At 27, I’ve settled into a comfortable coexistence with my suicidality. We’ve made peace, or at least a temporary accord negotiated by therapy and medication. It’s still hard sometimes, but not as hard as you might think. What makes it harder is being unable to talk about it freely: the weightiness of the confession, the impossibility of explaining that it both is and isn’t as serious as it sounds. I don’t always want to be alive. Yes, I mean it. No, you shouldn’t be afraid for me. No, I’m not in danger of killing myself right now. Yes, I really mean it.
How do you explain that?
Pretty much how I feel too. My dad told me the condom ripped and without hesitation I asked why they didn’t just abort me as I would have very much preferred to not exist especially since my parents split pretty much immediately after I was born.
I honestly think my mom wanted pets and confused children with pets. We’d get the verbal love and pats on the head, but never any effort, never anything that involved her taking action for us. At least now my generation is obsessed with dogs and are (correctly) choosing pets over treating people like pets…
Whatever you might think of John Mayer, I really liked his phrasing of “love is a verb.”