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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.

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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.

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Not even a piggybank. Sadface.

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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?

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No, you don’t need to know what I’m going to do with it.

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Posting this for Shing to get the #@*&%! bug off the front page. Love ya, girlfriend!

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I HAZ A CATERPIGGLE

Real life is kicking my butt lately, pure and simple. Due to business not picking up the way the bosses told us it would’ve by now, I’m having some very serious financial struggles at this time. This contributes directly to such things as deepening depression, periodic Internet and electricity shutdowns due to non-payment of bills, and more time spent away from home attempting to secure additional income and possibly a backup roof over my head in the event that the rent becomes unpayable, all of which in turn has led to me not updating my doofy little photocomic.

I sincerely apologize for the lack of communication; when times are tough like this, I always have a tendency to withdraw into my shell and avoid human contact, but it occurs to me that this long-standing habit of mine has never actually served any useful purpose and is probably only making things worse. So, those of you who are still reading: I’m sorry. I’m having a rough time right now. I appreciate everyone who keeps checking in, sending notes, and leaving comments. I’ll try to at least post some pictures, even if I can’t get it together enough to scrape a conversation onto them, but I’m thinking things won’t be back to normal here for at least another week or two.

Finally, in the (admittedly unlikely) event that you’re not feeling the sting of the current Economic Fun Times and you want to throw me a bone, I do have a PayPal donate button on the About/FAQ page. If you send me your mailing address along with a few dollars, I’ll get a hi-res photo print to you with a love note from me on the back. Or, you can buy prints directly from my gallery on ImageKind.

Again, apologies for the radio silence. I’ll try to do better.

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Of course you don’t, officer.

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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.