i want to die, love. i’m sorry i unrolled my shoulders and burdened you with this. i just don’t know who else to turn to but a stranger with too much ink in their blood and too little time on their hands. it hurts. so much.

inkskinned:

truth be told, it does hurt. 

the last few months have been some of the best of my entire life. I’ve been happy in this unbreakable way that seems impossible. i keep waking up waiting for the other shoe to drop.

it has taken me a bit to notice the shoe has dropped, i just know how to catch it.

the last months – euphoric, impossible, so full of love and light that it feels like a poem and not my real life – were also full of anger, sorrow, anxiety that kept me up into the night. and the loss of my hands. the loss of my writing.

it’s just that the things that used to stop me before don’t stop me anymore. it’s that i know if i am patient, the panic attack peters out. it’s that i know how to hold onto life even when life is a wisp of a thing.

everyone – myself included – always says it gets better. how fragile that sounds when you want to die. i remember reading it and thinking when!  i remember thinking: but what is “it”? yes, my life in general got better. but for that to happen? i had to get better first. and you get better. only in mental illness do we promise our patients a vague future where perfection reigns. with my hands failing me, i am not promised something vague. instead, i am given day-by-day instructions for managing pain. i am given the promise it will be managed, but only by my ministrations. 

hope is not vague. hope is real and it is another four-letter word. it is work. you get better. start with the small things. small enough they feel silly. the simple day-to-day struggles. fix that one poster that hangs to the side. get a night light. listen to a new song every day. find a schedule. no, scratch that. force yourself to have a schedule. write it down. if that schedule is simply “10:00 AM – get out of bed to stretch”, it is a schedule. 

hope is not vague. i know so many people who tell me: okay. i don’t want to be alive but i don’t want to die but i also don’t not want to die. the snake that eats itself. i cannot tell you “don’t worry, one day you won’t feel like that!” because even i, telling you that, sometimes find myself idly thinking about stepping into traffic. more and more often i’m surprised by it – and i was once so used to this constant undercurrent. but death is not hope. death is the end of hope. the long-sleep that you actually yearn for – that ending of trouble, of tired, of every day the same day… it cannot come from death. 

it can only come from hope. i know because i am not tired anymore. every day is still, sometimes, the same day. but i am awake in a way i have never been awake. i am present in the moment when the moment comes and my heart actually real-life feels love. it took me 12 years of constant work to get here. 12 years of hope. 

i can’t tell you what hope you should have, only that you have it. even if you don’t feel it, some part of you has it. not a vague you, you, because you wrote me this, and if you took the time to tell someone, some part of you wanted to admit to it. to be told: i come from where you are. don’t die. not yet. not today. we have too many things to make together. we have too many things to do. our bucket lists (still unwritten for me – i never expected to live long enough to finish one) need to be full. we have to put our feet into every ocean, we have to make cute sunscreen tan line tattoos, to write our book, to sell our first band cd, to make art that makes someone cry, to help people. to be alive for our sister’s wedding, to be happy when our dog comes home, to save the cat when he got his claw caught again. without us – you, you, you, and me – think of how many people will go unhelped, how many animals unsaved, how many gardens unwatered. how many books unread, walks untaken, setting suns unseen. 

my friend once said to me “every morning i wake up sad, i make myself waffles, because that day could be the best day of my life, and if it is, it needs to start with waffles. and every time i am sad in the afternoon, i just restart the 24 hours and make myself waffles. no matter what time of day it is, the next day can start then. and sometimes i have waffles for all 3 meals. but then it is the next day. and i can start again.”

tomorrow might be the best day of your life. hope is in you.

please keep living.