Makin' bad decisions, based on temporary thoughts

Trigger warnings: self-harm, suicide, mental health issues

Sometimes I think of my body and the little stories it carries. I call it "the chronology of scars."

Some are mundane. The one on my stomach, from a hernia repair. Or on my leg, from being a stubborn fool and trying to build a shed in a rainstorm.

Some are less visible. Some are only seen when you know where to look.

I promised I'd be honest when I set out to write this blog, and these things are important. The rawness, the distressingly ugly candor.... is necessary, to maybe understand me

I feel almost bad about dragging this memory to the surface, because it involves someone that I've grown close to again in recent months, and made utter amends with. Nevertheless, it is part of my story. I'm sorry, ke'chara. It is a burden I need to give light to, that hopefully it may finally wither and burn away.

There is a tiny, fairly well healed snag of a scar, on me. It's almost invisible unless you know absolutely where to look: on my inner left wrist, right where the hand creases. I think about it constantly, because it is my reminder that in early 1997 I tried to kill myself.

I didn't go through with it, obviously. I barely even broke the skin with the X-acto knife I was using, and I lied that I'd jabbed myself trying to clean the sprues off of a model kit I'd been building.

I didn't go through with it, but the intent had been there when I began. Because I was done. I was tired. I knew who I was becoming and I felt trapped and like I couldn't be the guy the girl I loved wanted me to be, and I didn't want to stop being who I was and was in such despair that I could see no other way to end everyone's suffering than to end mine. And I knew the correct direction to go: down the road, not across it.

I don't know what stopped me. It wasn't the sight of my blood; that never bothered me.

I'm actually really confused about this, because while I would love to say it was self preservation, or a sense of morality, or whatever... I honestly don't remember that at the time. I knew I was going to do it, and maybe a few hours later someone would find my lifeless body bled out in the basement, future wasted.

Was it that I wanted to spare my parents that sight?

I. Don't. Fucking. Know.

But I remembered putting the knife down, staring at the blood starting to well up, and looking for gauze. If I remember it took about half an hour to stop.

I will never go that way again. It's a cowardly way to go.

i could step off the end of this pier but i got shit to do...

Maybe that's it, Ani. Like you said.

And I had a lot of shit to still do in my life. Fall out of love, fall in love, rediscover myself, learn my own successes and tragedies and make new scars, make new stories upon my body.

But I carry that dark place with me. I know how easy it would be to go there again. The siren call of the easy way out.

I am terrified to think my children may contemplate that same dark place, when things get rough.

I only hope they have whatever same epiphany I did. Because I came close to losing me, and I don't want to lose them.

Things will always get better. It just won't be the way you want.

Maybe I stayed alive so I could hear those words, in late 1997. It's the only advice I trust. It's the only thing I've ever known to be true.

I should have handled it better and really I maybe should have gotten actual help, but I think I thought that if I ever did, it would be too late. So I carried this dark burden with me ever since.

There it is, at your feet, open to the gaze of everyone, so it may itself die.

---

I'd love to add some sort of optimistic epilogue here but there isn't one. I just confessed to a suicide attempt, and that I never sought help afterwards and carry that as a badly healed mental scar as well that translates to constant waking terror that others I love might contemplate similar harm to themselves. Because if I could, why couldn't they?

Just let me be the example of what not to do. If anything else, maybe that can help.

In the United States, you can now dial 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. I'd rather you do that than chase your own pain down your arm. Someone loves you and their world would be over without you in it