I don’t want to kill myself; I just don’t want to be alive.

Author’s note: I had some anxiety about posting this, because of the fear for me I think it might inspire in people who know me. Some close friends thought it could help others, and that’s why it’s here. Please know this is not a plea for help. I am a writer, and this is an exercise in vulnerability. These are not current feelings.

I don’t want to kill myself; I just don’t want to be alive.

Driving over 120 miles an hour on a dark country road with no lights in deer country didn’t do it. Interesting how there was no deer or tire blowout or fallen tree in the road that made my journey out of here reality.

That would have been it. Over. Left the display of all that is the human mind and perceptions to oblivion — that something we call nothing. Emptiness.

It’s there, so powerfully, it just has to express itself past my best intentions to stay alive. To stay connected and connecting to those whom I love.

There’s a great amount of display online about how one shouldn’t commit suicide, because it hurts the ones who are left behind. Let me tell you, to someone deep in the expression of it, those memes have no meaning, whatsoever. They are images and words without feeling. Nothing can override the gaping maw that tirelessly awaits. That darkness over which I lay my thin veneer of smiles and pleasing presence calculated so as not to disturb those who project the memes indiscriminately.

Nothing is bigger than that consumption, that open pit beneath my feet and my surface words and smiles and kindness. Yes, kindness. Being suicidal doesn’t mean you have to mope around in some dismal display or sleep through all hours of the waking life.

You can be kind, generous, contemplative of other people and what you could do to help them with some trouble or difficulty.

Yes. I’ve done that. Still do. There’s no time limit to such things. And each is drastically important to them. The maw is there regardless. It neither demands you be miserable to everyone else nor project your dark intentions. It awaits you in the time when you stand at your bed and wish the day weren’t over. That it wouldn’t end.

I look at the nightstand, the same one over which I held a handful of pills sure to end my breathing and thinking and eventually my beating heart. It was up to my mouth, just as some other thought jump-started me away from the maw. Away from the solitude darkness.

The yellow lamp and silence. At my feet, the shadows the lamp couldn’t touch. The pills slipping back into the container. I smelled them going inside, heard their little clicks against the plastic bottom. Still had their residue on my hand. Little white patches slightly moistened from my sweat.

That was the really scary one. You’d think the car or the…other things I did…would have been scarier, but no. Little pills. So simple. Right there. All for me.

There was this odd adrenalin rush, like everything coming into stark focus when I realized how close they were to my mouth. Like some other part of me that could see what was happening and knew there was only one chance left to stop it.

Then, I was sweating even more.

I looked around the room. The maw was still with me. Under my movements. My thoughts.

I didn’t want the day to be over. What is that? At times that deep, I don’t want to lie down to sleep. I don’t want the day to end. Forever going on.

Maybe it was just the thread to life I was feeling. I don’t know.

It’s strong enough, though. So heavily a part of my presence when I’m alone like that.

And it’s not loneliness. Not with me. Not at all. It’s being alone. In a room with one light. The nightstand. The pills. The bed I don’t ever want to lie down on because then….

I don’t know. I only know I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want my day over.

There is something about people whom you can inspire. People for whom you can do something that brings them some internal growth or new perspective. I can feel joy in that. Such joy. For a time, I can get lost in it. I can forget what’s waiting for me by the bed. Or under my feet.

Do the work of living, I tell myself. It is a process for them. I can’t leave them right now; they need some of my work and expression to give them a different perspective. Something that might help them somehow in some way. There’s no thought about feeling their sadness if I leave. Not when deep in my way….

Memes don’t work. They are an insult. Well-meaning selfishness guilt trip that is somehow supposed to make the suicidal turn over in their thinking, in their darkness and say, “Oh, hey, let me think about your feelings. What the hell was I thinking about wanting to be dead. Your feelings matter enough that I should just stop.”

Yeah. May as well be sending out hopes and prayers, at least they appear on the surface to be less selfish and demanding of others. Just demanding of their godheads is all.

There is no God, no Universal Consciousness or Higher Power. None of that has hold over the maw. Not in the slightest. They are powerless imaginings. Never took hold. Couldn’t. Just built that way from the ground up — and I’ve spent more time on it than most people would believe. They have no magical words, no perspective I haven’t deeply researched or lived. If I’m not willing to give up my life to a bottle of pills, I sure won’t give it up to someone else’s version of life that just makes them feel good.

There is no feeling in this place where I am. Only a slight anxiety that the day will be over. To give myself over to some man’s version of a higher power is the real death. May as well take my brain out and set it in a jar next to a small hammer that says, “break in case of critical thinking.”

No. That’s not for me. Inside there’s no feeling for such things. Never has been.

And when it’s bad…there’re no feelings for anyone. People who haven’t been this far down don’t understand that it’s a matter of monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily experience. There are only a couple of people who hold me to this world when in deep. And even they pale when the pills are in my hand. Then they are gone completely as the overriding impulse to get the pills down my throat makes me put my hand to my lips, before I even know it’s happening.

That’s real.

It’s a lapse in my consciousness that gets them there. And then I realize it and stop.

In time.

This time.

I know my people are there in their homes sleeping, not even knowing what’s happened in the past. What’s happening as I drop the pills back in the dark yellow bottle while they dream.

Yes, I think of them now with the lid closed over the pills and the bottle set farther away from the bed I don’t want to sleep on. I only wonder if tomorrow will come. For now, I am here.

Waiting.