Dear reader,
The post I write now has no happy ending but I'm not at the end -- read on through February 12th's outcry to May 24th's wisdom... It might just show humanity.
"There's something about a blank page that I always find hard to tarnish, that's why I have so many unused copy books in my possession. For some reason, the computer doesn't feel the same, that's why I took to blogging. I had an entirely different blog in mind for you tonight and an entirely other other one ready for publishing but now, in the darkness that can only fall at night, I need to beg of you, stay clean with me.
My wrist comes pre-lined but unmarked all the same. The blunt knife sat in my trembling hand for quite a while but I think I would rather a listening ear. I fumbled for the tools... My blade had been removed from my bedside but I had another box of knives over by the long sleeves anyway, both necessary for tonights little desires...
I don't like change. I don't like new. I don't want to use this strange blade. Give me back my own.
I am calm, cool, collected. I can't help but think do unto others as you would have done to you is misguided for the suicidal, perhaps we have learnt this already. My temperature is rising, my heart is beating faster. My mind flies four months back to the day my heart fell softer... I want a hug.
The tears have subsided now, the urge is an hour old... I could have been an hour clean by now... Remember, child, you don't like blood.
The blunt knife does no good. No blood to trickle down the arm. Slash again, sweet angel.
I am unclean. I might as well give in to sin at last."
My last days have been ruled with similar thoughts and worse. If I hold onto darkness through the chaos I find the storm calms before sunrise and with the stillness of sanity I know exactly what my actions mean.
I don't feel insane anymore, just miserable. My lows can be reckless but they've become coherent now. I seek help and the damage falls when help is "zero at the bone". I mean that to sound disjointed, too. A Dickinson line that doesn't fit, the same way I don't. It feels as though Amy Lee says it best in Lost in Paradise: As much as I want the past not to exist it still does/ And as much as I'd like to feel like I belong here I'm just as scared as you// I have nothing left.
I call bullshit. Everybody fits, we have to. Maybe we don't fit that school or those friends but we fit somewhere. The only thing that doesn't fit my life is my sickness. Being heavily depressed is like soaking the pieces of a jigsaw before assembling it -- water damage swells the pieces so they don't fit together. Please, be patient. Let the pieces dry before you get to work. Maybe you've a few pieces of someone else's puzzle and you've not collected every part yet but you'll get there... I'll get there.
So why Dickinson? If you look into her life and guess you can come to the conclusion of agoraphobia or homosexuality with great ease, incest or prostitution with a little more imagination and general turmoil consumes most of her work... But not this one.
"Hope" is the thing with feathers-
That perches on the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops -- at all -
And sweetest- in the gale- is heard-
And sore must be the storm-
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm-
I've heard it in the chillest land-
And on the strangest Sea-
Yet never in Extremity-
It asked a crumb - of me.
Hope by Emily Dickinson
Listen hard for that sweet song birdies,
Depressivedetails@gmail.com
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