I don’t want to kill myself. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Tried to write & got too frustrated; wrote a grocery list instead. Harmed myself again, in the shower. My back hurts but I don’t want to take Advil for it, because I want my leg to keep hurting. The selectiveness of my pain is fucking stupid. In the car, after saying that I felt okay about what I had done, I yelled This is fucking stupid. It’s stupid. I’m stupid. I have church tomorrow.

Wednesday 5:44 AM. Morning glory in the cold-dark.. Freeze warning. Cold, dark, scared. Thought about not wearing a seatbelt. Thought what the fuck is wrong with you. Thought about not yielding. Thought about how crashing into another car is wrong. Thought about how dying in a car crash is wrong. Thought & thought & thought. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to wake up in the dark anymore, or in the cold. The stars were low in the sky & I was all by myself. I thought I was going to get here late, but I got here early because I was speeding. My thoughts catch more easily now & thoughts become considerations without meaning to. My stomach hurts & I am by myself & I am on the bus & I don’t want to be here anymore.

I didn’t student teach today. I talked to Ivy on the phone & I wrote for hours, nothing that will be published here. I sent her my writing & she cried.

Sunday; skipping work tomorrow.

(Before that I had thought about buying some when I was on the phone with my friend, but I couldn’t make myself do it. It made me feel guilty.) This week I went to buy a pack of razors because I just needed to feel something, anything. They didn’t have the right kind at the grocery store & I was too tired to drive anywhere else, so I just went home in the dark.

On the phone with my friend at night under the covers, she had read me some writing about self-harm and I confessed to my (in)action immediately; I thought she knew. I have thoughts a lot of the time that someone can just tell that I’ve done something wrong through obsessive/compulsiveness. I couldn’t even say the full sentence. I stumbled through and kept repeating words. I tried twice. I said “never mind” both times. She understood the empty spaces. Then I said I didn’t do anything wrong. And I could hear her crying on the phone & I felt so bad, but I couldn’t cry. I just laid there in the dark. And she asked me not to start with something so “extreme” and asked if I understood why she was crying. I didn’t. She said it’s because she wants me to be safe & she didn’t like telling me to start with something else, that she didn’t want me to do anything at all. We fell asleep on the phone.

I told her on Saturday that I wasn’t going to do anything, that I didn’t need to do things like “that” and she told me how happy she was. I’m planning on getting a tattoo this month of Archangel Michael. I was going to get it on my back, but I decided to get it on my thigh instead. I told her that too. I really meant it when I said it. I was so sincere. And I was so certain.

I took the train into the city on Saturday and walked half an hour in the cold & in the rain to the museum. I was trying to do something to make myself happy. I wandered around the museum without any sense of completion or rightness and I began to feel increasingly worse, or like it wasn’t “working”, until I found a small, dark room with two benches playing a movie. In the movie, there was a scene with pigeons in cages. The room was completely black & the movie was projected onto the far wall, so it looked as though you were viewing the cage through a box. The scene became blurry as one of the birds (tried to) fly in its cage. After seeing this, I knew that I had seen what I needed to. I stopped to look at my favorite painting & I bought some postcards & I left.

I was purposefully underdressed for the weather & I walked to the bus stop in the cold & in the rain & I felt the wind through my shirt & I really felt okay. I really felt okay for a few minutes.

On the phone with the Gull I stopped at the used bookstore & to buy an alarm clock. I went to get something to eat right before she had to leave for Vespers. I was so hungry and ate so little all day so I could have all of my favorite foods. It tasted like nothing to me. It’s hard to express what it’s like to arrange all circumstances for happiness like a bouquet & to still fail. I felt so sad.

I walked in the rain back to the train station & I just wanted to go home. As I stood by the tracks, I noticed that they didn’t have any of those anti-suicide signs that make me chuckle. I thought about how I would kill myself on the train tracks, not planning on it, just running through it in my head, all of the considerations. I used to think about it constantly July & August when I had to take the train to class every day. The train is slow and small, so it would have to be a matter of the right timing, I had thought to myself. You would have to throw yourself in front of it at the right time, because if you had simply stood on the tracks, someone would stop you. As I was thinking this, a woman in a red coat walked down the tracks into view. I looked at her & she didn’t look back at me. She looked like she wanted to kill herself; I could tell because I want to kill myself. I stood still, not sure what to do, because maybe she was just walking down the tracks. I thought about calling out but didn’t. For a moment, I wondered if it was even wrong. I thought that if I were to get hit by a train, then it would be okay, but the idea of her getting hit by a train was horrible to me. She took a drag of a cigarette & I paused to think about what the point in smoking a cigarette would be if you were about to kill yourself. She kept walking & the train approached & she moved as though she was going to get off the tracks but then she stopped. And I jumped and I waved my hands at the conductor. And she laid down on the tracks. And the train stopped and I went to the conductor’s car & said there was a woman on the tracks, she was laying down. I don’t remember what he said to me, but he simultaneously seemed annoyed & as though he was trying to comfort me. He talked to me like I was a child. I think he told me to sit down. And I sat down. And he talked to someone else on the train, and asked if he should move the train forward to scare her, and the other man said no. And she was laying down on wet metal and rocks. She was getting rained on. & she wouldn’t move. They went out to talk to her. I don’t know what they said & I don’t know what they did, but it was only a few minutes. And then the train took me home.

I felt like I was going to cry on the train, but I saw my reflection in the glass & I couldn’t. My friend was done with Vespers & she texted me & told me she cried thanking Saint Michael for my protection. I asked if she thought they sent the woman to the hospital. I could see her typing for a long time, but all she said was that there was no way to know. I don’t know what I expected her to say, but I hated that answer.

I got home & I couldn’t stop thinking & I took a bath & as I stepped into the water, I paused, thought about it, and grabbed the sharpest thing within reach, which was just a pointed piece of plastic. Even as I dragged it into & across my thigh, I still couldn’t stop thinking. I closed my eyes & I tried to just focus on the sensation. It was a few minutes. I don’t know if I felt bad after I did it. I just laid myself down under the covers until the Gull texted & it woke me up. She asked if I wanted to talk before bed & I confessed. And at this point I felt horrible. Like I had done something wrong. I could feel my heart in my chest and I was so scared that she would be mad at me. After she had thanked Saint Michael too. And after I had told her earlier so truly that I wouldn’t do it. I was a liar.

She said she wasn’t mad & I didn’t believe her. I just couldn’t do it. She asked if I wanted to talk on the phone so I could hear her voice. I couldn’t talk because my parents were in the other room, but she said it was okay. And she talked for a while, a letter she said, because I couldn’t talk back. She read Aesop’s fable The Old Hound. I began to cry. I really cried. I tried to muffle it. My sleeve was completely soaked through with snot & tears. She called it “whimpering”.

It’s too hard to write more about it. I felt like a broken person. I feel like a broken person. She asked if I could see myself in the woman on the train tracks & that’s when I began to cry. & I just couldn’t stop.

I can hear the train right now. And I keep checking the news to see if a woman has been run over.

I used to tell myself “God is creative” to comfort myself: “Despair is a development of pride so great that it chooses one's certitude rather than admit God is more creative than we are.” Now I tell myself that things cannot possibly get worse, that I cannot bear it, and as I say this I tell myself “but God is creative.” And my comfort is now just a punishment.

I feel ruined as a person.

A hound, who in the days of his youth and strength had never yielded to any beast of the forest, encountered in his old age a boar in the chase. He seized him boldly by the ear, but could not retain his hold because of the decay of his teeth, so that the boar escaped. His master, quickly coming up, was very much disappointed, and fiercely abused the dog. The Hound looked up and said, “It was not my fault master: my spirit was as good as ever, but I could not help my infirmities. I rather deserve to be praised for what I have been, than to be blamed for what I am.”

Friday

I was too self-loathing to write this week. I am okay today. Life is kind of beautiful today. Maybe not my life, but the world around me. Final exam today. Icy Hot on my back in the bathroom before class. I sped through it. 70%. I walked to a Mexican food mart while waiting for Angeline to finish. Still waiting. It was cold. Brisk. I just wore the clothes I slept in. Out of tamales; greasy breakfast sandwich, but it tastes good. My keyboard is glistening from my fingers. Headphones on. Sunglasses. Image of the crucifixion & of la Virgen de Guadalupe, a small shrine really, with a candle. I asked for change so I could tip. Someone was decorating a little Christmas tree. I saw myself in the security camera footage and felt alright. I’m just a person.

Lonely wet pavement on the phone & the rain through the gutter. (“Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room.”) Suicidal. Selling books & scallionhope sushi while reading. I burned my hands with hot water in the bathroom sink. My face too. Raindrops on my windshield.

You really do bleed more in hot water.

I could not stop crying yesterday. I ask God just to feel something & the moment I do, I need to scrape it out of me; UNBEARABLE. I slept three hours & called my friend in the middle of the night, hiding beneath the covers. (“Dry your eyes / I won't tell your mother / She won't ever discover / The things you kept under the covers.”)

“I’ve been thinking about checking myself into the hospital. Outpatient care.” “Oh I thought you meant-” “I meant that too.” “For how long?”

Talking with Gull the past few days managed to undo some of the knot in my heart, but I have still never felt worse. I managed to cry though, genuinely cry I mean, not just the mechanical, anorgasmic crying that I am so used to. Something in me opened up; I opened something in myself up. Even if the door is open just a crack, it is letting some light in.

My throat hurts today from singing in church & from crying later. I have realized that I see myself as an unlovable, undeserving person. Today Father A_n said in the homily that it wasn’t possible to become “more lovable in the eyes of God.” During the service it was hard to keep from crying.

I took a nap after & when I woke up, it was dark & I was lonely. Incapable of doing my laundry anymore, I went to go buy a couple of hampers to keep my clean clothes in. Pushing the cart I so sincerely wanted to kill myself. I still do.

It’s hard to write. I cried on the way home & almost had to put my hazards on & pull over the car. I cleaned my room, somewhat. I will probably lie down & cry myself to sleep. It’s a new month. I don’t think things will get better.