The coward’s thoughts on self-nullification

“Good morn­ing,” I say, when I am at work.

“How are you?” my cus­tomers some­times reply.

“A swirling void of worth­less­ness and angry depres­sion, over­laid with some­what effec­tive anti-anxiety drugs, so long as I keep up with my sched­ule,” is not how I reply.

I smile and say “Fine, thank you, and you?”

They don’t want to know. I don’t, either. The state of denial is very appealing—its brochures are the glossi­est, shini­est, perki­est ever, like the Emer­ald City in the Wiz­ard of Oz. (Doesn’t every­one want to be like Glinda, the Good Witch? With apolo­gies to Gre­gory Maguire, Stephen Schwartz and Idina Men­zel, the answer is no—I do not want to have green skin. I want to be happy.)

The state of real­ity, with its cap­i­tal, Fac­ing the Facts? It’s all black and white, like Okla­homa in John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath abil­ity to reach out to oth­ers and express­ing your feel­ings turned to dust in your mouth also included.

If I do it, it’s got to be right. (No, wait, that’s the per­fec­tion­ist talk­ing.) And that requires research, not just the tak­ing of all the pills in the bathroom—because that might just fuck up my liver, requir­ing more pills, a life­time of pills and more pills, dif­fer­ent ones that require even more keep­ing track (as if the ones in the cab­i­net aren’t enough, all the –idines and –epams a clus­ter of end­ings numb­ing my nerves and my brain). Isn’t the up and down of that reg­i­men, that vig­i­lance, that need for con­stant atten­tion and report­ing to doc­tors at the slight­est change in one’s mood, one’s men­tal health, hell, one’s body odor, the very thing I’m try­ing to avoid? No. I don’t want to do research. (That’s the pro­cras­ti­na­tor butting in, too.)

Then there are all these sharp objects, a plethora of knives and mul­ti­ple sharp­en­ers. The elec­tri­cal one, bought by the hus­band who loves the elec­tri­cal gad­gets, the one he mostly uses because the noise sets my teeth on edge, a thou­sand nails on a million-ty black­boards. The hand­held device, swipe the blade through one side, the other– voila, an edge. It’s okay— not my fave. That’s the steel— that’s what I like to use, a gift from my father— its wield­ing requires some skill, since you’ve got to get the angle just right in order to get the sharp on the blade. You flick-test with your thumb until– ahh there it is, enough that ser­rated edges for slic­ing toma­toes? Those are for wusses. I want an edge on my knife to match the edge on my tongue. It’d be a shame to use one of my knives to that end—my end. So– maybe one of the util­ity knives except—ugh. They’re dirty from all of the tape on all the boxes I’ve cut through, open­ing boxes, as if flesh and blood through wrists (ver­ti­cally, not cross­wise, peo­ple always get that part wrong, and would my hands be steady enough after that first slash, I won­der?) would be any cleaner. Would I be strong enough, fast enough, bold enough, to cut down to bone? My high school biol­ogy teacher said my work on my fetal pig showed I had hands like a sur­geon, and I can butcher a chicken like nobody’s busi­ness. The snap-crack of the thigh bone under my hands, no hes­i­ta­tion as I slice through the ster­num and peel the meat from the ribs. Would that get­ting at the heart of myself was nearly so sim­ple. Each week in ther­apy, I stut­ter and start as I try to talk with my ther­a­pist, a well-meaning woman I like and with whom I’ve yet to really con­nect. She keeps ask­ing me “How are you,” you see. Per­haps I should print out this essay.

Step in front of a bus? The ones in con­ve­nient loca­tions where I wouldn’t have to go out of my way (see, this is the prob­lem with being depressed, get­ting some­place where the busses get up enough speed takes so much energy, damnit) are just pulling out of the station—there’s not enough speed to do the full job, and the per­fec­tion­ist in me wants it all done. At most, I’d get a bro­ken arm, bro­ken leg, maybe some ribs. It’d just gar­ner ques­tions, that and an increased dose on my anti­de­pres­sant– more fuck­ing pills, when after eight years of this round, I’m feel­ing done with the psy­chophar­ma­ceu­ti­cal game. The rest of my life, Plus, I’ve always joked with folks that I doc­u­ment steps at work, keep accu­rate records “in case I get hit by a bus.” I might hurt their feel­ings if I actu­ally did it that way. They’d won­der if I was leav­ing them clues. I wouldn’t want them to feel guilty.

Let­ting go of the wheel of the car is out of the ques­tion. Aside from the fact that I might lose my nerve—might not get up enough speed to do it right, make it final, all of that stuff—fact is, the insur­ance won’t pay for sui­cide, and then my hus­band will be out of a car, since it’s the only one that we’ve got and we haven’t got enough saved for him to just go buy another. I can’t do that to him, espe­cially since we’ve only just paid the thing off and wouldn’t that be a waste? Plus, I just got the oil changed, had it ser­viced, all of that rot. It’d be a ter­ri­ble shame to undo all of that work, espe­cially since it’s run­ning so nicely and they even vac­u­umed the rugs.

And then there’s the whole mess in the back bed­room. All that paper abyss from the job that I left (panicked–fled, gasp­ing for air on that third thrash to the sur­face, my arms so exhausted as I struck for the shore that some­times I’m still amazed that I didn’t drown), all the per­sonal mail I just couldn’t stand to look at or open, all those clothes that are too big or too small (I really should clean and Craigslist the cash­mere and suits, they’re in good shape and we sure as hell could use the money, it’s not like I’m going to wear most of them any­time soon). There’s so much that needs clean­ing and sort­ing and I think back to every death or famil­ial psy­chotic break or elderly move I’ve ever lived through— my breath catches in hurt for the peo­ple who’d have to do all that clean­ing. (The shame and panic I feel at all the secrets I still think I’m keep­ing of how messed up I am and how all that would be revealed if I left it for oth­ers? It’s some small deterrent.)

So per­haps I’m a cow­ard. Per­haps I am brave—this week, I sorted some mail and threw some away, keep­ing the top­most of some old, piled bills. I even made plans to call, to per­haps fig­ure out—well, I’m not sure, exactly, but I can at least ask some ques­tions rather than avoid the whole in blind panic. And then I swif­fered. Washed dishes. Made an appoint­ment with my pri­mary physi­cian, because I’d hate to make my poor hus­band have to go through my cal­en­dar, can­celling appoint­ments, much less explain why.

I choose to think that despite my bad choices, despite my bad moments, despite what may seem here as what aren’t quite what the shrinks might call “pas­sive ideation,” and what I pre­fer to think of as this.

“She was always a ner­vous child,” my grand­mother once told my dad.

Ner­vous. Fine. It’s a bet­ter term than some oth­ers I could apply to myself.

“How are you?” some­one will ask me tomor­row, because of all the deci­sions I’ve made, I’ve at least stuck to this—get out of bed, go to work, don’t burst into tears out in public.

“Fine, thank you,” I’ll answer, then smile. I’ll even smile like I mean it. Maybe I will.

(Ed. for those con­cerned. This is a … con­den­sa­tion of feel­ings I have had in the last few weeks or so. Noth­ing nec­es­sar­ily current.)