july 22, 2025
i feel like i have an emotional connection to people who commit suicide. for the obvious reasons: i’ve been suicidal for about half of my life at this point, i have deep-rooted and complex trauma, i deal with mental illness/disability, etc. but i just feel like i have a part of my heart dedicated and intrigued to a person who is so downtrodden and unable to cope with life that they plan such an event. and it is an event. the preparation: how you’re gonna do it, when, where your final resting place will be, what you will leave behind, what you’re gonna say to the people who will inevitably find you, along with your loved ones, if you’ll even say anything. even if it’s sporadic, it’s a decision you make in stages. some will hesitate, maybe spend that extra second wondering if it’s all a mistake. scanning your brain for that one little glimmer of hope you can cling onto to keep going. but these people don’t find one - i imagine some of them hope that glimmer will be waiting for them in the afterlife.
it’s hard to see footage or photos of someone and knowing that they were at one point preparing to take their last breath. you wonder what the last thing they saw was, what they were thinking about. were they calm, knowing that they’d soon be free of suffering? or were they scared, just trying to get over the hump of anxiety and get it over with? did they cry? did they have a last meal, last song?
it hurts. you don’t want to imagine a person in that state. but you know that at one point, that could’ve been you, telling yourself to just do it and it’ll all be over. 'once this song ends, you’re gonna do it...'
june 21, 2025
i feel her watching over me. when you look up at the sky and see a scattering of clouds - different shapes, sizes, colours. and then you see that one cloud that catches your eye; maybe it's the way the sun shines behind it, the near-perfect shape of it, or you feel some sort of calling towards it that makes you pay that extra second of attention. whenever i look up at the sky, i feel it there. a beam of light seeing through the cottony spots of white, almost religious in nature, the way it appears in front of me. a divine intervention. it's her.
may 25, 2025
'prepare to meet thy god'. i’m sleeping in my grandmother’s room tonight and i find it incredibly unsettling. her stuff is all sitting here as if she vanished out of thin air - clothes in the laundry basket, notes written hastily on the cover of the phonebook, glasses waiting patiently on the nightstand to be worn. there are crosses of all forms hung up on the walls and hand sanitizer bottles full of holy water. most unnerving, though, is the mirror opposite of me, returning my reflection. the glass is warped, rippling and contorting my features like i’m some sort of cryptid. it makes me want to shed my skin, be cleansed of something. i feel like the devil is lapping at my flesh, like a dark force is lurking behind my back.
i feel like i may be brushing against the tattered robe of the grim reaper. we meet for the first time.
may 13, 2025
i skipped a concert to come to the lake and cry.
i sobbed and rubbed my snot and tears into the sleeves of my sweater. i felt like a lost child, aimlessly plunking each step into the ground as my blurry eyes frantically try to make sense of the streaks of green and brown around me. i sat down by a big rotting tree and let myself feel (unfortunately).
in between painful gasps, wiping my nose, and spilling saline tears all over myself, my eyes lock onto the man-made lake. ebbing and flowing and pushing itself around. silvery and gleaming, like liquid metal. creating white caps at the corners of its abstract lines, jumping up and disappearing.
i wanted to jump in - tear a hole into the billowing fabric. i wanted it to swaddle me, lap at my skin and envelop it in its shocking grasp. i wanted it to be unforgiving, pulling me closer and deeper down into its center.
i wanted it to keep me there
i wanted to drown
april 19, 2025
do i know them anymore?
because they don't know me.
they know a me that existed long ago - a chunk of me, unrealized and partially-formed, searching tirelessly for its missing pieces.
knowing me now, you'll see that i found most of them. i searched, i grabbed, and i rearranged. i glued them into place and formed a body that i can confidently label as 'me'.
but if you look closely, you'll find a leftover gaping void where a piece should be. rough, greedy hands dug in their nails and ripped it out, leaving tattered webs of glue in its socket.
i stare into nothingness and it glares back forcefully at me. day and night, it pokes and prods and paws at my insides. it tears at me and tires itself out, failing to melt the glue that seeps through the edges of my gathered pieces.
nevertheless, the clock keeps ticking, the world keeps spinning, and the hungry void forever cries out for mercy.
will it ever be satisfied?