Stargazer

When I look up at the sky, I become vulnerable.

I seem to not be able to feel my feet on the ground and instead, I feel stuck in my thoughts. The thought of dying never scared me, the thought of living did. Many people at the support group told me that was bad, that I should be grateful at the fact of being to open my eyes once more or being able to get out of bed.

They think I should be grateful for so many things, but I think they should be more understanding that there is no point in feeling so.

They asked me when I feel this way, what triggers me to have a mindset like that. I told them that it was every night, in my backyard, when I looked up to the sky and I saw the stars just like now. There are thousands of stars as there are thousands of deaths, what if one death equaled to one more blazing light added to the darkness. Would it be so bad to end life and just be able to see it from above?

They say I have not had the full experience of living. Which I cannot deny.

But they do not wake up every morning to the realization that wherein their dreams they could run, jump, or just even breathe, they now, are forced to having a cannula.

They asked me what I exactly feel when looking at the stars.

It is weird to say it feels celestial, like if in between that feeling you could find some sort of metaphor life and death. I can see myself enjoying it. I hate we try to give the feeling a meaning like we do with everything else.

This morning when I was in Literature, I remember the teacher called my name and told me to explain to her what was the meaning of that poem, what did I catch from it. It was a poem from Carol Ann Duffy named Mrs. Darwin written the following way:

7 April 1852

Went to the Zoo.

I said to Him-

Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

I was honest with her, I told her that there was nothing to it that I could see, that sounded like a sentence I could make when I was younger. She was not happy with my answer.

She told me that this was a poem from a well-known poet, she told me her name and I did not know it. She told me that there was a meaning to that poem. I told her I don’t care to see the meaning in something like that, I believe that we shouldn’t be finding some deep meaning in things that don’t have it, nor in things that will never be for certain what they mean.

Like the stars.

She decided that I should listen to a more complex poem from the same poet to see if I could find something in it. I did not want to, but she insisted. She recited from her notes Mean Time:

The clocks slid back an hour

And stole light from my life

As I walked through the wrong part of town

Mourning our love-

I interrupted her during her moment of… expression. I did not understand it, I did not want to understand it. To me, it was finding words that happen to rhyme and just monologuing about it back and forth. I can see how she fumed anger, she reacted as if I ran over her husband by accident and when I realized that I enjoyed the feeling so I just put my car in reverse and when over him, again, again, and again. In front of her, of course.

She left me an assignment; write about a feeling I constantly go through. I have nothing written so far; it is for tomorrow by the way. She thought it was best I was under pressure than giving me some time.

That is why I am lying in the grass, I am finding some way to describe this feeling, but I am an apathetic person. But I am going to let you in on what I am writing:

I am going to tell you about the stars. The flickers of light in the ongoing, never-ending darkness of the night sky. I look at them every night.

I am not counting them, nor studying them. I do more than just stargaze, I feel them.

I feel the wonder, the contemplation of them. Some astrophile who feels like she has a connection to deep space. When I look at it, I feel as if I see myself. Like another celestial body, I find inner peace. I see my insignificance, through the realization of my size compared to the galaxy, the universe.

In short words, the stars call my name…

You see, I can tell you many things, many feelings, many… emotions. But it has little to no end. But I hope that with just a few words I wrote down in a piece of paper people will understand why I want to die.

My mom sometimes does not want me to come out to the yard to see the stars because she fears that that is what makes me think this way. That is how far her paranoia has got to her head. I tell her they are just stars; they do not whisper in my ear to kill myself; they make me see the good in something. She should be happy about that.

My dad took out the window of my room because he saw I would sneak out to the yard to look at the stars for more time and find me asleep.

My boyfriend of the time (before my attempt) didn’t like us going on dates at nighttime because he felt like I never paid attention to him, which was true but he would go out of his way to make all dates indoors.

The support group had an even outside because they knew I would like it, but when my parents found out they almost took me out of the group, which made me realize:

My happiness does not come from normal things, it comes from what people find weird. Normal people will judge your source of happiness because of their own selfish beliefs. Which made me aware of how no one will ever be okay with my coping mechanism.

When I look up at the sky, I am no longer Esther Brown.