Trigger Warning: This text contains explicit depictions of suicide, intense emotional distress, and suicidal ideation. It may be disturbing to some readers.
If you are struggling or thinking about harming yourself, please seek help. In Canada, you can call 988 (Suicide Crisis Helpline). In the U.S., call or text 988 or use the webchat at 988lifeline.org. You are not alone.
In the bathtub, my body floats.
I wait, with the patience of the drowned,
for the tragedy to take the trouble to arrive.
The pill bottles,
all counted, all lined up,
a private exercise of alchemy.
In this alchemy of depression,
I forged the antidote to suffering.
Ah, such useless wisdom.
I need help. Now.
God, the water is so cold. Why?
I opened the faucet in absolute burning.
Could it be I’m already dead
and this is nothing more
than a bureaucratic formality?
But who to call for help?
My parents? The most heinous crime.
My brother? That would corrupt what is pure.
Her? She’s the one who brought me here.
Perhaps she’d hand me the pills herself,
force them down my throat,
drown me, electrocute me,
buy the coffin, seal it with seventy thousand locks,
and throw it, weighed with two hundred tons,
into the Mariana Trench.
Friends? I will not scar them.
Unemployment? Materialism of the nonexistent.
Nothing works, God. Nothing works.
The Bible fell in the water.
The letters are swimming.
I can’t read Your teachings.
Better hurry.
And so one, two, three bottles go.
My body dissolves in the tears of the Milky Way.
In a gasp, I see myself seven years on.
Nothing has changed:
misery still gnaws at my edges,
the tears still fall,
the sobs and screams and shouts
are swallowed by the vacuum
of my stupid, incompetent existence.
But it is mine.
So I vomit it all back up and consecrate
my pathetic incompetence
once again.
– “Louise Vernet, the Artist’s Wife, on her Deathbed”, circa 1846. Painted by Paul Hippolyte Delaroch.