Delicious but deadly. But at least I smell tasty, which is almost worth second-degree burns and doing everything one-handed with the wrong hand. Also, Percocet.
Archive for ‘Comics’
Wedged in a prison I entered of my own free will, I look around my cell and wonder, in a largely-ignored corner of my mind, why I consistently do this to myself. As the walls close in, reducing my available options with every passing day, I stubbornly refuse to look up. An oubliette’s opening is always at the top, the way you came in the only means of escape. Surrounded by the bones of all my previous failures, I keep my eyes fixed on the floor. “I can make my own way out,” I growl through aching, grinding teeth. “I can do this myself.” The words belie the reality; I’m here, again, because I spoke without thinking, again, leapt before I looked, again. Now I sit here muttering, “I meant to do that,” which nobody ever believes, not even me. The inevitable approaches, openly, with no stealth or camouflage, calmly making its inexorable way towards me. I watch, mutely, as I always have before.
Have you ever taken a vacation or a road trip, and it was so awesome you didn’t want it to be over? Did you try to extend it, keep driving around for a while, stay an extra week? Maybe you knew it was time to go home, but you just didn’t want to face it after all the fun you had. Were you in denial about your responsibilities, about the reality that all good things must come to an end?
Have you ever been in a relationship that was great for a while but suddenly turned sour? Did you tell yourself you could work it out, keeping the water swirling around the edge of the drain like a roulette wheel, refusing to let the ball drop?
Have you ever avoided going to the doctor or the dentist even though you knew you needed to?
Have you ever watched a creeping fungus gradually kill a favorite tree?
Have you ever seen the end coming towards you like a heat-seeking missile and told yourself you can dodge it until it runs out of steam and everything will be okay?
Have you ever refused to admit that you’ve failed, you’ve lost, that it’s over and it’s your own fault?
Posting this for Shing to get the #@*&%! bug off the front page. Love ya, girlfriend!
I still think about killing myself.
I’m medicated now, have been for a little while. I don’t like to talk about it, not because it’s embarrassing (it’s not), but because for very good reason I’m an extremely private person and there are people in my life (and people who used to be in my life) who I’d frankly rather didn’t know. They’ll see this and they’ll know now, and it really doesn’t matter.
I’ve been medicated before, many times, many different drugs. They gave me Prozac when I was fourteen and the hairline scars on my forearm give testimony to how well that worked. (Fun fact: Shards of glass from a broken lampshade cut through skin like a scalpel with almost no pain.) They tried other things on me, none of which ever had a noticeable positive result. People repeatedly told me to keep trying, usually giving up on me after chirpily deciding that I wasn’t making an effort.
The pills I’m currently taking had an immediate and shocking effect on me: I actually felt good. I suddenly got a job, started going outside and enjoying my hobbies, lost weight, began repairing fractured relationships and making new ones, went back to church and got involved in ministry again, and succeeded in muscling through various roadblocks that would previously have sent me hurtling into a dark corner. I still have problems, like paying the bills and not getting on my boss’s (very broad) bad side, but I have a good, stable life.
When I lie in bed at night, I imagine being stabbed in the chest by an intruder with a very big knife. I imagine putting a bullet through my brain at just the right angle to prevent me from living on in a persistent vegetative state. Driving home from work on the Interstate, I imagine revving up my car to ramming speed and crossing the median as soon as I see an eighteen-wheeler or, better yet, a car hauler.
I imagine getting fired — a fear my boss likes to cultivate among all the employees — and calmly driving my car into the Peace River at sunset. This particular ideation actually terrifies me, the thought of a slow death by drowning and my last suffocating moments being saturated with panic, but it comes into my mind whenever I make a big enough mistake on the job and think, “Well, this could be it.”
I don’t think about my loved ones when these notions intrude. Guilt trips, whether internal or external, stopped working on me years ago. (Seriously, don’t try it. You’ll be moved into the “Don’t Confide” column.) I sometimes think about God, but I know where I’m going when I die. I imagine the crash, the home invasion, the gunshot, and I have a vague sensation of “This will probably hurt.” With the exception of the car in the body of water scenario, none of these thoughts scare me. It’s probably a side effect of the meds, a flattening of the affect, presumably.
I don’t think about it all the time. I don’t talk about it, because I can’t afford to pay the hospital and ambulance bill if a well-meaning loved one decides they just can’t take the chance that I might hurt myself again. (Funny how people’s consciences aren’t legal tender, no?) I write about it once in a while, pray about it when I remember to.
After all these years, it might simply be habit. Like how I still don’t own a toaster even though I could afford to buy one, because I spent all those years being broke and denying myself all but the most crucial of purchases. I got so used to never being able to afford anything that it doesn’t even occur to me that I could buy a toaster. And I’ve wanted to kill myself my whole life.
I’m not going to do it, but I still think about it.
Comment: “Serious question: how is this considered a comic? It’s just text overtop of an unrelated background.” — Re: Produce
Reddit utterly baffles me at times. Some of the stuff I submit that I think is really funny gets downvoted to oblivion, while other stuff that I submit thinking “meh” is unaccountably popular. In this case, I got a surprising number of upvotes, and this particular individual found it as baffling as I did. Oh well.
Comment: “You’re unquestionably correct with this one..” — Re: Tales of the BossLady: And They Say I’m Oversensitive (cont’d)
I’m sure I am, but personal affirmations from scumbag SEO peddlers do not provide me with a whole lot of joy. Yawn.
Comment: “I really like your website.. extremely wonderful colours & theme. Did you create this web site yourself? Plz reply again as I’m looking to create my own web site and would like to know wheere u obtained this from. many thanks” — Re: Mealy Combat
You would think someone trying to sell Diablo III software would have more of an eye for design, specifically an eye for the fact that I pretty much used no design whatsoever in laying out this site.
Comment: “An interesting communicating is designer account. I imagine that you should compose more on this issue, it power not be a inhibition master but generally group are not enough to communicate on much topics. To the succeeding. Cheers like your CMcL – Spam and Eggs: Thirty-Ninth Course.” — Re: Spam and Eggs: Thirty-Ninth Course
Ahhh, now that’s the kind of totally incomprehensible spam casserole that I’ve missed. To the succeeding! (I wonder if that’s like “Qapla’!” translated into Esperanto and then back into English.)