i might have to write this down.

[effigyp23]

saturday i went to visit grandpa in the nursing home. the halls were long and filled with old people in wheelchairs and using walkers. dad came with me, and mom was already there talking with the nurses about how someone needed to sign paperwork releasing him to the nursing home because legally they couldn't give him any more morphine for his pain as it might at some point soon cause him not to be able to breathe anymore. i stopped trying to listen to this conversation and go into his room. as i pass the nurses i see them pass my mom three little booklets on how to deal with death; they hand them to her with accustomed faces. there are two beds and each has a terribly old looking man in it, and i don't recognize either. i picked the one with the right color of white hair and as i walk closer find that the reason i didn't recognize him is because he looks dead. like how it's sometimes hard to recognize someone at a funeral when they're in a casket, because they don't look like themself. it took prostate cancer, colon cancer, more prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and now bone cancer to bring him down, but now he can't move or breathe on his own. he's on oxygen and morphine and can't even fucking wake up for more than a minute at a time. he can't even open his eyes. his hands are knobby lumps of bone messily lined with loose delicate skin draped over dark veins. four weeks ago he was dancing at a wedding. two weeks ago he thought he was a secret agent with 007. now he can't even wake up. and three or so weeks ago, i knew he was going to die. and i know how, and i know when. i've seen it in my dreams, and it's terrible. watching him try to breathe, struggling for every breath, then out of energy for the next it would be shallow, and after the next he'd try to cough but he was too exhausted for even that. i guess when he does wake up he generally wakes up confused, thinking he's in a hospital being treated for the wrong thing. it's terrible and only concretes in my mind the idea that i do not want to grow old. i think that was what originally put the idea of hurting myself into my head. it's been floating there for a couple of weeks now. i know i won't because i know i can't; i've been bad before and couldn't pull the trigger so to speak. tonight i had a feeling that i might do something stupid so i left my empty apartment to go be with people. snow patrol is my life right now. if i lay here, if i just lay here... when i left because i couldn't take seeing him there so worn or my dad's wet eyes, they told me i couldn't even say goodbye because it might agitate him. and i just want to fucking scream.

this is not a call for help.