Tunnel

The dreaded day approaches. Daffodils on the table gainsay the impending ending, as they did 24 years ago and every year since. For many years I couldn't bear the sight of them. And every year at this time there's this awful alternation between days with spring woven through them, new light, new warmth, more and louder birdsong, birds with things in their beaks; and days of terminal bleakness like today, when the sun is not even close to showing its face, my feet are cold, it drizzles all day, the sky is pale grey and sullen, everything screams ending and dying and the abandoning of hope. I am always shocked on the late February days that speak of spring, that this was the time when he did it. Now, just when hope seems to be returning. And then there's a day like today...

And today I weep, and today I know the lure, the magnetism of the day and those that lead me towards it, the twenty-somethings of February, of the path into the darkness, from which there is no returning. The lure of being close to my father, of trying to follow him there, to find a kind of video playback inside my mind of the inside of his mind on that morning. But I am not not not going to follow him there, on his last journey, and although I don't believe in anything in particular after death, as all I know is that I don't know, I find I can draw a shred of comfort from the idea (thankyou G) he might in some sense be here beside me, and want to help me continue to find the way not to go there. Help me find ways it could get easier (as over the years it has, except on days like today).

Killing yourself is a long-term project, even when no-one knows you're engaged in it. It doesn't just happen on the day the trigger is pulled, the blade wielded, the pills swallowed, the platform jumped off. There are so many small ways to kill yourself day on day, to silence your anger, swallow your hurt, squash your protest, override your instincts. Year on year. Decade after decade. So many ways then to feel dead, leaden, empty, hopeless, exhausted. Until only food and drink and sleep seem to bring any comfort, any relief, and even the tiniest hurt becomes a weeping sore, and no-one knows how much pain you are in and how alone you are, and you can't tell them, and eventually it is not to be borne, and becoming the instrument of your own end appears logical, and humane. Inevitable. That's how far I can follow. A book I read when researching my dissertation on suicide and self-destructive behaviour talked about mistaking a tunnel for a stope (a horizontal working in a mine - in other words a tunnel with only one end). Always, I must always remember that when I am in the darkness I am in a tunnel, and there is always light to be found (eventually) at the other end. Some tunnels are long, though.