My tongue is numb today. It's better, but still definitely numb. I did some lingual nerve damage to it when I was practicing hanging myself a few days ago. Scarves and ties both work-- at least theoretically-- but I needed a belt to get the compression right. Alexander McQueen, L'Wren Scott, Kate Spade, and Anthony Bourdain all managed to pull it off with a scarf or a tie, but I just can't get it to work. Turns out Robin Williams' and I share a preference for a belt.
I've started hiding belts around the house. To an outsider, it might look like I have a weird, secretive struggle with fashion choices. A sort of gallows accessories statement.
What happened was the door gave way when I leaned against it. Lesson learned; the latch wasn't clicked into place. But it feels less like a failure, and more of an "almost" victory. Like anything worth doing right, it takes a little practice, and preparation. I briefly lost consciousness; I remember stars. Seeing stars is not a bad last memory. Stars, and a sort of 'whoosh', like being hugged by a ghost made out of opiates. I had it right, just not quite to completion.
It takes a great deal of strength to face the nights when you're depressed, and lonely. Well, maybe more of a grim resignation than strength. I dread waking up, but God, how I dread the nights. The darkness has become the physical embodiment of sadness. When it closes around me it cloaks the sadness like a weight. It's just so heavy. The light of morning is maybe even worse. The shards of pain are brighter, sharper, more crystallized. Brought into razor-sharp focus. But mostly the light is a reminder that before long, the light will slip away again into the dark, where the pain is infinite, boundless, and staggeringly deep.
When I stir in the night, even before I'm fully conscious, my first thoughts are swimming, dreamlike, but always "no". Oh no, I think. Please no. Make it stop. The tears course down my face like the waves of sadness that wash over me, again and again, unrelenting, unstoppable. They run down and back, spilling into the matted hair around my neck. I lay in the dark, tiny lachrymose pools forming around my head, and I pray, grasping and struggling to return to the release of unconsciousness, the bliss of feeling nothing. If only just one more minute of reprieve; please, please just make it stop again.
Please just make it fucking stop.
I think I wrote the above in October 2018. Since then I had some brief moments of hope, even some more protracted ones that I held on to. But now it's starting again. A tide that's slowing rolling back in... in my mind the black, inky water is sadness personified, ebbing at a desolate beach. It's only around my toes now, but I know deep it'll get. I'm alone on the beach, and the tide is coming in.
Anyone reading this might think, "how sad... if only she had gotten help." There is no help; there is no rescue. I've tried before, only to find more pain, more despair. "Help" means finding something even deeper than rock bottom, and tunneling beneath. There is no help, only more sadness. It's up to me to make it stop. Please understand; I need it to stop.
