Loss

Today B. called while I was working and asked if he could come over. I said, Sure. He came over and we hung out. It was very normal. Later, Chris came home, and we ate and we watched TV on my computer, and then B. had to leave. Before he left he mentioned his friend, someone I've only spent time with on a handful of occasions, but who has always seemed like a nice person. I had known that her youngest sister had died last week, but I didn't know how -- B. had only said that it was unexpected, and very sudden. For whatever reason, I asked him tonight how she had passed. He said that she had taken her own life. I asked him how old she was. Had been. She was 16.

I don't know why, but I didn't start crying about it until after he left. I wept for a long, long time. I wasn't even thinking of myself. I was just so sad -- for her family of course, who will never be okay again, but I was saddest for the girl who had committed suicide, a girl I don't even know. While I was crying, I said to Chris, I feel so sad for her because it hurts, but the hurt of actually acting, the hurt that makes you do it – I felt so bad for the fact that someone I don't know had to feel that. And then I said, it could happen to me, it's so easy to be at the point where you don't care, it doesn't matter who loves you, it doesn't matter that you're going to hurt everyone who loves you, it doesn't matter that you're going to ruin their lives, you just don't want to do it anymore. And I was scared not because I'm scared of dying, necessarily, but I'm scared of hurting. I'm scared of pain that must be the worst pain, worse than anything I've ever felt, worse than anything that landed me in hospitals or made me hurt my body, etc. Again and again I kept thinking about [name redacted]. It's not fair. She is never going to grow up. She is going to be 16 forever – and 16 is when I first started seeing a psychiatrist, because I couldn't keep going on the way I was.

I got out all the pills, all the pills that I have to take at night; it's almost 15 or 20. I held them in my hand and I said to Chris, "These are what are supposed to keep me safe." And I swallowed them in two gulps.