I felt far worse at the ER afterwards than when I did the night I tried to kill myself. I got put there after they found me hanging, and I couldn't do anything, because there had to be someone in the room with me at all times, and it had just sunk in that I could get kicked out of school for what I did, and that I'd definitely have to be sent home.
The really funny thing about suicide is that it gets old after a while. Like, you just get used to it. You get used to wanting to kill yourself, and other people get used to you wanting to kill yourself, and it's just accepted as how you are. Maybe certain people are predisposed to suicidal thoughts, I don't know. I don't really know anything.
It's so cliche, too. Or passé. Derivative, even. Everybody wants to kill themselves, or talks about how they want to kill themself. You can't do anything without hearing about someone who committed suicide, or hearing one of your loved ones talking about committing suicide. There's always some kid in school who you can tell is the most mentally ill person in the entire building, and they want to kill themselves too. It stops being a concern and becomes sort of a lifestyle. Some cyclical process. Get better, get worse, try to kill yourself, get stopped, get better. So on, so forth, ad nauseum.
To be honest, I don't know how universal these experiences are. I feel like I end up surrounding myself with people who are similarly introspective and riddled with neuroses. Nothing seems out of the ordinary to me anymore, so I assume that nothing actually is out of the ordinary. My baseline is feeling like shit and wanting to die, and the same seems to be for my friends, and I can't really imagine a different way of living, so I don't, because thinking of better things tends to make everything harder. So I say things are okay, because things are okay, and as long as I say they are then they might as well be. It's alright.
Earlier this week I looked in the mirror before I tried to hang myself, and I was wearing some black cargo pants and a black Boards of Canada T-shirt. I realized that I fit the stereotype perfectly. I really did look like somebody who would hang himself.
Then I put the noose around my neck (tied with a sailor's hitch to the towel rack, Robin Williams style because I couldn't access the stairwell), and I gradually tightened it until I could feel it cutting off circulation, then more so it hurt to swallow (actually the most uncomfortable part was feeling my Adam's apple bump against the rope), then more so I couldn't breathe. I kind of sat there for a bit. I felt like I was swimming.
When the residential staff came to cut me down, I begged for them to let me die, and I noticed that my voice sounded strained and mucosal, and kind of strangled. Obviously it was because my throat had been constricted, but it made me realize that asphyxiation does actually work, and that if I had managed to hang from the railings around the stairwell as I'd originally planned I would have surely died because nobody would be there to help, and because I wouldn't be able to do anything if I'd changed my mind because my neck would probably be snapped from the drop and I'd be braindead before becoming body dead.
And now when I remember the last time I tried to kill myself I grimace at how pathetic it was. The towel rack was only a few feet off the ground, and once people came to stop me all I did was bawl my eyes out.
I had some wine last night and it was a relief. I don't care for the taste, which I guess is a result of my naivete and my unsophisticated palate, but the warm, volatile burn I felt afterwards was nice, or good, or affecting, or something. It reminded me of last summer, when during the good nights I'd drink and go out around midnight, wandering aimlessly around the river. Afterwards I'd find myself following the rails and sitting down somewhere listening to whatever album, and I'd consider throwing myself in front of the next train that would come, but I'd never do it.
And the burn reminded me of the bad nights, too, following days when I'd wake up after noon and barely be able to stay awake, when I'd go up after my parents had gone to sleep and start drinking, carefully choosing from the bottles of whiskey that would have the least obvious depletion. I'd drink until I couldn't think enough to feel sad or anxious - maybe 3 to 5 shots, depending. Then I'd usually stop after one in the morning, and I'd stagger back down to the basement to sleep, but I'd never be able to go to sleep right away. I'd try to text my friends, but I would be too uncoordinated to say anything meaningful, and then I'd wake up the next day incredibly thirsty, collapsing on the way to get water, sometimes vomiting, fully knowing that I'd repeat the cycle again that night.
Now that I think about it, I don't really know which nights were good or bad. I tried to record what nights were what, but I knew it'd be too subjective. But I did still notice that most of them were bad.
My dad told me that when he was younger, living by himself, he'd call L.L. Bean when he was feeling really lonely. He laughed and called it pathetic.
I remember being lonely, or sad, or maybe both last summer and going on Omegle so I could talk to people. Most people just wanted to sext. I talked to one person who seemed to be pretty young, maybe a few years younger than me. They were going to be hospitalized in a psych ward, or they already had been, and they listened to Mac Demarco. I felt weird. I didn't realize I could talk to my preteen self through a randomized chat app normally used for unsolicited sexual advances.
They had to leave after a bit, and I couldn't find anyone else who wasn't just there to sext, so I closed Omegle and opened Discord. I tried to start a conversation with two of my friends. They called me cucked for feeling lonely and going on Omegle, which was true. I felt even more dissatisfied.
We all had a rough summer, or at least most of us did. One of them had just ended a terrible relationship which had caused their ex to threaten suicide and stalk them. Another one of my friends had just been sent to the hospital for a suicide attempt. The singular person who seemed to be alright was away most of the time, working long shifts.
I was talking about how life was pointless and how everyone should kill themselves and my friends were understandably frustrated. They had been through some tough shit, whereas I still have both of my parents and live in relative economic stability. They got angry at me for being ungrateful, which was understandable.
I felt that this made me more pathetic. These people had endured incredible hardships and still try their best to live meaningful lives. My life is easy, and yet I still struggle to avoid killing myself.
I said that someone's quality of life doesn't matter if their achievements are good or influential enough. My friend responded by saying "You're not Kurt Cobain."
I've never been into Nirvana, but I was still embarrassed.