[Trigger warning: suicidal ideation]
I don't know how or why it came out, but I know I said the words last night as we were drifting off to sleep.
I guess it started by me saying that I have been having a lot of flashbacks lately.
She asked like what
And I said, weird small moments of times I embarrassed myself or let someone down
She asked for an example
Well, like earlier, I explained.
I was petting the cat while she was curled up on the couch and suddenly felt transported to several years ago when I was petting a totally different cat that bit me out of nowhere. I pulled my hand away like it was hurt and bleeding before realizing I was back in the present, unharmed, with a different and gentle cat purring gently.
My hand still stung for hours though.
She seemed affronted and said that her cat wouldn't bite.
I know, I said, I'm not...
She then told me that I was probably petting the cat wrong.
Yes, probably, but I was talking more about the flashbacks.
And then gave more examples. How I'll hear a song or smell a particular food or hear a bit of dialogue or even touch my face or an object in a certain way and find myself again transported back to a time when I was embarrassed, bullied, taken advantage of, or scared. Each time I feel I am there. I will catch myself sometimes whispering out loud to whatever specter stands before me.
Have you read Slaughterhouse Five? Vonnegut does a good job of describing this kind of trauma-related time travel.
Since I have been job hunting a lot these past two months or so, I have been having a lot of flashbacks about jobs and work-related stuff. It makes me tense and amplifies my already present body pain.
It's given me this feeling that feels like a fact even though I know it's not true. That I am just bad at everything. Politely tolerated at best. I seem to struggle with the basic tenets of survival.
I didn't want to say any of that out loud. I tried not to.
She had told me she was sorry about my flashbacks.
We were in dark silence, drifting off to sleep.
So I held my tongue and ruminated for either eons or seconds or days
But eventually, there in the dark silence,
I said I wish there was a way to no longer be alive without causing everyone I love so much agony and pain.
It's not that I want to do the thing. I don't. I really don't. It takes a lot of painful willpower to pull that off and I've tried it enough to be skeptical I could go through with it.
And I couldn't. Because I love so many people. I care so deeply about them. I can't add to their suffering. I could never do that to my mom, my friends, this woman mostly asleep beside me.
But what I meant was that I wish there was an "off" switch.
If this were a video game, I would have hit reset ages ago.
I feel like I've already lost the game and want to pack it in at half-time to beat the traffic.
I wish it could be like, I don't know, I moved to Florida or something. That I'm just gone now. No need to worry or cry or grieve. I'm okay. Just gone.
It's just that I don't particularly like the idea of another forty years of suffering of anxiety of self-doubt and self-torture and poverty and broken hearts. It seems like such a long time to continue failing in so many ways. So much yet to be endured.
I don't think she heard me. I'm not sure how much of any of this I said out loud. She was already asleep. I am grateful for that. My expressing so much is cause for concern. And even that's more suffering than I want to cause.
And besides, here now in the morning sun
with the birds singing outside
things feel different
well, it all still feels kind of true. All those feelings remain.
But there were also woefully incomplete.
In the dark, everything is tainted by shadow.
But the daylight reminds you that color was always there.
This world is full of sorrows, yes.
But also so much beauty and joy and music and art and friendship and pizza and kindness and connection
and love.
There is so much love in this universe.
And my present is not the future.
There could be many good things in store.
These feelings will pass.
I strain my eyes looking for hope.
I lay my head down to rest.
9:47 a.m. - 2022-08-16
Recent entries:
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