The truth

Two days ago, I told Facebook that I have tried to end my life twice in the last 6 months.

Two days ago, friends told me that they were glad I was still here.

The trouble really is that I am not.

The trouble is that what I want most is to be able to take this pain and fear and rage and loneliness and sickness and turn it into art but the words and pictures are all wrong and the only way I have found is just to say the words that don't make art.

One week and two days ago my father sat beside me in the same room I had been in 4 months ago to have the same conversation I had four months ago with my father beside me and I talked to the nurse and I talked to the pychiatrist but I told my father that I was so tired of being me, and that I had so much hatred for my mind and my body that I wanted to cause it as much pain as possible and I told my father that I felt that noone knew me better than him and I told my father that I was sorry because I loved him.

One week and two days ago I could not get the razor deep enough into my wrist, four months ago I could not swallow the right pills and today I remember that even when I was a child I was convinced I was dying.

The trouble really is that no-one knows what to say to me, that words are too hollow and strange and that sitting with a dying person feels like you are being sapped of all energy and the feeling of watching your daughter cry as the doctor bandages her wrists simply has no words to describe it.

The truth that lacks lyricism is that I am angry that I did not kill myself, and I am angry that I tried.

The truth is that everyone tells me that there must be part of me that wants to live because I made that phone call and the truth is that they are right. The parts of me that don't want to die are the parts held onto with gentle hands by a father suffering from chronic clinical depression who tried to take his own life thirty years ago and a sister who hid her pain from the world for years and a mother who does not have the words or the experience but holds me in her arms like I am the strongest and most fragile thing she will ever hold.

Today I carry my pain on my wrists and my arms and my legs and my ribs and the word that will never go away is

Why