Stress

(Mental Health, Substance Abuse, Suicide)

I can’t take the stress anymore. 

I bring my hand to my mouth and swallow my medication in one gulp while slouching into my couch.

I’m told that I work hard. That I plan smart and don’t spend my money on needless things. I’m told that I’m a caring person, a creative person, but I never feel like that's the truth. If I were a hard worker, a smart planner then how could I have fallen from the light into such a dreary emptiness?

I feel like one of those bathtub spiders slipping down the smooth inside of the silver pipes. Clinging onto the sides for dear life and harboring a hope that’s too easily made in vain. The spider climbs and climbs with every struggling breath and every last effort to be met with another splash of water. They find themselves slipping again into darkness and if they don’t catch themselves…

Well, eventually they drown.

I used to have it all. I had the money, I had friends, I had support from everyone. I had dreams.

Now it feels like I have nothing.

So far I have been able to catch myself every time I find my feet being kicked out from under me. My stability lost but grounded enough to keep from falling to the end. I’ve been grasping the smooth walls of the drain with all the strength left in me, but the strength of eight legs just isn’t enough to fight against the pounding pressure of the water pouring over me.

Granted, I don’t catch myself by myself. I will say that I’ve received help in many ways by many people. Yet, all the help does is rip me up inside. It leaves my dignity shredded and bare like a tree in winter where all the bark has already been eaten by the animals. I hate that I am offered help, but I hate it even more that I can’t refuse it.

Each time I am given assistance, I feel that it is being taken in under the influence of a lying hope. As soon as I think everything is fully healed, I get another stab to my abdomen and my life blood spills. I am forced to accept the help or surrender the purpose to all the help received thus far.

I know the feeling of humiliation that comes with not being able to do it on my own. I can’t do it. I’m not good enough to mend the shortcomings. Every time I believe I’ve finally reached safety my naivete is proven with another crash that was out of my control. I’m failing.

I cannot tell you how many times I have begun to feel the warm light above the drain as I finally grasp the edges of the top just to feel another sting of the cold water hit me back into the darkness of the drain. I cannot tell you, because I have lost my sense of time. I don’t know if time is moving faster or slower. I can’t handle the mysterious future like I once could.

Where is the proof that things actually will become ‘okay’? 

I know that I’m not drowned yet.

My sight is blurry from the view of the light that I almost saw. That I almost relished in.

I’m about to drown.

Just, not yet.

I’ve started to notice the look of envy I’ve been giving to my cat lately.

Not a damn care in the world, huh?

Well what if I decide not to feed you tomorrow? What if I don’t try to get you back inside every time you escape? What if I sold you?

…you still wouldn’t have a damn care in the world. Would you?

You can’t feel the pressure of existence. The only pressure you feel is when I stroke my shaking hand across your fat lazy body.

I’m so sick of it all.

But I can’t part myself from any of it.

But what if I could?

The thought of my capabilities to control my own outcome have crossed my mind many times within my periods of struggle. I’ve fantasized and even romanticized the idea of a next life.

I’ve conducted inquiries of many religions throughout my earlier days. Its led me to believe in unique possibilities for the there after. 

Happy possibilities. 

Promising possibilities.

The sort of reviving warmth after a damning cold.

Relishing such thought of possibilities gives one an uncanny delightfulness.

It’s like when you buy a lottery ticket and before scratching to reveal the truth of loss, you start thinking about what you could do if you won instead. Thoughts swirl in your mind of the things you want because you believe they would make you happy. All the good you could do for others or simply yourself. And as if hypnotized by a drug made for the imagination you actually become happy.

So what do I think would happen if I let go of it all and fallinto my drowning demise at the bottom of the pipes?

I’ve been a kind person and I’ve always put in the extra mile to show a better side to others. So, if the Christianshave the truth, then I might find my salvation after the darkness.

If reincarnation is the true answer then I wonder what my cat was in his first life? What would I be in the next? Even as a blade of grass being blown by a breeze or eaten by a cow I would be void of such heavy stress.

If it’s the Southern Baptists that hold the correct belief then…

Nah, I don’t think they are correct in their truth.

But also what if, what if, my own theories hold weight in truth?

What if by some grace of God, once our bodies are buried our souls are whisked away beyond the universe our world knows? Then what if we are placed within a new world to be born anew and to have a life of entirely new origins?

I could become a noble’s child and must carry the burden of whom to choose between my many suitors whobeg for my hand and what will I wear to the balls I would be invited too.

I could be born destined to become an assassin like my parent before me. Learning the art of hiding away in the shadow of the night.

Maybe I would be born but a simple peasant in a corrupt land. But as a peasant amongst many peasants we would become family through blood and through friendship. We would cry together, starve together, work together, and laugh for days.

I pull myself back from my daydreams and have come to find that my stress has slipped away.

I look over to my cat. He seems a lot cuter now. He flips his body over asking for me to pet his belly next, meowing and purring at me. It’s gentle and peaceful.

I pause in thought.

What if this is what comes next?

Peace.

Eternal, peace.

A transparent tear strokes my face.

The overdose has started to take effect.

My body sinks into the cushions. Heaviness grasps hold of my earthly form.

My gaze shifts to the light that sweeps in from the window resting on the couch. That light, so full of promise.

My cat purrs in the quiet of the room lifting the last of my doubting soul.

My eyes close.

This life is finished.

And there is nothing.