I honestly forget not everyone thinks of killing themselves. For me, suicidal thoughts are as frequent- but not as consistent - as menstruation. Maybe if it were, I'd have a better grip on it.
I forget whether it was during high school or college, but at some point, my cousin filled the gap in my hip hop knowledge with Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die. She told me her favorite song was Everyday Struggle which starts with the chorus "I don't wanna live no more/sometimes I hear death knockin at my front door/I'm leaving everyday like a hustle, another drug to juggle/another day, another struggle." Beside the pusherman aspect, I related to the song as well, and it quickly became my favorite.
Everyday is truly a struggle. Some more so than others. Like knowing you should get out of bed and go to work but recognizing that even if you do you'll be useless or a danger to yourself because you might have to handle a piece of machinery and have a quick second of weakness. It only takes a second to die, you think, you can't stop yourself if you just do it fast before --.
So you call out of work and lie in bed on your phone until you get enough strength to watch self-aware cartoon characters.
But like I said, some days are easier. Those lightly days you just quit in the middle of a game with your close friends because you figure this is pointless, I'd rather do something productive like sulk in my room until I can be around people again.
I can't say I understood what I was doing until I watched FX's Legion. Without giving too much away, the main character is one of the strongest mutants ever but is convinced he is mentally ill. Whether he is or not is still to be determined, but it is discovered that he actually has a "parasite" burrowed into his psyche that has been trying to take over. Occasionally it tries to get the main character to kill himself. That's more or less what depression/suicide feel like for me.
So, let's give my parasite a name. This is actually a new exercise I'm trying out live [recorded on delay] with you all, my dear friends (and associates). Let's see, I'm gay and it's trying to screw me out of existence, so it definitely needs a male name. Eustace. Yeah, that works; I don't personally know any Eustaces.
One of Eustace's favorite pastimes is making me lose friends. He first did this the summer/fall of my college senior year. He told my high school best friend that we didn't need his moppy IMs/texts because we had other gay guys to talk to, and he exposed another close friend as a cheater knowing it would forever drive us apart. He was successful in both endeavors. Although I had other friends, they were - at the time - the two I talked the most openly with. And with my mother already shut out, also his doing, I was alone with my thoughts the way he wanted. Because Eustace is my thoughts, at least an extension of them. It's easier for him to direct me with no one else to sway me. And if everyone's upset or doesn't care about me, it's easier for him to tell me to fall down a flight of stairs or stab myself with a pair of scissors I'm using to design a prop for a karaoke performance.
I realize how alarming the last paragraph is. Don't worry, I've been admitted to a hospital before I could inflict damage upon myself (see: blog post).
I'm impressed that I'm this self aware of the hold Eustace has on me with having any professional help. I'm glad I've developed strategies to keep me alive. I'm appreciative to the friends I have around me, especially the ones I've talked to about this. Obviously he still takes hold of me. He almost kept me from blogging today. But if I sit still and breathe long enough, I can usually get through the blockades he sets up.
Thank you to all of you reading this now. I think giving him a name will help me scare him away. I guess I have a real personality to add to all the fake ones I made up as a high schooler.
Word.
