VIELED EYES, CONFUSED MIND

The full impact of Christian's death has finally hit me.... seventeen months it has taken. I cannot begin to tell you how painful it is. How deep the depression. How great the despair. How strong the desire to join him. If I were brave enough, strong enough, I would. Yes, it takes strength to take one's own life. To those people that say suicide is a sign of weakness, the act of a coward, I say you are so, so wrong. It is only now that I have come to know just how wrong you are. To overcome the natural, overwhelming desire to survive, to thrive, takes a monumental amount of determination and courage. I do not possess that strength. I am the coward.

Do not misunderstand, I am not an advocate of suicide. Most definitely not. But the last several days I have given it some serious thought and am now seeing it from a different prospective - a personal prospective. I came close - really close. I had what I needed at the ready but when it came down to the actual act itself, I couldn't do it. I wanted to. Told myself all the reasons I should. Every hurt, every slight amplified, multiplied.

And love? Love has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. When you are in that dark place, you aren't thinking about love. It is not that you don't think about the people that you love and those that love you in return. As harsh as it sounds now, in that moment love takes a back seat to stronger emotions. You are only thinking about ending pain and ending the depression that accompanies it. When I say a dark place, I mean that in the most literal of ways. Life feels heavy. Every act, every movement difficult. The world is gray and overcast with gloom. There is no color, no music, no joy, no diversity of emotion. Only two emotions exist: unbearable pain and black, suffocating depression. Nothing else. The only thought, how to end it.

No longer living
Just existing.

Looking out
Through veiled eyes
Life blurred
Out of focus.

Imperfect hand and mind
Create through paintbrush
and pencil
an imperfect lie.

Boundaries erased
The mind takes flight
Fact, fiction
Sane, insane
Disillusion, confusion.

Swimming in the blackness
Drinking in nothingness
Gagging on hopelessness
Drowning in the voidless void.

Waiting, waiting, waiting
For the final tragedy
That will swoop in
and pick the flesh from my broken bones.

DEPRESSION.