518p 2d march, 2021. On defeating suicide.

That’s what it is, that’s what suicide is
It is literally the only and one solution to
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore and I know that I will
I don’t want to feel like this anymore and the only surefire way to not ever feel like this anymore is to kill myself.”
That is the only surefire way.I don’t want to feel like this anymore I hate feeling like this I don’t want to feel like this anymore

my voice grows shrill inside my head and out and it amplifies as my heart rate amplifies and screams

I don’t want to feel like this anymore.
There isn’t any other solution to not feeling like this anymore to *not ever* feeling like this anymore.

nothing is helping nothing is helping nothing is helping

it is going to keep being bad, isn’t it
it is going to keep hurting
yes.
yes it is.
people are going to keep being stupid
you are going to want to scream and hit and rage and you cannot
it is going to keep driving driving you down lower and lower and lower until you cannot breathe.

you might not want to feel like this anymore but Mojo.
Mojo and cookies.
Weed.
The full fucking moon and a sky full of stars.
Kissing.
Art.
Music.
Kissing.

There will be kissing Saturday.

so if I’m getting this right the idea is not to wish for it to stop feeling this way because it will always keep feeling this way
I mean it’ll stop for a while but then it goes right back it always has and it always will
it always always will.

no the idea is to not think about how terrible it is feeling and to only think about ending that but to think about all of the things you don’t want to end
Mojo.
Mojo and cookies.
Weed.
Those are all things I can do by myself
Those are all things I don’t have to depend on anyone else.
but kissing.
You can’t do that alone.
You need at least one other person for that.

You can’t go just yet.
You’re not done yet.
There are still so many good things.

614p, 26th february, 2021. hope.

a photo of me with my unwashed, tearstained face, in front of a wall with a laser-cut rising sun sculpture, a photo of me as “Rosie (the Riveter) Revisited” by my husband in 2002, and an exhortation to “cheer up honey pie” .
there is no filter on this photo.

I am driving and I am listening to the President and I am crying
I am crying and I am crying and I am crying and they are huge ugly tears
“A dose of hope”, he says and the tears flood down my face “a dose of hope” he says

Hope is something that I never ever had.
It was never even on the list of things to look for.
Hope was for the foolish and the losers and the suckers.
the idea of hope was as painful as the reality of unrequited love, a crush that goes nowhere, being ghosted by someone you really, really thought you liked.
Hope was not for me, not ever.

but maybe,
maybe now it is.
maybe I can have some for myself, just a little.
I’m not asking for much.
Just a little.

Hope.
The taste of it, the texture.
rolls around in my mouth, between my fingers.
hope.

I draw my hand back, my heart back sharply from the edge of this hope
too sharp, this edge, too unknown.

My chest tightens, my jaws clench, my fingernails dig into my palms.
breath shallows, and hitches as my eyes darken, kohl smudging my cheeks.

“Guess what!” the President says, excitement clear and bright through the speakers
“We landed a rover on Mars!”

hope.

1116a 27th january 2021

it is elevensixteen now but at 1111
(waiting for the strike?)
so much flash of anxiety flash of panic
i learn have learned to keep track to
watch
to pay attention to monitor
to see what
i mean it is always as it is happening
it is always in the middle
although
increasingly it is on the way up
in
out.
it is no longer as the smoke is clearing
it is no longer when there are horrified faces

there is actually (sometimes)
(sometimes)
time to stop it before i
before without i cannot without
without
without distressing to the point
of disintegration

so it is an hour later and it would seem
that I was unable to stave off this
this disintegration
this dysphorically manic tumult

yet another hour later
i know it is having an effect,
taking the sweet
but i really just don’t want to be right now.
not at all.

146p

there shouldn’t be this much rage
there shouldn’t be this much pain
it should have eased by now i am trying
i am trying everything to be eased.

another hour later
chest tight
shoulders tight
jaws tight
there are two and a half hours to go
before I can go
core tight
i feel frozen, stiff
as if the only parts of my body i can move
my left hand to write, move across the
page, turned forty five degrees to
not ink up my hand

another hour gone
anger, still
no patience, rattled
i need sublimation
i need to be underneath and out
i need to be out and gone
one hour eleven minutes to go.

twenty minutes left.
almost there.
almost there.

1158a 19th january 2021

i can tell my mood by my handwriting. manic, here. i noticied it whike working, needed to take it down.

this lines running altogether
all together
((manic manic)) heart rate elevated
((panic panic)) eyes wide and brow creased
grateful for the mask covering most of my face
it hides the quivering of my mouth
the tightness of my lips pressed against my teeth
i can see the not-curvedness of my letters
the thank you notes i am trying to bury my head in
brain is so scattered so noisy
grateful dead on the speakers but it is jangling
not soothing me at all the way i need.
i shove a chocolate bar in my mouth
a three musketeers
where are my musketeers?
where are my compadres? my friends?

924 am Friday December I don’t know whatever today is

i am so incredibly manic.
my eyes are wide and wider
surely looking like the stereotypical “crazy eyes”
i feel insane, my brain on fire, wide open.
everything all fight and flight and run and scream and panic
cold and hot and fire and ice and death

the only things that I know will help the only things that I know will sate this I cannot have
smoke and sex and sleep
comfort and softness
hard and fast.

so I do what I can
I medicate as much as I dare
I empty this out into here
I prepare to fight.
but already I am losing.

it is 10:18am and i
I can feel less tight
less clanging less
Panicked.
less of a horse caught in a burning barn, less a wildfire
my shoulders lowering
My eyes softening.
I find smiles there, and here, too.

622p 12th december, 2020

So I have begun the mind-bending exercise of wondering how my dead husband would be dealing with life if our roles had been reversed and he was the one who survived me.

I have been caught in a dysphoric mania, ultra-ultra rapid cycling with depression all day,
working a full day with a full staff and a full store and less bandwidth than I can afford.

I am driving and it is night and it is dark and it is foggy and it is misting and the road is fast and usually this scares the shit out of me but tonight it isn’t tonight I just want to get home.

Why can’t I get up.
why can’t I just get up.

It lifts for a little bit, a little while.

then

it is as if I have taken an enormous swallow of pain
Inhaled lungsful of death
A huge blackness fills me, empties me
My eyes grow wide, wider still
tears filling them, pooling, overrunning them
splashing my glasses
running hot down one cheek
then the other

I just have to make it home.
Home.

Thirty-seven minutes of this
around and around and
around.

Home.
Sitting in my car, engine running, music on
anything to drown out the noise in my head but nothing is enough.
smoke. ease the knots enough to feel just how tightly my core is clenched.
my entire body feels as if it is collapsing in on itself, shoulders slumping, spine curving
jaws tight, the only things moving are my eyes and thumbs.

the smoke is taking hold, finally
i can lower my shoulders
remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth
breathe in
and out.
finally.

1205p wtf even is today 2020 (22 july)

i am hoping.

(i am hoping)
jesus gods i am hoping
i am hoping that it is just that you are busy
that there isn’t some other reason
“oops, it looks like his phone has been off/disconnected for awhile.”

disconnected

we have been disconnected
the last thing i know you saw of mine was thursday,
even though i text you every day, almost.
(i know you are busy. i am not complaining.)

six days ago.
disconnected.

it will be five months since we’ve seen each other
no longer am i worried it’s something i’ve done
no more paranoia around that particularly fun attribute of my chemical rollercoaster
no.
you are a doctor.
there is this virus.

i am hoping.