attempt

 

I was standing in front of a mirror, a blade pressed to my jugular.

For a moment I wondered how it had come to this, and in an instant my mind flashed back to the psychiatric ward from three years ago. My first roommate there had attempted suicide this exact way, in a paroxysm of anguish that granted her only a visit to the ER and several prescriptions to be filled. She had told me her story as she packed her bags, but I had been preoccupied with the wound that had led her here: that one-way ticket into the ward, swollen and red beneath thick black stitches. I shivered as I touched the shallow gashes in my forearm and wondered what sort of courage she had, to have plunged a blade straight into her neck.
Some sick part of me wanted to be that brave.

For months afterwards, I practiced the motions time and time again, swinging knives about my throat in a deadly dance, eventually leaving thin traces of blood and danger clinging to my skin like a hangman's noose. Would you have the nerve to end it now? The question burned in my brain. Or would you be a coward?
I pressed my hands over my ears and backed away from the gallows every time, trying to ignore the manic laughter that followed me as I unlocked the bathroom door and collapsed back into an iron sleep.
Coward. Failure. Poser. You think you have it bad? Think again, you bitch. You're nothing but a fake.
I'd tell you to go kill yourself, but we all know you don't have the guts. Too bad.
They were right, after all. Despite all the frantic attempts of my own, I'd never felt any braver than I had then, sitting on a bolted-down bed and admiring the broken skin of a woman I'd never see again.
But with each passing day, I quickly learned that it wasn't about courage at all. Courage never led a man to die, not like this. It made men into war heroes, even survivors. This wasn't courage. This wasn't even despair. This was a white flag.
This was a tiredness of the soul, painting me numb and empty-eyed, and I was simply a man tumbling sideways off a bridge just because he couldn't bear to take one more excruciating step.

And yet it still felt like a condemnation.

Guilty as charged, they sneered.
Guilty of what?
Of everything, a voice spoke up, dark as pitch and rumbling like a volcano. I could sense her grinning, eyes wild with gleeful hatred, staring up at me from below. You're guilty of everything, you filthy slut.
I said nothing, still staring at the mirror, the cold knife still shining between the body's unfeeling fingers.
Somewhere deep below my bones, I knew she was right.


I was so hopelessly fractured that I had buried myself far out of sight within my own mind, unable to deal with reality. So they did instead, taking over bits and pieces of my daily life, splitting up responsibilities and roles. Some days it almost felt like a game, as if I were nothing but a set of instructions and they were the champion players.
As more and more holes appeared in my psyche, more and more of them appeared to fill the gaps. Some were born directly from pieces that had broken off-- emotions, memories, thoughts-- while some simply walked in from God knows where, and decided to stick around.
I was suffocating in my own personal hell… and they were angels that had fallen just to get me out of it.