I felt like I was con­stantly on the verge of a ner­vous break­down over the week­end. It’s been a while, but I started think­ing about sui­cide again. Not a heavy-hearted con­sid­er­a­tion, sim­ply some­thing I was turn­ing over in my head. Suicide only makes sense when the good out­weighs the bad, long-term con­sid­ered, and for a moment there, it felt like the future had noth­ing to offer. I had lost inter­est in all the small things that keep me sane on a day-to-day basis; the move­ment of my music, the com­pany of my friends, the com­fort of my writ­ing, the mem­o­ries of my rela­tion­ships. The prob­lem was that I couldn’t explain the feel­ing, which was more scary than any­thing else, as some­one who takes pride in know­ing him­self through and through. It was a com­pletely irra­tional pat­tern of thought, and I knew it, but I couldn’t con­vince myself of it. The only rea­son I could come up with was a chem­i­cal imbal­ance, caused by a rather sud­den absten­tion, along with a gen­eral feel­ing of sick­ness I’ve had since the begin­ning of the month.

I have more to live for than most peo­ple I know, but none of that meant a thing. This gave me some minor panic attacks, because I’d lost my rea­sons for liv­ing, and more sig­nif­i­cantly, never saw them improv­ing. I started to under­stand how beau­ti­ful, influ­en­tial, famous, suc­cess­ful peo­ple like Margaret Laurence, Elliot Smith could kill them­selves. All I knew is that I didn’t want to be one of those peo­ple. One of those peo­ple who took their lives sud­denly, irra­tionally, with­out any notice. The step-mother who fought life-long depres­sion. The friend who just decided that they couldn’t deal any­more. If I was going to die, I’d at least wait another year, another ten years to see if the any­thing would change or improve, because life is worth it. I started play­ing Ratchet And Clank to keep my mind off any­thing heavy, and kept play­ing 12 hours through the repet­i­tive motion symp­toms. I dis­cov­ered that it’s one of the most remark­able games I’ve ever expe­ri­enced, and it let me know that I can still enjoy things. That’s at least one rea­son, right? Or am I liv­ing back­wards, des­per­ately cling­ing to what I have left, try­ing to jus­tify my existence?

After explain­ing it all to John last night when he got home, my sit­u­a­tion started to make sense again. Some things only do after I say them. I con­fided in Shirley today too, even though she doesn’t fully under­stand, and never could. She told me that she’d go to hell and bring me back just to kill me again. Hearing that brought a lit­tle smile to my face. I feel bet­ter in a very gen­eral, inex­plic­a­ble sense, and am left with a slightly wor­ry­ing, unset­tled feeling.

This is prob­a­bly one of the most dif­fi­cult entries I’ve ever writ­ten. Even now I don’t know why I felt com­pelled to do so. Being able to means that I’m at least tem­porar­ily com­fort­able enough to speak about some­thing that I’m ter­ri­fied of think­ing of.