Member-only story
Sometimes My Brain Tries to Kill Me
Extremely long story short; my brain is an asshole.
When I was 16, I lost a mentor to suicide. He was only 19 but seemed like he had the world under control. That was the only day of high school that I ever skipped class. We quickly formed a group, like a herd of bison circling their young in the midst of predators. Perhaps we thought that if there were enough of us, we could preserve the innocence in the middle of the circle. That whole afternoon we just walked around town and talked. I didn’t understand how someone so cheerful and with such promise could just disappear from this world.
My moment of understanding would come just a few short years later when I reached the fateful age of 19 and was coming back from class. I don’t remember what the class was but I remember the cold and unzipping my boots while sitting at the kitchen table in my overpriced university residence apartment. Many things have changed over the years but my penchant for zip-up leather boots has remained. My boots were unzipped but not kicked off and I just sat there. The only coherent thought that made its way through the fog of despair and fatigue was “I get it now”.
Suicidal thoughts have never really been about death for me. Unmedicated, the thoughts become my constant companions and I learned to treat them like a mosquito buzzing by my ear. My train of…
