I tried to kill myself a week ago today.
Truthfully, I tried to kill myself four times, all of them in my apartment, once with a pocketknife, once with a steak knife, and twice with a razor blade. It wasn’t a particularly fun game of Clue.
I wish I could tell you why I tried to commit suicide, but I don’t believe that there is any definitive answer to that question. In my experience, there aren’t any solid reasons for why these things happen; instead, there are triggers, like the spark that ignites a mine full of methane. There’s no reason behind it, no force of will pushing the reaction to occur. It just happens. Running up against life’s adversities always creates some friction, and sometimes, when the conditions are arranged just so, that friction is enough to set the whole world ablaze.
Unfortunately for both my psyche and our metaphor, there is no straightforward way to drain a psychological illness from somebody’s head, as one would ventilate methane from a mineshaft. Chronic mental disorders can be detected, worked around, and even alleviated, but they are rarely done away with altogether. And so, those of us who have them try to coexist, living with the knowledge that we are, in a terrifying sense, flammable.
Last week, somebody very dear to me lit a match.
I got my first hate mail at the age of thirteen.
I had been quoted in the school newspaper as the token atheist. In response, some anonymous gentleperson took the time out of their day to inform me that I was going to burn in fiery and eternal damnation.
I printed the email out and, upon returning home, gleefully showed it to my parents, reasoning that I must be doing something right if I was pissing off the crazies.
My mother still thinks there’s something wrong with me. I’m okay with that.
