I thought this would be appropriate since people have always been curious on why i would try to kill myself and i could never really explain it and also to explain why i was thinking of what i wanted to do also. This explains it exactly to what i was thinking.
My Suicide:
Suicide is a form of murder-premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatabile with the suicidal state of mind.
It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining youself dead, or in the process of dying. If there's a window, you must imagine your body falling out of the window. If there's a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there's a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattended under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.
The motives were weak: Without a strong motive, you're sunk.
My motives were weak: an American-history paper. I didn't want to write and the question I'd asked the months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn't have to write the paper. Nor would i have to keep debating the question.
the debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.
Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark-why not kill myslef? Miss the bus-better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie-maybe i should kill myself.
Actually, it was only part of myself i wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate that made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
I didn't figure this out, thought, until after I'd swallowed 50 asprin.
I had a boyfriend named Johnny who wrote me love poems--good ones. I called him up, said i was going to kill myself, left the phone off the hook. took my 50 asprin, and realized it was a mistake. Then i went out to get some milk, which my mother had asked me to do before i took the aspirin.
Johnny called the police. They went to my house and told my mother what i'd done. She turned up at the A & P on Mass Ave. just as i was about to pass out over the meat counter.
As i walked the five blocks to the A & P i was gripped by humiliation and regret. I'd made a mistake and i was going to die because of it. Perhapes I even deserved to die because of it. I begran to cry about my death. For a moment, i felt compassion for myself an all the unhappiness i contained. Then thinkgs started to blur and whiz. By the time i reached the store, the world had been reduced to a narrow, throbing tunnel. I'd lost my peripheral vision, my ears were ringing, my pulse was pounding. The bloody chops and streaks straining against thier plastic wrappings were the last things i saw clearly.
Having my stomach pumped brought me around. They took a long tube and put it slowly up my nose and down the back of my throat. That was like being chocked to death. Then they began to pump. That was like having blood drawn on a massive scale-the suction, the sense of tissue collapsing and touching itself in a way it shouldn't, thenausea as all that was inside was pulled out. It was a good deterrent, Next time, I decided, I certainly wouldn't take aspirin.
But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn't dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I'd manage my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I'd been in years.
My airiness lasted for months. I did some of my homework. I stopped seeing Johnny and took up with my English teacher, who wrote even better poems, though not to me. I went to New York with him, he took me to the Frick to see the Vermeers.
The only odd thing was that suddenly i was a vegetarian. I associated meat with suicide, because of passing out at the meat counter. but I knew there was more to it.
The meat was bruised, bleeding, and imprisoned in a tight wrapping. And, though i had a six-month repsite from thinking about it, so was I.
