, just remember that I love you.

And I love you too, Momma. I love you and I dream more often than you know about how you rescued me in Cambodia, how you flew out when they were preparing for my life support to shut down and made them take me to Chiang Mai by ambulance. I dream of how I came back to life and was reborn to the sound of you singing lullabies to me. You were singing about Christopher Robin and Pooh, when I came back. And your face was the first thing I saw.

Okay, I can’t cry.

I can’t cry.

I can’t cry.

But what I am going to do is take a few minutes now, snuggled down on the couch in the dim light before I fall asleep, to expatiate a bit on the little nuggets of history I’ve shared with y’all above. Because, if we’re being entirely honest, the ten days I spent dead to the world were spent learning things I can’t unlearn, things which have haunted me day and night ever since and which are driving me more than any other contributing factor towards my final sleep. I know I’ve hinted at this in conversation with many of you whom I’ve been close with, but let me be plain right here and now when I say

I went somewhere Else.

I went somewhere that no plane, train, or automobile could take me back to.

I went somewhere real.

I went to the Other.

God is not what you imagine, nor is Hell and nor is Heaven.

So let me tell my story here–what I can remember, at least, a year-and-a-half after the fact–and let me invert on a silver platter before all of you the rancid contents of a vivid brain that cannot sleep, and cannot forget.

Let’s get down to serious business,

1

“Seriously. The rest of the god damn planet knows that Cambodia is hopeless, so why am I wasting my time and my life here?”

She slammed the laptop. The apple on the back sustained its glow for a moment, as if in silent protest of the conclusion of that abrupt and rather racist diary entry, and then decided it better not to argue and faded to sleep.

The girl slid sideways off the chair and onto the pleasant coolness of the concrete. She scooted over to rest her back upon the twin bedstead, stretched out her legs, and roughly wiped sticky tears off her cheeks. This fucking heat was a nightmare. She took a deep breath. She took a swig of wine. She listened for a moment to the feral dogs yapping and howling in the street outside. Even that noise was less appalling, at the moment. The drugs must be starting to kick in. She made an experimental fist, and her fingers felt fuzzy. Far away.

She took a swig of wine.

On the makeshift dresser to her right was a right-nasty pharmacy stash of ziplock bags mounded in chalky multi-colored cacophony. Maybe just one or two more diazepam, then she wouldn’t be anxious at all. The night would flash by and she would be rested and strong enough to say a great big “fuck you!” to Shally before rolling out of Wat Damnak Village and hopping on the next flight back to Seattle. Back to her school. Back to her family. Back home.

She took a swig of wine.

She took a swig of wine.

She took

wine.

2

The sun was shining brightly the next morning, but it wasn’t hot. Zoë stretched her arms up high above her head and the warmth felt nice, for once, which wasn’t normal for Cambodia. Certainly not Cambodia in May. She closed her eyes for a moment and let the sun shine red and golden through the skin of her eyelids. It smelled nice, too. It smelled like the sunshine that comes after rain. She swung her legs off the

classes finished quickly that day. It was odd, because even as she put the paper clocks (they were studying time, in Elementary III) back in the drawer and tidied up her piles of homework, Zoë realized she could scarcely even remember what she had taught that day. It was Monday, though, so that didn’t seem too strange. A walk would clear her head. She hit the light switch and reached up to turn off the

Wrong street. She had turned off the wrong street. She pivoted, spun around, and felt the bile rise in her throat as she realized she had no idea where she was or

how the fuck did I get here

where she had come from. None of the alleys around her looked familiar, and though the sun still shone brightly the town was suddenly very quiet. No motos swerved through the streets overloaded with multigenerational families, no vendors peddled fried snails or knock-off smartphones or chilled palm sugar drinks in plastic bags, no dogs yelped at foot traffic as they delivered their litters by the roadside. It was silent. Zoë could hear every footstep as she made a path through the dust, and all of a sudden she knew it was very, very important to be quiet.

How long had it been? Hours? Half a day? More?

The streets looked no more familiar than they had when Zoë had first realized she was lost, and the buildings had begun to get curious. Haphazardly erected in futile attempts to bury the Khmer Rouge memory, they now took advantage of their fragile structures and leaned in over the roadway, empty but for one very hopeless-looking girl. They stretched as they watched and began to loom higher than they were built to loom, casting shadows from which that girl scampered like a furtive spider. Fearful.

Fear-ful.

F-e-a-r-f-u-l.

earful?

Zoë did not know who they were, but she heard them coming. There was a heavy pounding, and shouts, and suddenly she knew it did not matter who they were or what they wanted, she had to get away from them. There was no other choice. If they found her, if they caught her, all would be lost.

She ran.

The streets were empty and that did not help, because there were no crowds to get lost in, no tuk-tuk drivers who for a handful of dollars would take her far away where they would never find her. She ran, but they were faster and so at every turn she would glance behind her and see, never a face or a flash of color, but the shadow of those who pursued. She ran, and her breath was hot and dusty and dry in her throat but

she ran

because to escape was the only way, was the only way

(to what?)

and if they caught her all was lost. They would take her, and she would never be free.

A narrow alley opened up on the left and she ducked into it, hearing the shouts loud as ever, close behind. Where, where, where? There. A heavy curtain fell across a doorway just a few meters down, and Zoë pushed the heavy cloth aside and stepped across the dark threshold.

I can’t do it.

I don’t have the time, and I don’t have the energy. I cannot write about how long I hid in that house, behind boxes and beneath blankets, or about how terrified I was when the hands grabbed me and tore at my flesh and clothes. How I escaped into the street, and how my dress suddenly began to grow heavy on my body with what I thought at first was mud (but was really rotting flesh) and how the flesh began to grow on me as well. How my lungs were crushed by the weight as it grew across my chest as throat, as thick, gnarled, bark-like grey scabs thickened and swelled in flaking layers over my face and engulfed my left foot.

How I collapsed onto the side of the road into a mound of corpses, and how more corpses piled on top of me until I could not see or move or think, until there was nothing in my world but pain.

And then, later, the doctors who strapped me to a table and cut at me with knives, removed my mouth and jaw, opened my belly. There was more pain then, and such fear. I broke the cuffs and ran again, stumbling, out into the dark.

The House of Lepers where I hid awhile, and then

The women who cleaned my body and dressed me in silk and lace, draped my neck with chains of gold and filled my hair with fragrant flowers before they took me to the funeral litter, and I was borne into the crowd who had come to watch the cremation.

Chained again to that wall. That wall in that dark house with the small, dark boy who came to watch me. He had a red ball he played with and when he left me he would sometimes forget it on the floor, and the white light from the door left ajar would highlight its perfect contours. The light in my room was green, and dark. I would beg the boy for a knife to cut my bonds, and once he set one at my feet. But, of course, I could not reach it.

No. I cannot go back there. Not now.

Sunday, 19 November 2017

Take Me to Church

I did, in fact, go to church with Dan today. And I cried and cried and cried, because there I was in this room full of people who have at least superficially convinced themselves that their lives will terminate with their realization of eternal glory in Christ. And “Christ!” is what I say to that, because I would love more than anything to have that level of confidence in…well, anything. And after the fact we went for coffee and–you know what, I actually don’t even want to talk about it. I, Zoë Hyra, am holding back on talking about something. When working on a post that will only be published postmortem. But you know what? It makes me really fucking sad. And I’ve been really fucking sad anyway. And that experience, that moment I had today, is something that I will hold close in the coming hours, until I commit suicide. That was special.

Fuck, I love my friends.

…

So, I’ve just tried a half-dozen ways of addressing you all, but I can’t find any good way to do it. So know that I am thinking of you all, and that my heart is fuller than I can say.

Sunday, 19 November 2017

Mood Music

I don’t know if this is helpful or detrimental, but I pulled together a list of the songs I’ve been listening to that have been…capturing my frame of mind, I guess. The most immediately applicable are in bold. I don’t know if this is stuff that will be played at my funeral or what, but if nothing else they are beautiful artistic expressions of the sorts of things I am unable to articulate myself.

Song Title Artist Ghost Towns Radical Face Neither Heaven Nor Space Nada Surf One More Time with Feeling Regina Spektor Blue Lips Regina Spektor Every Single Night Fiona Apple There’s Something Wrong Brad Sucks Certain Death Brad Sucks Orion Elizaveta Whispers Passenger Speak Nickel Creek Trouble Cat Stevens The Mute Radical Face Sadnecessary Milky Chance Silent Sea KT Tunstall Honey Honey Feist Arsonist’s Lullaby Hozier In a Week Hozier Hello Adele Youth Daughter Dumb Nirvana Born to Die Lana Del Rey Pride’s Paranoia Atmosphere Crystalized the xx Beauty and the Mess Nickel Creek Black Leaf Falls Sea Wolf Midnight Radio John Cameron Mitchell My Friends Red Hot Chili Peppers Neutral Ground Sea Wolf Frank Sinatra Cake The Crane Wife 3 The Decemberists In Search of My Rose The Tear Garden Paper Bag Fiona Apple Fast as You Can Fiona Apple Dance Anthem of the 80s Regina Spektor Let Go Frou Frou Wait it Out Imogen Heap Canvas Imogen Heap Speeding Cars Imogen Heap To the Sea Katzenjammer Black Gold Blues Laura Veirs Parisian Dream Laura Veirs 3rd Planet Modest Mouse Lives Modest Mouse Smells Like Teen Spirit Nirvana Featherstone The Paper Kites Black Eyes Radical Face All the Rowboats Regina Spektor Apres Moi Regina Spektor Turn the Dirt Over Sea Wolf America Simon and Garfunkel Casimir Pulaski Day Sufjan Stevens

Monday, 20 November 2017

Butterflies

I wrote this last year when I was contemplating suicide. It still holds true.

It starts off as a butterfly

It’s just a little thing

With six small legs

Six tiny feet

And silken, white-tipped wings

Another comes to join the first

Count four, six, seven—ten

They fly up high with whispered sighs

The wings fan flames alive and then

White butterflies

Soft butterflies

Pour out my mouth and nose and eyes

Due to a higher-than-normal call volume, your expected wait time is more than ten minutes. If this is a life-threatening emergency, hang up and dial 911.

Everything I see I am

And everything I see is me.

The pattern

Breaks now and

Before you know it the pretties are all gone

Too far now to pretend there is any

Thinking something’s worthwhile here to

Save it for later stuff

The insects back down your throat they’re

Trying

To crawl back up but you

Keep them down

Choke them down

Crying on dirty public washroom tile what

Are you looking at

Go follow your own fish.

Your call is extremely important to us. Please hold for the next available representative.

Intermission.

It’s only ever only intermission and the credits never roll for the play never ends

(not till it really ends)

‘Cause it’s a popular show so it runs back

To back to

Back

Again to the beginning.

It’s a tiresome loop after so many viewings so you take a break to smoke a cigarette and stare out to where grey sky meets grey ocean.

It’s always twilight in this world,

And across the flat dishwater sky there flutters a single white-winged butterfly.

Due to a higher-than-normal call volume, your expected wait time is more than ten minutes.

The rib-shell’s an eggshell, did you know that?

And it hurts when it cracks

When the air bubbles up through the rips in the seams

And each breath puffs up the neck

Crackling, snapping fishies hunting insects

While they themselves echo

Like the amplified footsteps of a thousand-thousand white-winged butterflies.

I can’t find the thoughts in my own head.

There’s too much static on the screen.

Operator, operator can you hear me?

Are there even real operators any more and

Who’s flying this thing?

Where are we headed, anyway?

And while we’re at it, where did Tuesday go?

Everything I see I am, and everything I see is me.

It starts with a butterfly.

There’s first that single butterfly

And then their fury rises in a cloud

I feel the weight

The consequence

Of every sight and every sound

Please hang up, and dial 911.

Out my mouth and nose and eyes

They choke my throat and bleed my thighs

Your call is extremely important to us. Please hold and—

Chalk-white bitter bile and half-digested gel capsules

“Stop!” says the red light, but you run it anyway

Red light reflecting off tributaries running south

To where the burning print of one foot drags dead in the wake of its livelier sibling

Your call is extremely important to us.

Just sit down in the puddle, it’s alright.

Please hold for the next available representative.

There’s ink a-plenty here and

You don’t mind being a little damp, do you?

I know you don’t want to but

You’ll never feel better with all the butterflies

Inside

Your expected wait-time is more

You can cut them out and they will fly away

This time I promise.

Just a little more and they will burst out your belly and you will feel so

Much better.

I promised.

Please hold for the next—

I promise I’m okay.

Please hold.

I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay I’m just

(higher-than-normal)

trying to get home.

You wouldn’t know where that is, would you?

Please hold.

No, you’re right, I’m not okay

If I tell you that

Please leave me alone

And take with you the white-winged shadows and the ‘night,

Mother.

(If this is a life)

Just let me go, now, please.

Let me go.

Please hold.

Everything I see I am, and everything I see is me.

Everything I see I am, and everything I see is

Please—

Monday, 20 November 2017

What Dreams May Come

I’m ready.

And I have to be, because the window of opportunity I have lied into existence for myself is a very narrow one. To be specific, I have almost exactly four hours to kill myself. So this last entry will be more brief than I would like.

Firstly, let me apologize sincerely to my mom and dad, and to Dan, Alvin, Joseph, Mel, and Paul, all of whom I have lied to this morning in order to buy myself this time. I am so sorry, and though I know that “doesn’t cut it” I hope that with time you all can come to forgive me. Also, a special heartfelt thanks to Joseph, who made my last morning on this planet as wonderful as I could ever ask for. True friendship cannot be replaced by anything, and yours has really been a treasure. Thank you all so much for caring, and for trying to save me.

Mom and Dad, Seth and Rae,

You are the center of my universe. You have provided me the most supportive, loving, and oft hilarious home environment I could have ever asked for, and were it not for you I would have none of the positive attributes that have managed to drag me through these years of depression and self-hate. None of this is your fault, in any way, and I know this will hurt you. Perhaps I am evil and selfish for doing this, but in my mind there is no alternate option. I am so frightened, and so haunted, and so broken, and I even if I could get better I don’t know that I have the strength to put in the work. I don’t know why I am the way I am, but there’s nothing that can be done about that. This is the path that has opened before me, and it is the path I will take.

Perhaps some of the ease of that decision stems from my dogged belief that I may be living in some sort of Inception world. I know that’s not true (I think?) but there is nevertheless a part of me that thinks maybe I never woke up from the first time I died. Maybe I’m still asleep, or still trapped in an alternate plane of reality, or something. But I dream about it when I sleep, and am haunted by it during the day. What if I’m not real at all?

Since I’ll be dead by the time you read this, I’ll be completely honest on that front:

I don’t believe I am real.

I’d probably be given a whole new slew of DSM diagnoses were I to have admitted this in the past, along with a brand new pharmacy of terrible drugs that would leave me catatonic and even less mentally and physically capable than I am at present. But the seed of that belief was born on 30 April 2016, and it has blossomed into a vivid and toxic flower the scent and allure of which I cannot ignore. What if I die, and I wake up?

What if I am Dorothy or Alice, and I return to consciousness surrounded by those I love?

What if I die, and things get better?

Alternately, I’ll be burning in Hell for all eternity. But if I’m headed there anyway, what are a few dozen years off my time on earth?

I can’t say enough how much I love life. I’m writing this from the Starbucks on 42nd and the Ave, and as I walked here from the Quad I looked up at the grey sky and rain and my heart soared with the beauty of everything.

Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it,

and my heart is just going to cave in.

Yes, I love the world and I love life. I love the people I know and the places I’ve seen, I love the cool breeze and the color of the turning leaves here in Seattle, the stench of Siem Reap and the freshness of Seoul in the heart of winter. I love airplanes and airports and long walks at dusk, I love sex, I love getting drunk with strangers, I love writing and reading and memorizing poetry and singing in the shower. I love dancing. I love drawing and painting even through I’m no good at it. I love trashing the kitchen at my family’s place with my Christmas baking projects, and jumping into the freezing ocean on New Years Day.

I love everything. And I see the beauty in everything.

Except myself, of course. I hate myself.

It is impossible to say just what I mean

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen.

I’m running out of time, so I have to wrap this up. I would write a thousand pages and more. But life isn’t perfect, and I guess death isn’t either. I made that blockbuster movie joke above, but know that won’t happen. I don’t know if even ten people will ever see these notes. I hope they at least make it to those who love me.

This is such a strange sensation I’m feeling just now. Like I’m already starting to fade away, to dissolve into sea foam like The Little Mermaid.

The world flutters like insects.

I love you, Momma. I love you, Dad. Please live well, for yourselves and for me. And you know what? I choose to believe I may well see you again. Part of me longs for the Void, but I’d also be keen for another adventure. Just not one where I have to be me. And I would love to see Grandma again. Besides, God or no God, I will be with you always and forever. We don’t need to look any further than String Theory to see the truth of that.

All that’s ever happened happens still,

And everything that was will ever be.

I love, I love you, I love you.