i ripped up my suicide letter…

I had never written one before.

Then one day..after about three weeks of sitting in the dark and sleeping as much as humanly possible…I wrote it.

I stood at the end of my bed and looked down at the folded pieces of college ruled notebook paper and thought to myself “if I actually send this to my family, my life is over. The next step is to mail this letter.”

I sobbed. I somehow had just put my own suicide into motion. I’d always found a reason not to die but suddenly I had rationalized killing myself and I had outlined every reason as to why on notebook paper. It was right there in front of me in black and white.

“I am simply a ghost from a bad past and I wish to haunt you no longer.”

“I am a burden.”

“I should relieve my loved ones of the stress that is my existence.”

“I am disappearing.”

This was exactly what I’d read about on all of those bullshit pamphlets in the hospitals. This was textbook suicidal behavior. What had been in my head stared back at me from the paper.

I had to decide. Where does this letter go next? My life hung in the balance.

Then my phone rang. It was one of my old friends from the Northeast. He had admitted to me that he’d been suicidal before and as my video loaded for the call, I began to cry.

“I wrote a suiucide letter.” I told him.

He looked serious. He seemed to understand.

i wiped snot from my nose and gasped for air. I needed someone to receive this letter. I was holding on by a thread.

“I can’t send this to my family but I need to get it out.”

He shook his head yes and gave me life saving instructions “Read it to me. Then rip it up. Let it out. Then throw that shit out. Let it go.”

My hands shook as I read the three pages of my last will and testament to my life. I thanked him and I ripped it into as many pieces as I could.

He stayed on the video call with me until the next morning. The sun rose and I was still alive. I couldn’t continue to sleep and I couldn’t continue to live in the dark. I had to shake things up in order to find the inspiration to continue to live. I couldn’t die because well, I had no letter to mail to anyone.

I placed another call to a year long friend, whom I’d never met in person before. The entity from internet had been drinking but seemed to somehow know that I was in crisis without me saying much. “Don’t you live on a lake?” I had remembered seeing photos of him kayaking and boating on social media.

He drunkenly retorted “Yeah and I got a fucking jetski. You should come out here. Fuck the bullshit. I will book your trip. I need some company.”

“Sure.”

I had a one way greyhound ticket for the following day and I began to pack what I could into two suitcases. I grabbed my smallest guitar and tossed on my cowboy boots.

I was headed for the lake…indefinitely.

My only plan: stay alive.