By Fiore Amore
Content warning: mentions of suicide, self harm
I’ve spent nine whole years of my life wanting to kill myself and by god, I did it.
“Finally! Suck my dick, corporeal being! You don’t mean a goddamn thing to me.”
Or so I thought. Funny thing: I was entirely prepared for there to be no afterlife. I cried out for the void, to be swallowed by it, to once and forever escape the drudgery of life.
The slight complication here is that Hell is not only real but just another psych ward. Guess who’s been involuntarily committed! Yours truly. Can you hear the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme yet?
I swear to you: it’s a picture-perfect replica. You’ve got the puzzle crew, Dennis and James, assembling endless fruit baskets. Amelia and Deborah just got supervised knitting privileges. Old George is in the quiet corner, reading a donated Don Quixote. Plenty of black coffee and peach yogurt for everyone’s troubles, too.
It’s snowing outside.
I can repeat the schedule to you again, verbatim. 6:00am, the nurse comes in for my vitals check, and I promptly fall back asleep. 9:00am, I wake up and have breakfast. Oatmeal, I always get the oatmeal. 10:00am, morning check-in. My depression’s 4, anxiety’s 4, dietary restriction 2, suicidal ideation 1, self-harm 1… you know the drill. 11:00am free time, followed by lunch at noon: the prime reading hour, Tolkien lives in fear of me. Yoga. Group therapy. More reading. Dinner. Evening meds, still not a single xanax this side of the Mississippi. They’re showing a movie tonight—oh look, The Birdcage! And then to bed. Rinse and repeat. I’ve never stopped sleeping.
The devil himself is a 5’5” psychiatrist by the name of Andrew Slater. Every check-in is more vapid than the last, one long process of mutual incomprehension.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Like a raging dumpster fire, same as yesterday and every day from here ‘til the end of time.”
“How’s the Lamictal treating you?”
“I’m covered in rashes and feel like a castaway leper, dying beside a Venetian canal.”
“We’ll get you off that then.”
My diagnosis is the same as ever: major depression, severe. Never mind everything else, one SSRI after another trying and failing to correct the uncorrectable. No hope in hell for my ilk, the perennial patients and designated dysfunctionals.
When was Christmas?
My best friends here are the trains, screaming endlessly into the night outside my window. How I long to be like them—always on track, no time to brood, just point A to point B all over the great expanse of North America. One day I want to snake through the Rockies and across the plains, down along Appalachia and up again past Moosehead Lake before finally settling for a nice break in Montréal, musing over a smoke and the world’s second-most-famous bagel before tomorrow sends me off again.
In my dreams live the voices of angels and demons (what’s the difference?) racing as if to give Dale a run for his money on those left turns, consulting on everything and nothing. I am met with a barrage of infinite meaning I cannot parse and will not remember.
The cycle continues. 6:00am, vitals check, fall back asleep. 9:00am, I have breakfast. Oatmeal, always oatmeal, cinnamon spice. 10:00am, my depression’s 4, anxiety’s 4, dietary restriction 2, suicidal ideation 1, self-harm 1…
Wait, what do you mean I’m getting out after lunch?
I need a drink.
