THE BIG SLIP

by Lisa

I don’t know what it’s like to want to die, but a part of my mind that doesn’t speak in words spent a while nudging me.  Bump, bump, bump, it’s not worth the effort, you are causing harm to people you love, look what you let happen to your child on your watch. Bump, bump, shove.

While I still don’t know what it’s like to want to die, I do know I took up arms for myself in that internal battleground. My real gun, a .38 revolver, sat, still sits, on my desk at work. A conversation began between me and my gun and the hateful, silent, rarely acknowledged part of surviving another Thing.

It went like this: “I will not kill myself today. So there.”

In the timeline of the conflict, when Vicodin was no longer my only familiar, my silent-mind told me in our private hateful language that I did not need to bother to finish that semester, or that degree, or even the day, because the world is a terrible place and people do terrible things, and all the love I thought I saw in the world was bullshit.

I went back after one week. My child thrives. My partner who opened his home to me still loves me, and I know how to love him.

So there.

The next day and the next day and the next day, I sneered at the real gun and told the silence to stay in hell where it belonged. And I didn’t tell a soul about that promise I made to myself every day, sometimes all day.

I did not want to die, and I managed to avoid it. Just wanting to live and having good reasons to keep going and having a good sort of life didn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t slip in my own mud. I could pat myself on the back for shushing the bad in my head, for getting the kind of help that was real help, for living to raise my beautiful child, or for embracing a life full of love instead of allowing the despair to learn a louder language. All I did was not slip.

Anthony Bourdain killed himself in the middle of filming in Paris. Was it Paris? How could it have been in Paris with his dear friend in tow and so much to see and do and teach us? I thought that this man would be different, an example of how to put the big guns down and carry a watery can of pepper spray, or maybe just another warm can of beer in the Mekong Delta.

Sometimes, we slip, even in the perfect pair of cowboy boots.