(no subject)
For most of us, suicide is a moment we'll never choose. It's only people like Lexy, who know they might choose it eventually, who believe that they have a choice to make.
What's it like? You wake up and you feel - what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces inside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head - no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says "Turn left at the corner" or "Don't forget to stop at the post office," only now it's saying "I hate myself." It's saying "I want to die." It starts in the morning, as soon as you wake up. You see the sun through the curtains, it's a beautiful day maybe, it doesn't matter. You turn over to see if you can sleep some more, but it's already too late for that. The day is upon you. You want to hide, to curl up in a ball, but that's not really what you want either, after all. It doesn't stop your mind, does it, it doesn't stop the ache. It's not an escape. The whole day in front of you. How will you bear it? You want to escape, but there's no place you can go where it won't be with you. Inside you like a nausea. Even sleep, really - you wake up with a jaw sore from clenching your teeth in the night and a feeling inside you like you've spent the whole night dreading this moment of waking up. The shining sun is of no use to you. Crying helps sometimes, the way that the wrenching act of vomiting can lead to a few moments' respite from nausea. And the way it racks your gut is exactly the same.
You don't want to get out of bed, but you don't want to turn into that cliché, you know danger lies that way. So you get up, and you try to find pleasure in the little things, the first cup of coffee in a mug you like, the mint-burst in your mouth when you brush your teeth, but you can tell you're trying too hard.
You go through your morning, but your interactions feel false, all the little things you take for granted at other times, the need to smile at the neighbors on the street, the need to speak pleasantly to the awkward boy with the terrible face ringing up your groceries. The smile feels wrong on your face. You look at other people, and you know they have their problems, too, but it seems to come easier to them, all of it. They don't have that hollow sound in their voices when they talk.
You force yourself to go through the immediate stuff, the stuff that must be done, write the check for the gas bill, put the frozen things away in the freezer, but the more amorphous tasks, the things that are not so crucial right this minute but will ultimately shape your life into something worth remembering, those are harder to face. You'd rather lose yourself in something stupid that wastes your time but occupies your mind for a few moments - TV, a crossword puzzle, a magazine about celebrities. You've spent whole days doing things like that. And then you get scared because another day of your life is gone, and what have you done with it? What will they find, you wonder, when they find me dead? Years can pass this way. Years. The pleasures of the body, food and sex, walking under the autumn leaves, these can give you some small comfort, but even then your mind is running in the background, worrying, hurting, hating, despairing.
Suicide is just a moment, Lexy told me. This is how she described it to me. For just a moment, it doesn't matter that you've got people who love you and the sun is shining and there's a movie coming out this weekend that you've been dying to see. It hits you all of a sudden that nothing is ever going to be okay, ever, and you kind of dare yourself: Is this it? You start thinking that you've known this was coming all along, but you don't know if today's going to be the day. And if you think about it too much, it's probably not. But you dare yourself. You pick up a knife and press it gently to your skin, you look out a nineteenth-story window and you think, I could just do it. I could just do it. And most of the time, you look at the height and you get scared, or you think about the poor people on the sidewalk below - what if there are kids coming home from school and they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to forget this terrible thing you're going to make them see? And the moment's over. You think about how sad it would've been if you never got to see that movie, and you look at your dog and wonder who would've taken care of her if you had gone. And you go back to normal. But you keep it there in your mind. Even if you never take yourself up on it, it gives you a kind of comfort to know that the day is yours to choose. You tuck it away in your brain like sour candy tucked in your cheek, and the puckering memory it leaves behind, the rough pleasure of running your tongue over its strange terrain, is exactly the same.