And so…

Tags

depression, life, live, suicide

I am stupid.

I’ve got so much to live for. There are quite a few things in my life that many others envy – not in the least my past. I have two gorgeous children, an even more beautiful wife, a safe place to live and enough to eat every month. Who in his right mind would want to kill himself?

I am stupid.

I am not right in my head. Why would I possibly hang my dirty laundry out for everybody to read? I’m going to regret this, probably. And that adds one more drop to the buckets of burden my mind keeps telling me I’m carrying. Because that’s exactly it: my mind plays a fucked up trick in making me believe it’s all burden and no joy.
I have not experienced any form of exhilaration outside my bedroom for so long, that there is nothing anymore that gets me excited before it happens. Perhaps I should use some substance to get me going again.

I am stupid.

I am dumb enough not to have the insurance to go see a shrink; neither the mind-molding, nor the drug peddling version. Every month again I prefer to feed and clothe my kids and make it possible for them to have a good time during holidays. That has – for me at least – the obvious preference. But on the good days, where I don’t look at every train as a possible out, or check every rope to see if it would be strong enough, I realise it is a dumb idea to not go and see a shrink: what good am I to them if I can’t hold my own shit together?
But thankfully there’s Facebook. First I received the expected responses to last week’s post from unexpected corners. There was a friend, W, who very to the point read between the lines where some of the issues lie, and who invited me for a cup of tea – some time. But there are also others who advise me not to blog about this; I wonder why. Is it because of Buddy Kane’s motto: ‘one must always portray an image of success’, and they advise me to do so too? Or are there other reasons. Are they afraid I will alienate myself – from them?
Whatever it is, this blog is here to stay; better get used to it. I know I’m fucked up to the core, and it’s a risk writing this blog.

I am stupid.

For continuing this blog. But also for having tried substance: alcohol. I downed a bottle of liquor in a week, and I’d be doing a bottle a day by now if I hadn’t rigorously stopped myself. It was just too good to be healthy. It is true what they say – the down after alcohol is deeper than the high with alcohol. And I have so much to live for, and so many depending on me, it is unfair to go that way and tell everybody to go fuck themselves.
This is the reason I gave J when I declined his offer to visit him with a bottle of booze and talk it over, last week. And I didn’t respond when he said it was meant metaphorically – a good talk, to put my misery in perspective. Let me tell you, down here, there are shades of black, and hundreds of shades of grey (it’s bullshit that there are only fifty), but there’s only one perspective: me. Nobody else’s misery, nor your own possible pleasures matter when you’ve been as far down the well as I have. I feel like the snail climbing out of the well – during the day I climb up two meters, but at night I slide back down. Some nights I slide only a few feet, but there are moments where I am thrown back down all the way to the bottom. A brain with a short circuit has a habit of doing that.

I am stupid.

And yet…

Tags

depression, life, live, suicide, write

I am a coward.

Some people say that it’s a kind of cowardice to commit suicide. You’re unable to face your problems, so you end it. Coward. I know better. Ending a life is crazy – ending your own life takes crazy courage.

I am a coward.

I can’t do it. And by now, I know for sure that I won’t. But – pun intended – it’s killing me that I can’t. Over the past couple of years, quite a few times I’ve really wanted to just get it over with. Many times apparently unloved, underappreciated, and overworked, and to top it all off quite obviously a nuisance to all the people I care about, I’ve not only once thought: ‘Fuck it – they’d be better off without me.’
I’ve never even made it to the edge of the bridge though. I travel by train on a daily basis, and while many a morning I think of stepping off the platform in front of the train instead of into the train, I never will do it. I simply can’t.

I am a coward.

A little background is in place here, but I won’t give you too many details. It’s not fair on the people around me for starters. But this diary is also merely a reflection of my darkest musings. It may very well be far removed from the objective truth – it is surely very far removed from the subjective truth as seen by the people around me. I – like most – don’t see myself as an asshole, yet it is very possible that I am. It is bordering on certainty that these suicidal wishes are my own fault.
But I’m deviating from the background. So in short:
I have a few people around me in my life. There’s my wife A, me B (I would’ve put myself first, but Ben happens to not start with A), there are my two children C and D who love me dearly. C is the eldest, there’s five years and a week between them. The youngest is – at the start of this diary – too young to make any sense when speaking. Then there’s my dog – Dog – and cat – Cat who live with us. A circle wider are my parents F and M – F being my mom, M my dad, based on their gender not their names. They live next door. A little further away lives my brother J, with his wife H and two children. I do have a sister too, but for reasons I won’t elaborate here, I doubt she will feature in this diary. Then I have two close friends in my country – R and T – and a good friend whom I don’t see often enough to become close friends with, but I feel I could if given the chance J. Rounding up the friendships, there are three more people whom I consider close friends, but they live ten thousand kilometers away (give or take 7%) whom I became close to in a previous life – in between migratory movements. If they ever feature in this diary, I will give them a character then. And of course there are people at work, at my university (I study part time), and my in-laws, but also they live a long way away.
Looking at my inner circle, my first life, I have everything to live for. Right? And yet…

I am a coward.

I am a fucking coward with a death wish. But I can’t do it – and I don’t want someone else to come and do it to me – just because I won’t do it first and foremost to C and D, and secondly I won’t do it to A. But recently F has made it really hard not to do it, for she’s come to us – me and A – on quite a number of occasions to tell us that how we treat the children is wrong. We are bad parents. We have to do things differently, or else… We will probably ruin our children for life.
We quite obviously disagree; our way of parenting is different from hers; look at what fucked up boy she raised. I will try not to do that to my children, but of course I will fuck them up just like most parents do. All parents make mistakes, and do things according to their own insights. I for one have fairly solid reasons for doing things different – less harmonious (but most definitely not violent!) than F. But there’s no stopping the stream of ‘as-advice-wrapped-insults’. Despite this severe parental pressure…

I am a coward.

I know all of this is rather vague. For now I intend to keep it that way. I plan to post in this diary almost every Sunday. For two reasons – first, like it says on my Dutch language writer’s site: for your entertainment, and for my own. And secondly, because writing helps me to calm down. There’s a fat chance that keeping this diary will result in more peace between M, F and me. And perhaps also between M, F and A. 

While writing this blog, the blog was called “diary of a suicide”.