Ninety Days
Thu, 08 May 2008.
I wanted to wear black. That’s about as much as I can remember. I wanted the immediate space around me to be a thick, black smog. A magnetic cloud that repelled you at a distance and sucked you in if you got too close. In class, I stayed quiet as death and kept my head down.
It wasn’t quite a double life. It was more like doing chores before my dessert. I studied dutifully and got my straight A’s and then I went back to being dark. The word ’suicide’ became a piece of gum in my head; a constant smacking, slurping and chewing but an idea so old that all meaning and flavour were gone. I was never serious about it but it remained a central theme to my thoughts. How would my family react? How would my school react? How would that girl react? Who would attend my funeral? Would I even get one?
I doubt I could have ever qualify as properly suicidal and it may be peanuts compared to you but it felt like something to me. The aftermath, the chaos, the poetry of disappearing attracted me like it continues to attract vast crowds of teenagers and misfits. Maybe I was angry at world, maybe I was crying for help or maybe all I wanted was fifteen minutes. But the act itself made me squeamish. I knew deep down that I’d never jump, never cut, never step out of line. My acts of rebellion were frustratingly tepid.
Still, the lesson stays with me. Should I ever think about departing this world, a new voice is there. A voice that makes the decision so obvious, it’s like asking if the pope shits in the woods.
Of course I want to live today. I’m not done.
I read somewhere that suicide is really a phase people go through. I think it’s dangerous to say it’s “just” a phase but I’d like to believe it exists in a well-bounded period of time. They say it lasts about ninety days; I didn’t count. It’s funny to think that one day a person wakes up after three months of resenting the life they were given and they decide to live for days, weeks and decades. How do you change your mind about something like that? Do they worry it will just happen again? Does the universe do them a kindness and let them forget the whole thing?
Does ninety days accurately reflect your experience?
Nope; I’d definitely say 3 years more accurately reflects my experience.
I’m glad I always chickened out.
yeah….2 years for me.
so many people have stories like that though….which is sort of ironic, because when you are going through it, it seems like no one else could possibly understand what you are feeling.
but looking back, i don’t ever think i had serious plans to go through with it. it was more the product of being completely fed up with life and how shitty (i thought) it was.