I don't do it, I don't skip the drugs because they are a pain, because they are debilitating, fatiguing.  Poisonous.  They are.  But I don't skip the dose deliberately.  Today, all day, I thought I had taken this morning's dose.  I kept remembering that I had intended to, that when I put the water on for coffee I would have grabbed them then, and downed them with a couple gulps of water.  Or, when the coffee was done, I would have poured a mug full, and as I added a little milk to the coffee, I would have taken them then, and washed them down with milk right from the carton.  I kept remembering that I would have taken them, and I thought I had.  All day. 

Tonight around eight I looked; I don't know why.  I don't remember anything lately, maybe that's why I looked.  I looked at the little compartment for Monday morning, and there they were, still.  I skip them without knowing it, but it seems intentional.  The side effects are subtle, headaches, nausea and exhaustion, but nothing unendurable.  I never consciously say, "These make me feel too sick," but something in me says, "Too much!" and encourages my forgetfulness.  I consciously chose to submit to these pills because I had gotten too sick without them.  I know they are deadly.  I know they will kill me slowly.  I guess I wasn't ready to die, so I chose to take the pills.  But now something beneath the surface, some subconscious self-preservational instinct, is now fighting that decision.  It is not ready to die, either. 

Us suicidalists, we seem to want to die—but then we don't.  I mean, I've had my chance a couple times, and I have always turned back from it, with a vengeance.  So I am beginning to think that it is not death I want, but life.  I am beginning to think that my desire for life is, in fact, so desperate, so profound and so severe that it terrifies me; that my screaming need for life roars so loudly, and so unsettles me that I flee from it in terror.  I am beginning to think that the wailing siren of my desire to be alive has always been more than I could bear.  That would perfectly explain why my life has been a persuit of self-destruction, and why that persuit was always carried out in moderation, always careful to never achieve it's end. 

This is no newly found desire to keep on living.  If anything, I am weary of my flight from life, and am beginning to contemplate allowing it to overtake me.  I am wondering what that might be like.  And I don't know what it will look like to you when I finally stop escaping life.  To you it may appear—and for all I know, may actually be—exactly the same as dying.