Suicide Machines.

When I am depressed, or freaking out, and I can't sleep, I fantacise about facets of suicide. (Let's not blow a gasket thinking I might be contemplating a move towards worm food--as much as there are some moments when these fantacies seem a solution, those moments pass and I've experienced enough of life to be wholly aware that things get better. And worse. And better again.) I was pondering, the other night, a theoretical machine that could replicate the physical feelings of various methods of suicide without the actual act. For instance, I think it would be quite soothing to go through the process of loosing the blood from my wrists. Or to ingest a million sleeping pills. There would be a problem, though, and that is for it to work fully, the brain would have to believe it were happening; be tricked into the pain, seeing the blood, etc. This could cause some pretty serious psychological trauma, I'm sure. And some Flatliners shit would probably go down. I do not want to have to face any of my demons in that manner, no thank you.

Last night I dreamt (that somebody loved me [titter]), in that lucid almost dreaming phase where you still have full control but you're so on the cusp of sleep it feels like it's actually happening, that Andy was in bed with me. That he died, for no obvious reason, in his sleep. I woke to his cooling, stiffening body, and had the clearest of mind about it. Got up, went to several stores where I purchased otc sleeping pills, came home, took a shower, wrote a blog that doubled as my will (which I think I'm actually going to do cuz it super freaks me out that there's nothing written down that indicates my wishes and I definitely don't want my mother taking the reins on that; she's already stated if I go before her she's gonna put me in a pink frilly dress and curl my hair, and I know for damn sure she isn't interested in who I am as a person or what would be a meaningful funeral/burial/wake for the people closest to me--it would all be ceremony for HER), then took a shit ton of pills and curled up next to Andy. Of course, this would turn into some kind of Sylvia Plath debacle, waking up moaning, covered in spiders in some god forsaken root cellar (are there god forsaken root cellars?), or I'd wake up in the emergency room with a giant fucking tube down my throat.

My idea of the perfect suicide involves months, even years with no sign of remains. A disappearing act. Crawling into a cave in the Arizona desert with a .38. Pills on an uninhabited island, somewhere. Or maybe no suicide at all, just the disappearing act.

I wouldn't want to kill myself because there's not a single person who would understand the motivation. My mother would take it incredibly personally. It would absolutely break my father's heart. I would be called horribly selfish, and that would be true. It's just not viable without upsetting everyone you love who loves you, and even a few who loathe you too (Christ, the people who loathe me, feeling guilty, like they had some hand in my demise [would that happen, or would they just nod and say they always expected it?], that would be disgusting). It's the escape that's tantalising. The freedom. But then there's the nagging, "What if there's an afterlife?" problem. God damn it.

Well, I guess I just won't be offing myself today.

My preferred way of dying involves being 85, in bed with my husband of fifty years and a carbon monoxide leak, btw. No one can get upset about that. Grandkids knew gran and pap pap well, we saw them through college, they've got kids of their own and we even kissed the foreheads of a few of 'em. A full life.

But then, it's times like this I wonder if that will ever be my life. And boy, that's a downer.