The pills were white and round. I didn’t count them, but there were about 20 of them. They were in a baggie next to Zach’s computer.
It scares me to write about this. It scares me to even think about writing about this. It scares me to sit in the classroom and think about writing anything. It scares me more to write about it than it did while it was happening.
I met Zach at work, at the dental lab. We bonded over teeth and wax and teriyaki. I will never love anyone as much as I loved him. I have never been able to figure out why I loved him the way I did, but he was the god of my idolatry.
I took the pills with a glass of Kahlua. I was so relieved to think that this horrible business of living was almost over. I took the pills and I lay down to die.
Writing makes me nervous now. I’ve changed so much, become an entirely different person. I don’t have the capacity I used to for love or hate or any sort of passion. I worry that my writing will be bland and affectless. I want to run away and never read anything but John Grisham again.
I fell in love with Zach at the bar, lingering over our drinks. I fell in love with him at work, watching him brush his hair out of his eyes. We kissed at the Goth club, and I’d never been so happy in all my life.
I took the pills and put on my ipod with my favorite album, and I lay down to die. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so relieved in my life. All 35 years leading up to this: 20 white pills and a song about vampires.
I really want to smoke some weed right now. I wonder if it would help me or hurt me in finding my voice if I write the whole thing high. My boyfriend says I talk more when I’m high. I feel more expansive, better at seeing connections.
I left my husband for Zach. I left everything I knew, everything I had. A year later, he stopped loving me and I was left with nothing.
Took the pills, song about vampires, waited to die. Zach was gone, and I didn’t know where. He left me alone with this baggie full of pills. I have never hated myself so much, never before believed that that my son would be better off without me. I left a note, on Zach’s computer. It said “I’m sorry, I just can’t do this anymore.”
I worry a lot that I’m not as creative now that I’m not as crazy. I don’t make as much art, crack as many jokes, talk as much, have as many ideas. This shit used to be like breathing to me, but now I’ve forgotten how. I will never again hurt that much. I will never again love that deeply. I will never again live that fully. I have suffered a sea change, into something less rich and strange.
Zach and I tried to stay friends. We spent long, lazy days together, smoking weed and watching movies. But sooner or later, we’d fight. Always, we would fight. And it all came down to this: Why don’t you love me anymore/
Took the pills, wrote the note, song about vampires, lay down to die. I was never so sad in all my life, never so resigned, never so relieved. I waited and waited to die.
I’ve missed two classes now because it’s just too damn hard to sit in the classroom some days. It takes me right back to those awful weeks when I couldn’t leave the house without an anxiety attack. I couldn’t go to class. I couldn’t do my homework. I flunked out spectacularly. I lost my financial aid, lost my home, lost everything I knew, everything I had.
I didn’t know how to live without Zach. He no longer cared to live with me. I hated myself, hated him, hated the wreck my life had become. I was stuck in a downward spiral.
Took the pills, wrote the note, song about vampires, lay on the bed, waited and waited and waited to die. I heard Zach shout “My God, what have you done?” He dragged me out of bed and fed me gallons of coffee.
I didn’t die.
* * *
I lived, though I didn’t much care to. I spent two weeks in a drugged-out haze while classes and due dates drifted by without me. I flunked out and lost my financial aid. I lost my much-loved room in the beautiful house. After a while, my thoughts turned to suicide again. I checked myself into the hospital.
I emerged a week later as a completely different person. Overhauling my medication meant better living through chemistry, a whole new me. For the first time, I felt happy and hopeful. For the first time, I was glad I hadn’t died. Slowly, I came back to life.
All it took was the addition of one pill. One little pill a day makes the monsters go away. I was no longer scared. I was no longer sad. I no longer wanted to die.
This is my first time writing about these things. About how I almost died, and how almost dying made me a new person. About how scared I am now that this new persona will never be able to achieve the same things that the old me did. This is the first time that I have tried to articulate the difference between the me of then and the me of now.
The old me was always hurt, the new me is numb. The old me was quick to anger, the new me is always calm. The old me was a gifted artist, the new me has artist’s block. The old me loved passionately to the point of pain, the new me is timid in matters of the heart.
And I ask myself, as I struggle with writing this, as I look guiltily at the canvas started and forgotten, as I navigate life with a new lover, I ask is it worth it? Is it worth it to want to live, if I have lost so much of what it meant to live? I am not who I was, for good and for ill. But who would I rather be?
I’d rather be the new me. Rather than sacrifice myself on the alter of my dubious genius, I choose to be tamped down. I would rather fade away than burn out. I am aiming for the adequate, the mediocre, the middle-brow. Anything to be safe.
My new boyfriend never knew the old me. The woman he loves is calm, agreeable, quiet, and gentle. I do not think he can imagine what I used to be: shrieking, crying, brooding. It does not matter to him that I used to be smarter and funnier, that I used to love harder. He is satisfied with what he has.
I am not. I mourn the artist I was. I miss being passionate. I miss going up to 11.
But it is better to live than to die. So I’ll take it.
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