wow. I'm, kinda, shaking. I don't know what to make of it. It's December 22, and it doesn't seem to matter anymore what year. I've been at this journal for over a year, and like many times before I have set myself here to say something about where I'm at right now, tonight (or this morning—whatever). Christmas is imminent and its stresses are upon me; gifts which I will give late, if at all, and parties I'll avoid. You know the drill. I know you know other people like me.
The words began to precipitate and collect in the base of my skull, as usual, like a dusting of snow. And I began to sift, and to stir at them with an idle intent, and more of the words about who I am today gathered in the pattern of today, unique as a snowflake—only it looked so familiar... Something seemed a little wierd, but I kept on with this happy task, assembling thoughts, selecting ideas, and making words, sentences, and paragraphs out of who I am right now. But what I wrote seemed to be the same as something else, familiar even though I was creating it new.
I was repeating something, and I didn't want to look. December 22, 1999. But I had to.
nothing changes if nothing changes. Once I was alive and then I chose not to be. I made that choice for a reason, and it's probably not at all uncommon. That common reason probably makes only a very few, like me, choose not to be alive. It's nothing special about me or my circumstances which makes me this way. I went a little too close to the edge, let myself slide down just a bit on the slippery mud, and then just a bit more, and so on. I got stuck, before now, a couple times in my life; the first time was utterly terrifying I think—I try to not remember much. With each successive entrapment at the base of that steep slope, stuck in the black mud's suction, with the promise of death so near—hypothermia, drowning, exposure—it has become less and less imperative for me to struggle free and climb back to where I was, where you are. Though I do remember the old fight, the extraordinary exertions on those delicious days of desperation and frightened panic at the spectre of... oh, I don't know—of losing the choice to stay alive, I guess. What scares me now is that that doesn't scare me anymore.
Nothing's changed for over a year and I have hardly noticed, and, but for this sentence, I probably won't ever acknowledge it.
with the promise of death so near," HA! I am such a drama-queen! In truth, the worst that could happen in the 'entrapment' I describe is that my little bootie might come off, and my foot get wet. God help me if I had something really wrong.
The tragedy is all the worse, though, for being trite; I have nothing more wrong than a foot stuck in the mud, and that's enough to make me want to die.
|
|
|
|
updated |