Danger

The walk along the edge is perilous. I'm forced to move onward, forward, but as I place one foot in front of the other, I lose my bearing ever so slightly. I am a danger to myself. If I don't save myself from myself, I will be murdered. One day the balance will shift, wrong will look like right. I can't trust myself but no one knows that. I have betrayed myself and one day, I will take revenge for that. I am afraid of me.

Bewildering

I still smile.
I still laugh.
I still joke.

I also still cry.
I also still hurt.
I also still crash.

Peppered throughout it all, I dream of killing myself.
Repeatedly, continuously, absolutely.
That's the beauty of my psyche.

Incessant

Never leaves, never goes away. Wanna go away. Want to leave.

Want to die. Wanna kill myself. Tired, weary, had enough. Still waiting, can't wait. Can't go, wanna go.

No way, no more, wanna go, go away.

Quotes I cherish from you

You say I am the reason you are here
Have you ever thought that might not be a one way thing?

I'll always be here
So don't you leave me instead

I need you too you know?

And I love you da
And the sickness will not get to you while I'm around
I won't let it, and you won't either

i want to see you every day like before

I love you

Miss you already

How are you

No good days

All days are littered. Blank and dank. They are better when accompanied by tears. Worse when not. Most days are bad. Some days are diseased and decrepit. Particularly today. Example today. No reason necessary. Low and sunken. So tired and punctured.

There is a hole and I can literally put my hands in there and find nothing. My brain is broken and my heart is empty. The rest don't matter.

Addict

Its the only thought I get every hour of every waking moment. Its a reactionary ideation. My feelings fluctuate between nothingness and pain. To treat and escape pain, I threaten it with death. Its become something that defines me. Its my retribution and my revenge. Its the only thing that makes me feel power, and a sense of abject ownership. Its the only thing that I truly still own that hasn't been taken from me.

I want to die. I don't necessarily have the courage to kill myself at the moment but I think I could if given enough time to train for it. The baby steps will one day lead to that leap. Meanwhile, I'm that addict, thinking about it, day in and out, mulling over it, fantasizing. Every day, that fear wears down, looks less fearful, and more peaceful. I want to sleep. I want to die.

Inexplicable

People wonder why you are the way you are. They propose solutions to glaring problems in your life. They think you choose to be so, and wonder why. They tell you to snap outta it, to think happy thoughts, to exercise, to try yoga or maybe religion. Then, sooner or later, they give up. You're the alien they avoid. You cannot be helped.

How can you blame them? You don't even understand it. When you spend most waking moments of your day contemplating your demise, it becomes very hard to attend to worldly problems. There's a larger elephant in the room that everyone sees but deftly avoids. That's why you don't plan or contemplate much about the future. You feel invincible because you think you're future-proof. In actuality, what you have is an exit strategy.

Until the cancer leaves you, you are fundamentally incapable of any cognizant functionality. Problem is sometimes cancer lasts a lifetime, and a lifetime of it is very possibly too much for anyone. For those that tell you to snap outta it, how exactly does one snap outta cancer?

My friend the grocery store

Why am I comforted here? Not the apparel store, the restaurant or the drug store. The produce, the frozen foods, the meats, the condiments, they resonate with me. Why is that? I come here once a day without fail, sometimes twice. I never complete my shopping, so I'd have a reason to return tomorrow to get that one carton of milk or eggs, the one I had deliberately left out. I feel appeased, and soothed. Its not happiness. This feeling, almost like home, of times past, of conjured memories. Its nostalgia, clinging onto wafting, fleeting bliss of bygones.

Triggers

Some people develop depression for no reason at all. They wake up one day and they are sad. There was no trigger, nothing that caused it. Was it a bad dream? Maybe they slept on the wrong side of the bed?

Mine has a story. A start, a circumstance. It has a birth date. It was nurtured and developed, and it matured to its present state.

Which is worse? Are they any different? Do they get different endings?

Living with it

Its a commitment. You cannot outgrow it. You cannot run away from it. It will never leave you. It will be with you forever. It is you.

Accepting it as a perpetual hitchhiker helps you to accommodate its presence. Depression will be with me forever so it helps to understand it. Even if it takes my life, at least I won't waste any more energy in the meantime trying to outrun my shadow.

Numbed

The fear, the dread, the vapid constant barrage of anguish envelopes you and swallows you. Soon the delirium turns you numb, nullifies your defenses, and makes you just give up.

You don't welcome it but you expect it and recognize the inevitability. Always vulnerable. All efforts futile. You contemplate the end because you no longer have any fight left.

This is depression.

Stagnant

You'd think something would change. Maybe you have a chance, maybe there is a way. Perhaps you'd catch a break, but no. The dread remains, just as it was the first day. It didn't return, it just never left. Still as powerful, still as eviscerating. Its here to stay. To stay until you eradicate it of its host. Without a host, it would be naught. You might not have had control over its birth, but you can surely control its departure.

A notch down

Lots of people tend to be self righteous without knowing it. I happen to know I have failed at meeting my own standards for being a good person. I have also failed at meeting the standards of everyone for being successful at life. Lots more will be dismayed at me in due time. Its inevitable.

I have turned into my worse enemy, my nemesis. I poison myself with a thick putrid stench of a ghost, robbing me of clarity, tripping me when it counts, haunting me with hopelessness.

I am that guy, that uncle, that friend, that son, that brother, that father, that one, the cautionary tale. The whispers flow from their lips and tell of how not to be, not to fall, not to become, like me. Not to contract that, whatever that is. Plainly a pariah.

Momentarily

Spending what's perhaps final moments with family is bittersweet. Everyone around you has been carefully denied the esoteric fracture that has been brewing all these years. You keep a straight face and try not to let your prep give anything away. If they suspect, they keep it to themselves, wary of salting old wounds or creating new ones. Can you blame them?

This familiarity is fleeting and will end soon. All contempt is withheld. In doing so, you realize there is love there. However, the time is coming and its constant. Without prejudice and irreversible.

Trauma

Its traumatic to contemplate death, especially your own. We respond with much angst, fear and sorrow when faced with imminent death. Similarly, we mourn and express empathy fueled by these same emotions. However, trauma sufferers all have one thing in common - they are alive.

Death can be frightening to think about but its not scary to die. All there is to dying is loss of consciousness. In fact, its one of the most relaxing and least frightening things to succumb to. With death ends pain, ends trauma, ends fear, ends suffering.

Understanding the above means we should strive to never think about our own death because that only breeds fear and trauma. Instead, we should be comforted by the fact that death ends those emotions.

Before you know it, you're gone. Fact is, you won't know it.

Junction

Our lives have arrived at a finality. Words have given birth to actions, and those have all but secured our eventual disintegration. So much or perhaps too little was said, wrongful rights, willful wrongs. Fear and isolation remains, ever steadfast and mindful at every corner. The pact is no more, we capitulate to ourselves. We are only our own.

Crosshairs

I've got nothing to lose. I'll be walking into the line of fire soon. The expiration date on my inconvenient existence will then be challenged. In a way its comforting to know an endpoint is in the near horizon and relief is forthcoming.

One at a time.

I don't look farther than the nearest junction because that in itself is treacherous enough. If and when I pass that point, then I look to the next one. It will stop soon enough, and then I stop too.

God?

You condescending, egotistical prick.

Up yours, motherfucker.

Faller

I'm the odd one who stumbles, who fails, who doesn't make it.

I am the faller.

Timely

One year more to live through or one more year to live.