Piecing Advice

[SDFoundGirl]

Rather than hijack Swashy's thread, I thought I'd answer you here, Rob.

Yes, yes I was quite suicidal this summer. I have multiple writing pieces I did during that time with characters who had fascinations with razor blades...great writing I have to say. Very, very real. I actually understood the whole cutting epidemic among teenagers this summer...in some weird way, I really thought it would make me feel better. Sounds crazy, but I *got* it this summer.

Thankfully I think more of myself and realized that was nutso, so I never went down that path.

Actually, this is one of the less alarming pieces I wrote during that time:

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Sophie sat in the car, watching the sun rise on the ocean waves. It was an eminently peaceful scene. First the drive from the top of the mesa in a snowstorm of fog, now the early morning light warming the beach-goers and lighting everything with hope. Both quiet, both enveloping, both peaceful.

Anyone who noticed the woman would think she was the definition of content: slim, tan legs propped out of the window, pink tinted shades perched atop a slim nose, large java in hand, music flowing from the car stereo. But the truth is, if anyone had been able to see the eyes concealed by sunshades, they would have known. Raw pain, hopelessness, grief. While couples walked dogs adorned with patriotic bandanas and surfers waited for the next big wave, the woman thought of nothing but how she could die. The pain was dragging her under, and nothing but death was numb enough.

How she had gotten here, she really did not know. She could not tell anyone; there would be the predictable, You have so much to live for! or the You have it so much better than most people! comments. And they would be right. Her life was not bad, not difficult, just impossible to live any longer.

Her career was as good as ever, but it was lacking the passion shed had once. Last year and its ribbons of paperwork, pressure, and results had stripped her of her purpose. A job and city change to correct it did nothing for her; shed lost her mojo, and what once was her joy was now only rote. Going through the motions. Something to get through.

Her marriage, well, it wasnt that it was bad, it just wasnt good. Somewhere between saying I do and the present they had lost their way. He was a good man; flawed, but with good intentions. She had to admit she was difficult, but she was not solely responsible for the roommate-like relationship they had now. His need to keep the peace and martyr himself whatever the cost, her need not to be controlled and to maintain independencethese things contributed to the uneasy silence that surrounded them each night as they sat together but not on the couch, each focused on their own, separate worlds. Their surface conversations reminded her of a line from one of her favorite young adult novels: The truth was hidden beneath piles and piles of unsaid things.

Perhaps that is the cause of her unhappiness. When you can no longer speak the truth, you are living a lie. At some point that reduces any honest human to a wisp of his or her real self. She was already not really here, already somewhere between life and death, and the clear choice was to step in one direction or the other.

To outsiders, the logical choice may seem to be living, to embrace it and face it and recapture ones realness. But if she did, she knew she could not face the consequences. To tell the man she loved all the things she needed to say and he did not want to hear, would result in death of self anyway. He never could take her honesty, though he loved her for it. It was a textbook example of a catch-22, damned both ways. Choosing life meant prolonging sadness, pain, disappointment and in the end she'd be in this same place.
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I'm light years away from this place now, but I remember all too clearly what it was like to be here....

SD