Have you ever wondered?

TW/CW: Suicide/self-harm/mental health

Have you ever wondered what happens when we die? I mean, we all have. But, have you ever held a knife, looking at the blade or watched an train flash past, trying to work out how fast it was going and wondered what happens when we die? Felt like you were that close to death, because you felt like you wanted it for you and wondered what happens next. What would it be like? As if, somehow, what happens is different if you do it to yourself. Like, I don’t know, you get to watch everything that unfolds next if you do it to yourself. Watch how people react as if it were some sort of Netflix show where you’re both the main character and strangely absent from the entire show. 

Have you ever wondered whether you’d do it if you could watch what happened next? And then, perhaps crucially, get to decide whether you made a mistake. Whether, actually, you should not have done it because people did care or, maybe actually because no one did so what was the point. Not because it was a cry for attention, no it never is. No, it would have been just a cry. Into the abyss. Into the nothingness that was all consuming, that suffocated, that made you feel like you had no choice. Maybe you do not want to die. Maybe you just want to stop feeling and because all you want is to stop feeling, once you’ve stopped feeling you want to know what happens next, what’s that like, how does that, well, feel? Not feeling. Just for a moment. Just for long enough to breathe and not have your chest feel heavy. 

Have you ever wondered how people would react? If they’d wonder how they could have stopped it. Because obviously they’d want to have stopped it, right? If they’d blame themselves when really it wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it wasn’t even your fault. You just needed everything to stop. For a moment but that isn’t an option, it doesn’t work like that, why does it not work like that, you need it to work like that. Just for a moment. You don’t want anyone to be sad. Hell, you don’t want to die, not really, you just want it to stop. But you don’t know what ‘it’ really is, so everything has to stop but if everything stops then, well, everything stops and you don’t think you want that, not really. So you don’t. But, you think about it. 

Because I have.