The Things You're Not Supposed to Say

Every now and then I have a recurring thought.  I never record it though, not publicly because there are things that as a normal member of society, that you're not supposed to say.  

You pretend that the thought isn't real, but often, at times when you're alone it resurfaces.  Pops up.  Shows out.  And you wrestle with it for a few days, and then you're back to normality, and it retreats into the subtle darkness of your conscious and you convince yourself to forget, convince yourself you were having a crazy thought, crazy moment, and you're back now.  You're ok now.

Until of course, it comes back again.  

So you do some reading on it.  You talk to a few people about it.  Instead of listening, genuinely listening, they fob you're "special thought" as overdramatic.  A cry for attention.  An unnecessary luxury.  And for a while they may even stop speaking to you, maybe in the ridiculous hope that by ignoring you they can ignore your "special thought"into oblivion.

But your "special thought" grows.  It mutates and spreads and it has its own voice and on special nights, it grows and it speaks.

And my "special thought", with it's special voice says to me,

Why are you still alive.  Isn't it time to go yet.

My special thought is suicide personified.  It first came into being when I was eleven, and it has faded and existed since then.  After the boy I knew from university committed suicide, I think about him at least every three days.  I can't fully comprehend that he's gone.  I can't fully comprehend that he did it.  And I wonder if he had a "special thought" or whether he'd just had enough.  Worse still I see several young men around the city who look like him.  I almost say his name, and then I remember and then that "special thought" slivers back into focus.  

You know, I've had enough.  And not really of life...But of this life.  If there was a form that I could tick or cross boxes on...I would say that this is enough.  And in the "are you ready to leave" box there would be a huge tick.  

Two nights ago, I lay in bed with a male friend.  It was a house party and it was 8am.  He was asleep but I couldn't.  (Sigh.  I hate confessions.  Even to a blog.)  I came to the realisation that I really cared/liked/wanted him but would never ever be with him.  I also came to the understanding that I would never be happy.  That it wasn't going to happen.  That I'd been too damaged by life, this life, to ever really come back around.  

And I just wished that I had the courage to end it.  (ugly wrong confession I know.)  And that "special thought", returned, ever so surreptitious and said

why don't you.

And I lay breathing, and for an instant considered not existing.  There was a literal shattering of normality and finally, I was able to fall asleep.  I had confronted the grotesque idea of the removal of my own existence.  And the "special thought" was finally quiet.  

When I woke up, he hugged me, and the voice was gone.  In the taxi home with my friend, we talked, girl conversation, and hangover talk.  And the voice was mute, like some soiled secret, like dirty clothes under the bed.  Waiting to be uncovered another arbitrary night that I decide to trawl through the dark corners of my own conscious.