Down The Gullet

I struggle with sharing this because the stigmatism around suicide is that one is always susceptible to trying again. It is an over generalization that silences the voices of those we need to hear from. The voices we need to hear are the ones that made it out. I certainly could have used the power of those voices in the time leading up to when I twisted off the cap of that Excedrin bottle and washed over ninety pills down with Johnnie Walker. It’s been nearly ten years since that day, and I still wonder -when the pain becomes excruciating- if death’s kiss would be better. And I don’t think that will go away and I am not ashamed of this nor afraid to admit it. I’ve been in pain for as long as I can remember, most of life is a constant reminder of what I never got a chance to experience: happiness without the fear it will be taken away at any moment. As in my poem, the important part of my journey was to make it out of the darkness: to focus on the light house that guided me to a safe harbor. I am not going to write some fancy tag line or slogan. There is no magic bullet. No 10-step plan. The reality is that you must develop the capacity to feel the pain and experience it in all its forms. Maybe a therapist will help with this, or a friend, a family member, a random stranger, a pet, books, movies. Whatever it may be, it is unique to you and there is no right or wrong answer. The safe harbor you need is somewhere inside yourself and you already know the way there and don’t be afraid to seek the aid of others. We are -as my first therapist told me- relational beings. There is no shame in what you are going through. There is nothing wrong with what you are thinking. There is nothing wrong with you.

Down the Gullet

90 tablets down the gullet,

The pain of the following hours a mirror

The pain of all preceding years-

The rendering of a life lost inside hopelessness

Loneliness and Fear

90 tablets down the gullet,

A miserable night awaiting deaths bitter kiss

The grim reaper: She-He-They never came,

But dawn did.

Now those who are close to me-

Ask if I am okay,

They really mean, “are you safe”

None to ask,

“Who are you?”

“What do you want to be?”

I need a place where the pain raging inside can be released. Is anyone there?

Rather than listen to my story:

They tell me, “You need help!”

They beg me, “Think of all who will miss you!”

This lack of empathy is because they are uncomfortable with my pain-same as me.

They tell me what I need to do because they are afraid because they do not know how to be there for me, sometimes both.

And so in the dark of the night despair from the terrors unseen chokes my voice: pain tears at my innards like a lioness her dinner. My hope is snuffed out like a candle meeting the breeze. I wonder if I can bare it any longer. Ruminating whether the unknown journey of death is less risk than the known. Somewhere in the dark the Grim Reaper beckons. All sound is gone now. Senses dulled. Paralysis has set in. Some call this a sickness.

Suicide is no sickness: my mind warning— things can no longer continue as they were. As they are.

That the path I’ve traveled, is ended. 

I Ignore the voices pleading with me to make their pain go away. And instead write or say a few words of encouragement to myself each day. And when the clouds blow away-as they will I’ll find my voice, again. I’ll know what my truth is.

I cannot make the pain stop by ignoring it nor even ending it. I must feel. Go through the darkness and whence through I’ll see a new path where light abounds and dreams scare the nightmares away.

I will overcome what is in all reality my own warning me that things cannot continue as they are. I am not weak for this. I am not less than they. I just am. And will be all that I can even in this storm the darkest of moments.

-EJB