Week 2 Day 3

Killing myself isn’t something I think of regularly. I’ve thought about it before. We all have. I hope we all have. Not to say I hope you’ve experienced the kind of soul-crushing misery I have.

Actually, I take that back. Why should I be the only one?

 

Be that as it may, if you have ever thought of killing yourself like I have, you also know the thought can creep in even when nothing is actually wrong.

 

In those circumstances, it’s more of a logistics proposition so I know what to do when my quality of life deteriorates to a point that suicide is a viable plan B. I know guns are out because I saw the Oprah episode where that woman got shot in the face by her ex-boyfriend and lived and she was all deformed and Oprah made her take off the mask she uses to hold her nose and dignity in place. I know that hanging myself can take a very long time if my neck doesn’t snap. I drive down the street and think to myself, “I could just turn the wheel…” As someone who has been in plenty of car accidents, I can tell you death is a departure from the norm, usually I just end up with a headache for five days and higher insurance premiums.

 

If you’re like me, you know the best way to kill yourself is a drug overdose. But enough about you and what you know, this is about me.

 

The eighties were overrun with public service announcements about drug addiction. Like the one with the kid on his headphones and his dad barges in with a cigar box full of weed and it ends with the kid screaming , “You alright! I learned it from watching you.” Or the one where a blurry girl is dancing in slow motion and the voice over says “I want to be a ballerina when I grow up,” but then the camera focuses and the girl is really some nodding out junkie falling out of frame. And then another voice says, “No one ever says ‘I want to be a junkie when I grow up.’” I beg to differ. Everyone gets what they want.

 

In the midst of my drug problem I made a list of things I wanted to do before I killed myself. It included things like swimming with dolphins, running a marathon, getting a job, and other accomplishments that were so far away from that moment, they could only happen on a list. But the last item on the list was “Find a reason to stay alive.” I moved it up to the top. Number 1A.

 

Six small words I’ve used many times, but never exclusively in that order.

 

When I moved last year, I found that list. I read it and checked off the things I had done. I have a job. I have a car. I have an apartment. I swam with dolphins. I ran a marathon. Well, half a marathon, but for sentiment, we’ll just say I finished the whole thing.

 

There are also a lot of things on that list I haven’t done. I haven’t married a fireman. I have no kids. I’ve never been to Europe. I’ve never held a tiger cub.

 

And I never found a reason to live. It was not for a lack of trying, but reasons to live aren’t exactly between the couch cushions or in my other pants. I failed to realize that checking off item 1A would render the rest of the list useless. If there was no risk of killing myself in an accidental overdose, there was nothing to accomplish before then. I could just live with a list of things I’d never do.

Instead, I just stopped looking and started checking off the other items on my list.

 

I decided to keep the list and packed it with some other papers. and went out on my balcony, thinking back to who I was when I wrote that list. It seemed like three people ago. I took a deep breath, looked down into the alley below and thought to myself, If I land on my head, my neck would just snap. Unless I landed wrong and just became paralyzed. That would suck.

 

B