After years of watching my patterns of self-sabotage and depression, I finally started laughing at myself.
Every winter I plan my suicide.
I first do something really fucked up to make me hate myself.
Then I begin my annual hibernation diet of Fritos and Cheez Wiz
so I can be smelly, fat and oily and hate myself even more.
I call my friends Robert up ‘cause he’s the only one I know
who’s always more fucked up than me.
He’s happy to hear from me.
We wallow together through the pawn shops,
discussing all the morbid possibilities.
Robert checks out the daggers.
I go right for the revolvers.
The guy behind the desk get turned on,
which makes me feel temporarily powerful and in control of my life again.
”How much?” I ask.
He gives me a price.
“You can’t commit suicide with that!” Robert slurs.
“It’s so fucking phallic!”
The guy pulls out another.
I put it to my head and ask my friend what he thinks.
“Better,” he says. “We need more beer.”
We leave the pawn shop.
I’ve never actually left with a gun.
I once remember an old boyfriend jokingly holding a loaded gun to my head though.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “My dad never leaves any bullets in it.”
But when I go to push his arm away the thing goes off,
shooting a bullet right through the curtains and the wall of the house.
I remember the two of us just sitting there on the bed laughing hysterically,
driving in silence to buy new drapes
and plaster to cover the hole in his parent’s bedroom.
Other than that little episode, I mostly just imagine shooting myself in the head,
lying in a pool of blood, my cerebral steak hanging out of my caved in skull.
I say to myself, “I could go to the bank on my lunch hour,
pick up a gun on my way home from work and be dead by dinner.
Blowing my brains out is my preferential choice of suicide
because it’s both violent and precise, like hate.
And as long as I hate myself I stay in control.
With razor blades and pills, you never know.
But with a gun you can be sure it’s pretty much a done deal.
I also like the idea of blowing my brains out
because it’s my mind that gives me the most trouble.
It says, “Get a job!” one minute
and “You’re selling your soul doing this shit!” the next.
It whispers, “Take off your clothes and throw them out the window!”
only to yell “Fool!” as I sit butt naked at the light.
Maybe that’s why we all love getting inebriated.
Maybe we’re trying to kill our brain cells on purpose
so we won’t be able to think so fucking much.
Maybe it’s part of the heart’s bigger plan to take over the head.
Maybe I’m not so depressed and confused after all.
I just need to stop taking my serious thoughts so seriously.
