More writing (TW suicidal ideation)

It’s funny, how it comes upon you. The warning signs are never clear, not as they happen, or indeed rarely even in hindsight. One day, you are happy, the happiest you’ve ever been; life seems lush and sweet and hopeful, as though finally it is all going to be okay. Then, in a moment, a cold rush of melancholy pours over you like a sudden April shower or a sputtering choking tap, finally releasing all the pressure that was bubbling behind, waiting. The trigger that releases the damn is not always obvious, only after the tide turns do you realise you’re on the wrong side of it and feel the water swallow you whole. It is often a rather innocuous day, maybe even a good one, until you find yourself on the bus home, pressing your forehead against the cold shuddering window and playing music too loud, trying desperately to chase the sinking feeling out with sheer sensory overload.

It only ever makes it worse. You can write, you can draw, you can even try to ignore it, but it will not abate, the more you fight, the more helpless you feel. During this time, you may find yourself drunk – this is a bad idea. A night of intoxicated reverie may seem like the cure, but it will not distract you, it will only ever make it worse. One stern word. One tense conversation. You find yourself sitting on the stairs with your head in your hands and thinking about all the ways you could make the drowning stop. Somehow, you are crawling, fully clothed, into a bath. The white porcelain is cold on your hands and feet, and maybe you’ll have thoughts of fighting fire with fire, to drown the drowning. Maybe you won’t turn the tap, I never do, but you will stare for infinitely dilating time at the taunting glint of it. You will see it, so vividly, the cold roaring water. Perhaps you will contemplate the dull pink razor on the edge of the bath, but you will put it back, if you ever pick it up.

Go to the kitchen, dull the feelings with food. Cut soft slice of bread after slice of bread, butter it, slather it in sweet expensive jam, or choke it down dry, it depends how desperate you have become. Contemplate the bread knife, it’s in your hands this time, run it idly over your palms, over your fingers, over your arms. Push its serrated edge into your skin and watch the little divots form in your flesh. Think about pushing harder, let yourself, just a little bit, relish in the sensation, but don’t break skin. Breaking skin would mean actually doing something, and that’s scary. Never actually do something, that would make it real, that would make it a problem, anyway, it’s selfish, think about all the people you would hurt. Put the knife back.

You’ve eaten an awful lot of bread. How selfish, other people live here. You weren’t even hungry. It hurts, doesn’t it, the feeling of all that food in your stomach. Maybe you could turn back to an old way to dull the pain, a way that doesn’t leave a concerning, identifiable mark, as far as you know. But don’t forget how it felt when you pulled out that old hoodie, the one that had been sitting in the closet for three years, the sweet, rotten, acidic smell of that hoodie. Everyone else must have smelled it too, drowning it in designer perfume clearly hid nothing, the perfume is faded, the odorous bile remains. It’s not like it would even make you thin, and surely you learned long ago that people won’t love you more if you are thin. That’s how you got here in the first place. Being more conventionally attractive, more outwardly beautiful, only garners a wider circle of shallow acquaintances. It destroyed the personal connections you had. The relationships you didn’t realise were keeping you alive.