To Dream as a Coward
Make me brave, so that I may live for the first time.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicidal ideation and imagery.
I wake up, and I’m angry. I rub my eyes and wish they’d never opened. I make my bed and I dream of my grave. I brush my teeth and avoid looking at my face in the mirror. Sometimes I do try and smile at myself, as everyone says to, and in return for my smile my face gets to wear embarrassment for a while. I get dressed and I wish for a pair of magical scissors to cut away all the flesh I deem ugly and abominable. I leave my room and I prepare for this particular feeling to hit me square in the chest. I don’t think I can truly put a name to the feeling, but imagine walking into a room full of people and you are watched and ignored at the same time. They see you there, and in their kindness they must hold back their disgust from showing. They cannot stand the sight of you, your existence within their space like a rotten apple core amongst gold jewellery. Though I am aware my own mind must be responsible for the majority of the time I feel this way, it doesn’t help that I approach each new person and environment with the mindset that I have already been marked as undesirable in every possible meaning of the word.
Often I think this one singular thought, “If only this life belonged to someone brave enough to actually live it.” I think of everyone with a fire roaring within their souls, a drive to live louder than the most calamitous thunder, yet forced to submit to the whims of fate. Sickness, accidents, cruelty and hatred swinging a scythe upon their souls. I think of them and I feel a desperate longing to be able to give them this life, my life. To extend theirs and make this time that I’ve been handed worthwhile. Well spent. Maybe if they had this life, they’d actually reach out and grab at their desires. Their pursuit for happiness would carve a path through the densest boulder, and they’d be brave in the face of fear, loss, and abandonment. They would be grateful for this life.
I think of this hypothetical person that could be living my life, and I hate myself for not even being able to visualize becoming them. I feel immensely guilty that I have so many resources available to me that would allow me my happiness but I am not brave enough to use them. I’m wasting this life and I’m wasting all of these resources that so many people would kill for. I feel so exhausted just thinking of what it would take for genuine peace and happiness to become visible in my line of sight. I don’t want to do the work. I don’t want to have to choose between my family or the person I wish to be. I don’t want to be ridiculed and humiliated and abandoned and I don’t want to be lonelier. I don’t see a way through that doesn’t leave me miserable in some way or form, and I don’t have the strength in me to trudge through that misery until eventually I find contentment.
I’ve been passively suicidal for a good chunk of my life. I dreamt of death the first time my mother found out that I liked girls. I was probably 13 or 14, and it scared me. Her face and her wrath, even before I had to face it, terrified me enough for me to look to death for comfort. Since then, I’ve treated death as a haven I could flee to. Recently though, it seems even death has had enough of me. There is a horrible guilt in my heart when I think of dying, a guilt I know would stop the knife before it has a chance to cut through. When I’m driving back home, my eyes glance towards poles and railings by the side of the highway and gruesome films play in my mind of a wrecked car, burning and unsalvageable, and I indulge myself. My hands will never turn the wheel towards any of those poles or railings, but the image of flames consuming metal and flesh remains a small respite. Even in my imagination I picture the faces that my death would dampen with tears, my baby sister whose life has just begun and which would be doused in unspeakable sadness, and I know instantly I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. It’s unfair, so now instead, I play with this make-belief version of my life where I fake my own death to stay alive. Laying in bed, I weave the threads of fantasy and wrap this tapestry around myself as I drift off to sleep.
In this life, a secret underground organization seeks suicidal people and employs them. It helps them get away cleanly and start anew, and the work they do is good and helpful. They need people who have no ties to anything else, clean slates with nothing to lose. We have no identity anymore, and so we cause no risk. It's a wonderful dream to me, and on nights that particularly awaken my hatred for my current life, it’s an incredibly wonderful escape. I have little to no guilt in this life, the people who used to know me believe I died tragically in an accident that could have happened to anyone. I live in an army bunker-esque situation but I feel at home. Everyone around me understands exactly what I’ve gone through, that’s the only reason they’d be there in the first place. We are all people desperate to live but forced to merely survive, and it’s a home I’ve craved for all time. I am finally able to access the healthcare I need, the surgeries I need, and this time when I cautiously throw a smile into the mirror I’m met with a face that looks beautiful, handsome, for the first time. I get to meet a girl, and she gets to meet a boy, and between us something sweet and soft takes root. What had taken root then grows and grows and suddenly I’m 35 years old and my wife is calling out to me from the living room and I am smiling and walking over to her. All our friends are over, this little family we’ve constructed out of heartache and longing. Our kid is being fussy and I take over, my heart so full of love and warmth for each atom building up this moment. The alarm rings and my stomach lurches with grief. I wake up, and I’m angry.
I’m not really sure what this was supposed to be, I think it ended up being just a way to vent about some stuff that’s been on my mind for a while. It’s incredibly frustrating to be passively suicidal, and there’s no real way sometimes to ease that frustration either, especially when something like therapy isn’t an option. This is probably quite a grim read, but I am trying to figure my life out, I don’t have anything else to do. Maybe things will change, and 10 years down the line I’ll look back at this and feel utter shock that I used to feel this way. I hope that’s what happens. I will always keep hoping it ends up that way. Reader, if you relate to this, I hope tomorrow is a good day for you, that you feel comfortable in your body and skin, and that your mirror makes you smile. Everyone says it gets better, let’s keep waiting until it does.
"We are all people desperate to live but forced to merely survive" speaks volumes. Thank you for sharing this.