Karaoke Pt. IV
"I tried to sing it all back like I heard it, it don't sound the same"-boygenius, Salt in the Wound
IV: The Application
It’s the doing that landed me here in the first place. Daydreaming while smiling and imagining the cold-edged-sharp feel of a point going into my skin. I wouldn’t harm myself in a real way because I care too much about how I look. I would never recover from taking the time off work to tend to my psyche. The doing is worlds away from the application and this means I’ll have to schedule my next mental breakdown.
In therapy, I learned I have anxious attachment, hyper vigilance, and possible PTSD. I had begun to wonder why I wanted to drink mop water every time I didn’t get a text back, but I would never actually toss it back. Purse my lips with the bucket tilted way upwards just enough to burn the first layer off my lips. I’ll never meditate, journal regularly, or practice self-care long enough to heal these pathologies. The tips of my fingers are inked with waiting. I rub my hands along the print of ‘the work’ and wonder when it will be enough. I will bother everyone until I’m physically removed from their walkway. Getting rid of me is not an option, but I will decide when it’s time to replace you.
And not like replacing staple clothes in your closet or like buying new books and swapping out the old ones. Simple, sensical. Replacing you like how I replace the air filter in my studio apartment. I pry open the metal cage and scoff at the inside. Ugh, disgusting. Polished nails scratch at the rusted screws, hoping to not cause a chip. I scratch and scratch and scratch until frustration bubbles in my head. I feel like this is not my job. Taking out the filter, I notice the black dust, fuzz, and bits of dirt. Notice how this could represent something, more than dead skin cells and allergens, it could be all that I’ve let pass through for the last few months. How did any of this get inside?
I throw it away and buy another 2-pack at Wal-Mart. Mindlessly and with no hesitation.
The first time I wanted to die, I imagined a car speeding around the street I lived on and losing control. Taking me out and stopping the tingling on my skin. Hopefully, a hit and run so no one had to endure the paperwork and leftover resentment. My street conveniently did not have sidewalks, so this possibility was within reach. People always talk about intrusive thoughts, a cliff here, an edge there, a slight pass over the median. Mine were (are) more like the desire to disappear without any drama or sound. Poof. Or like, it hurts so bad I would trade places with almost anyone who did not look plagued with recurring-ness. I want to be stupid and still.
I have wanted to escape so badly that I would find any universe to clip into.
My therapist asks me what soothes my inclination to die. I tell her my best friends, my cat and brothers and mother, music and lyrics and bridges in my favorite songs, having real, known, vouched for love in my life in many forms, seeing live music, swaying in a crowd, being fully seen and held, my students, the possibility of being debt-free, of being someone who travels and looks out of windows not desperately, but in a way that reads: Appreciative.
I still think about death and dying. It’s exhausting and crass. To imagine stopping, skulls, dirt, receipts, and pain so many times. to imagine what it would be like to leave my littlest brothers without a big sister is actually so fucked up, i make myself sick over it. I can’t feel bad about having these thoughts, though. It just makes them worse.
It makes things like your problems seem small and it creates the opposite of empathy in me. I have found that living with dying is much easier than trying to fade the feeling. Wanting to die is a part of my make-up that I’ll always be in conversation with. Sometimes, I’m shouting at the ideation to absolve the tingling, and other times, my moves become so gentle that she quiets on her own.
<3 you