Will she be okay after I'm dead?

 This isn't anything creative. It's personal and probably should not be shared, but I have to get it out and away from me so it doesn't continue to overwhelm my mind and lead me to total collapse. Which probably won't work; I'll end up succumbing to it all eventually. 

me and my niece stuck in the void

Early last year I had nothing left to live for. Beyond my control, I was forced to move back to the United States and live at home again. When I was in the process of moving back, the weight, terror, and heartbreak involved with having to move back home and forever away from the person I most wanted to be with was raging inside of me, I would try to routinely tell myself that it wouldn't last. I'd move back home, sure, but just to momentarily regroup as best I can before either finding somewhere else far away and foreign to me to escape to or kill myself. I thought about moving to the west coast, somewhere where there were massive sycamore trees and lots of fog, rain, and mountains. Or I thought about moving further north into New England territory into some sort of remote small town that would likely be far more affordable to live in as opposed to my current whereabouts. At the same time, I thought, every moment of every night and day, about how I was going to go about ending it.

The most logical method, and the one I have always envisioned myself taking part in, was to simply sink into a scaldingly hot bath and open up my veins. However, as time went on in my life and I found myself briefly entangled with someone I loved more than I thought could be possible, this constant intrusive thought and visual tapestry laid out in my mind altered to accommodate this new person. I'm sure I've expressed this before somewhere on this stupid little nonsense site that I find the idea of dying together with a loved one and specifically committing suicide together, to be an utterly powerful and romantic act of uncompromising love. Although this person, for the time being, made me want to stay alive for as long as possible, a sentiment I have never felt before in my life and likely won't feel again, we shared this sort of naive and fantastical idea of joint death. And from there on out, I knew for absolute certainty, more clearly than anything else in my foggy, sludge-filled brain and the empty, formless future splayed out in front of me, that if we could both somehow avoid any sort of terminal diseases or sudden and tragic accidents that could occur at any moment in any day, then that was definitively how I wanted to die.

Pictured in my mind like a colossus canvas blanketing the walls of my skull was the image of me and her in a bathtub embracing, ensnaring one another in each other's arms, as our sliced open wrists leaked out, the tub filling with our shared blood, and the two of us peacefully fading out into nonexistence with each other's faces being the last sight we'd ever see. A shared funeral perhaps would follow, or maybe our families would grant my wishes and throw our bodies on a mountaintop somewhere and let the vultures devour our rotting flesh. I'd imagine she would have wanted to be left in the woods, and I'd like that as well. Maybe before we are found dead in the tub, we would decay into each other, our wounds opening up like wind-blown circus tents inviting the other to escape into. The same decay, the same maggots, the same tub of soupy remains. We'd finally fulfill our wish and merge into one being, even if we couldn't be alive to witness it. Unfortunately, and shamefully, I don't remember what her post-mortem wishes were - maybe I just didn't ever want to think about surviving alone and having to deal with her death, although I've essentially had to deal with that in another way - we both loved wandering in old graveyards, so perhaps she would have liked to be buried together underneath an unmarked grave. I wish I could reach out and know for sure, there are still countless questions I'd like to ask her, all of which haunt me and eat away at whatever is left of my mind. I got carried away. Regardless of my failed ambitions of dying with someone who tragically still holds such an intense grasp on my heart, and likely always will, I still figured that slitting my wrists was the best option. I thought that maybe pills, but I tried that once before. I could have gone to my local train station and jumped in front of a train, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to make such a public display of my death and further inconvenience commuters and railway staff. The other option, an extremely accessible and plausibly fool-proof option, was to go to my sister and brother-in-law’s apartment, steal one of his rifles or shotguns, and blow my head into nasty little sopping chunks of finality. But…if I did that, I would only create more trouble for the two of them, likely unintentionally entangle them in legal troubles of some kind, and also provide them with a lifetime of unending guilt - possibly leading to an ugly, painful, trauma-fueled divorce. I might want to kill myself, but I’m not entirely selfish and careless about it. Around this time, my father took a trip to Argentina to hunt and came back with this incredible hunting knife, the handle made from elk antlers with an immense and exceptionally sharp blade. This knife was for me, a gift that I really did appreciate and was grateful for - I was a bit shocked that my dad even thought of me at all during his trip. But, my dad doesn’t live with me. He never has. And despite seeing my self-harm scars and even telling me to explain my reasoning for doing that to mysef, and despite his history with suicidal thoughts that he would often tell me about (saying such things about coming close to shooting himself but the only thing that stopped him was his dog and he didn’t once think of his kids), he did not and probably could not realize what I would be compelled to do with that knife. As soon as I got it, I took it upstairs and grazed it gently across my flesh - my skin effortlessly parted ways and a small river of blood rose to the surface. I knew it would be perfect, I wouldn’t feel a thing with this one. Especially in comparison to all of my old, dulled, over-used razor blades and box cutters (some of which have actually started to rust) that pull and tear at my flesh with more and more difficulty every time I succumb to using one of them. However…my sister, being an intelligent and sensitive person that I am truly very lucky to have in my life, realized what I was thinking before I could even do anything. And after a terrible outburst, an outward and explosive display of my then total mental collapse, I stupidly and impulsively vocalized my plans as I likely was subconsciously screaming for help, and she promptly took the knife my father gifted me and hid it away. I still don’t know where it is. Obviously, I don’t blame my dad for giving me the knife, a normal son would use that knife only for displaying purposes or follow in his father’s footsteps and go out and start killing animals with it. Despite all of my parents’ flaws, shortcomings, and attacks on my psyche…I will forever feel bad that they couldn’t have a “normal” son. I’m getting lost here, losing track of what was originally on my mind. Escaping into tangents of nonsense personal information best left unsaid. My point being; suicide via cutting was becoming less and less likely, and at this point, I wanted to avoid hospitalization. I tried to get help. Thus, I started an ugly, dizzying, and exhausting process of taking different combinations and dosages of several medications. Some of which nearly pushed me even closer to ending my life. Chances are, something was going to stop me from following through. Maybe I simply don’t posses the willpower or the courage to attempt it again. Regardless, that didn’t stop me from envisioning my death at all moments of the day - which has been my reality for most of my life. The other option, as I mentioned before, was to move away. Start over, so to speak, and get away from my hometown which has unfortunately been infected with far too painful memories of the past. The person I loved spent time here too, she was in my bedroom, she was in my car, we went to my favorite record and book shops together, and I generally tried to integrate her into what life here would be like in the hopes that she would one day make the move to the States. So, to no fault of her, every aspect of my life reminds me heavily of her…and still does to this day, a year and a half later. I don’t know if moving away would help, but it seemed like the only other option for me. But, not soon after moving back home, I realized I was stuck here. This sounds overly negative, but the reasoning behind me being tied to this place is an extremely positive one and something I am eternally grateful for. In December of last year, exactly one month after my own birthday, my sister gave birth to her first daughter - my little niece. Now, I’ve made it clear time and time again how vehemently against childbirth I am, I love children and wish they didn’t ever have to suffer in this sordid, twisted, perpetually worsening world, which leads me to naturally hate the idea of new human life being forced into this eventually doomed rock floating in space. If we all somehow decided on the idea of never voluntarily giving birth and creating new life, maybe humanity would start to heal a bit before our timely and gradual extinction. But that’s never going to happen. We’ll all destroy each other before anything like that could occur. My point in all of this is that while I myself would never want to bring life into this world, especially life that would share my rotten D.N.A., I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of my niece. And, luckily, she has so far been an eternal light in my often hopeless, void-like existence. I’m lucky enough to spend time with her regularly, babysit her every week, share music with her that she might retain in the recesses of her subconscious, read to her, and watch her change and grow. It’s undeniably one of the most positive aspects of my life, maybe the most positive aspect of my life that I’ve ever experienced. However, as with anything, my mind has an incredible and loathsome ability to spin even the most objectively positive things in life into depressing, stressful, and fear-inducing nightmares. While most of the time my niece and her strange, blob-like, gremlin-esque, and adorable actions and noises make me uncontrollably smile with a sincerity that is extremely rare for me, (one of the most heartwarming sights I have ever seen is waking her up from her naps and seeing her face light up; smiling right up at me) I can’t help but have this horrifically loud and frequent intrusive thoughts when I look at her about my own inevitable death. I look at her and think to myself, beyond my control, that one day possibly soon I will undoubtedly succumb to it all and take the voluntary plunge into nonexistence. The call to the void is always there, no matter what I do, no matter what medication I take, no matter how many therapy sessions I attend, no matter what changes I make, and no matter who enters or exits my life. I don’t know when it is going to happen, but there has been a constant nagging cloud of knowledge clogging my head telling me that I’ll be exiting this world soon. Now, I know full well that this is all bullshit and a byproduct of a depressed mind. There is no set path for any of us. There is no possibility of a predetermined death or a fated demise or anything akin to that. I have control over whether I kill myself or not, no one and nothing is out there guiding my hand, pulling my puppet strings, and leading me in a possessed state to the razor blade, the bottle of pills, the noose, the loaded gun, etc. I can tell myself all of this, I can use it to ground myself back to reality for maybe a second, but nothing stops this feeling raging through my psyche and my conscious that I will inevitably end up killing myself. For a time, I made peace with this and it really did not bother me. But now, looking at my niece and having these thoughts come to me absolutely cripples me. People say things about how exciting it is going to be to watch her grow, to start to walk, to talk, to say my name, to run around, and to further develop into her own unique individual. And, yeah, that might very well be exciting…but I am completely devoid of the ability to see a future where I am a part of any of that. My niece will surely grow up without me in the picture at all. The rest of her family will remember me, maybe, and will tell her about all the time I spent with her and how much I adored her..and she will have no memory of any of that. I never liked the idea of being remembered, but I worry about her growing up and knowing that she unknowingly lost someone who was once a consistent part of her life and early development. She’ll see the pictures I’ve taken of the two of us…me looking like my usual unkempt angry self, and her tiny face looking right at the camera with her huge, expressive blue eyes. Or the edits I’ve made where I censor my face out with black lines of inverted light shooting out of my eyes, or blood running down my face, while I’m holding her. Who knows what she’ll think…she’ll likely not miss someone that she doesn’t even have memories of, but it troubles me nonetheless. All of this sounds so absurdly stupid…the solution is clear, just don’t kill yourself, survive, continue to be grateful for the things you have, and try to realize that maybe you are an important part of your niece’s life and should remain as a part of it. That all makes perfect sense, and I try to tell myself all of this. But nothing works. The intrusive thoughts of my fast-approaching expiration date poisons everything. And all I can think to myself when I look into her innocent, curious eyes is; Will she be okay after I’m dead? Honestly, I think she’ll be mostly fine. She’s lucky to have two parents who are both extremely headstrong, independent, supportive, and caring. That’s more than I or many others can say. I’m not her only uncle, she would have an aunt and uncle on her father’s side. And she would be in a family of several people that no doubt love her very deeply. Now a lot of these people in her family are not the most stable or mentally healthy individuals, but their love is still just that. I’m not worried about that. I don’t see myself as such an integral part of her life. Although…I have to admit that her entire family is entirely far too “normal” and “conventional” and maybe it would be beneficial to have a miserable weirdo like me around, I don’t know. Then there is the much more obvious fear, one that I can’t imagine anyone else not fearing for either their children or generally the next generation of children. That being, having to grow up in this particular landscape we are living in. I believe what Thomas Ligotti once said, that every era of time is the worst era to live in. But, at the same time, it does feel especially worse these days, right? Maybe that’s to blame on how widespread and easily accessible information is, allowing all of us to witness every single major atrocity as it happens around the world in real-time. It all feels like it's compounding on top of each other, each atrocity trying to outdo the last, until finally the world will buckle underneath the weight of corpses and rubble, crack open, and swallow us all into its burning core. Which really might be something we deserve. Furthermore, there is the idea of her simply having to grow up at all. To develop into a human being who is forced to experience an ugly maelstrom of conflicting, powerful, and confusing emotions that never let up. My family has a history of mental illness, and what percentage of that will leak into her bloodstream and cause her to struggle beyond the normal, natural struggles of growing up, regardless of her environment? It’s all too much to think about, I can not handle it. To think of her experiencing anything negative, hurtful, or close to any of the mental struggles I’ve been given to deal with throughout my life, makes me want to utterly collapse and weep until the end of time. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s all part of life, after all. I strongly believe that you have to face all the negative and dark aspects of life in order to embrace them, process them, understand them, and conquer them. And there’s the other possibility of her being artistic and creative and using these darker emotions and miserable facts of life in a way that channels them all into art. So, what’s the big deal? I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you why it affects me so strongly. But it does, and it won’t let up, and it only gets more profoundly difficult as the days limp along and she continues to grow. Would it be better for me to bow out and find the perfect time to exit this life so she doesn’t ever have to process my choice of killing myself? Should I move far away and seclude myself from all of these stressors in order to maintain my wavering sanity? Or should I simply remain a part of her life and try my absolute best to support her along her path of development and her awakening into the cruelties and horrors of the world? I don’t know. All I know is that my desire to end my own life grows continually day by day and has been growing for well over a decade now, and I don’t quite know what to do. So, I suppose I’ll acknowledge the fact that I am still here and I have survived this long and can continue to do so. Every day is another opportunity to prove to myself that I can survive and persevere. But I don’t believe any of that. I selfishly just want to perish and fade away without a single trace or memory of me left behind whatsoever. Whatever happens will happen, but hopefully, she will be okay after I’m dead. - That’s it. I wrote way too much for such a stupid string of ridiculous, nonsensical thoughts and fears stirring in my head. Sorry to anyone who would potentially read this. I hope no one does, but I have to get it all out and upload it here as part of my strange and futile process of validating and processing all of this shit. I swear that I have actual creative writing projects to upload here soon. It has been a bit of a long while since my last poem and nearly a year since my last short story, but I am working on two short stories at the moment and several ideas for poems that I have extremely rough drafts of. Maybe those will be done soon, maybe I’ll lack any motivation to write at all for the next few weeks, or maybe I’ll simply stop altogether. Regardless of the outcome, it isn’t likely that anyone is really going to care. Goodbye for now. - Malignant Tumor