Don't Kill Yourself

read this instead

I’m extremely qualified to tell you why you shouldn’t kill yourself. I never had suicidal ideation. It is a completely foreign concept to me. I giggle, dreaming up dystopian scenarios where London falls under a zombie apocalypse- I bet you I would make it out alive. My smugness may send you looking for a blade, but reading me takes less effort, so you may as well stay put.

You see, despite my extreme survivorship privilege, I am a total mood slut. I find mood swings absolutely irresistible. I need a chastity belt for my tear glands. A coil fitted on my heart. A keen GP would put me on antidepressants or mood stabilisers. But I know better. I am a reader of history, a woman of letters. I recognise my demons in the hollowed cheeks and piercing eyes of people who, in previous centuries, burned out early. Children crying in public don’t repel me. They are my clarion call. I can’t get over roadkill, and why should I? I mourn people decades before they die. I am proud of them well before they earn it. I never manage to stay angry at anyone, including myself.

I reach my low points at night, immobilised under duvet and cat. I relax my grip on reality, and demons jump in to push their propaganda. What is it this time? Fear and pain are universal; the details are inconsequential. There is always more where this came from. Your hopes are crushed, your people are dead. You are a member of the human race.

On earth, we mostly suffer, but sometimes one of us writes a very good book, and then millions of us feast on it for centuries. Tens of thousands of years ago, a literal Neanderthal mixed crushed wheat with water, and look at us now tucking into napolitanas.

Unblock yourself with this one weird trick: say that you did kill yourself. You killed the part of you that wants to be beautiful, the part of you that wants to be rich, famous, to be chosen, to be loved. Now what’s left? You are free.

The options are limitless. Put on shoes, leave the house. Don’t worry about how you look- remember you are dead! And therefore, invisible. You are an observer of the world’s marvels. Unburdened by the expectation that you need to participate, you can lie on the grass and look at the sky. Turn your cheek to the mud. Don’t worry if there are bugs; they can’t hurt the already dead. Buy a pristine chocolate cake. Push your index finger into the ganache. Lick it clean, repeat. It’s your cake, ruin it, kill it, it’s already dead too. You are the worms feeding on its rotten flesh.

Maybe you are convinced you are a lost cause. You will never be happy. Your impediments are too many, the world is too harsh. You will never have a lover, a family, or a house. But you will always have us. The other humans who played and lost- that’s most, if not all, of us. Your pain is our pain, your loss is our loss, your fear is our fear. Lonely, yes. Alone; never. The final boss of don’t kill yourself? If you are convinced you can’t be helped, help someone else. Share my extreme confidence to think I can compel you to not kill yourself, despite having never even wanted to harm my mother’s child.

Bad pizza is still pretty good.