When I was seven years old, I found a body on the beach. It lay their, skin bloated and lips purple. I called to my mother and she took me away and told me not to look.
I asked her why the man washed up on our beach. It seemed as though she didn’t want to tell me. She put me on her lap and said,
“This man was very sad and lonely. He had no place to call home and no love of his own so he jumped off the bridge”. At the time I couldn’t grasp the concept of suicide.
Five years later I was crying in my room.
I asked myself why demons are evil, why did they choose to be this way when I eat myself alive if I’ve even remotely hurt another human being. I forgot how to feel.
And when I stayed home from school for a week nobody noticed. Why would they? I was just sick.
I asked myself why the rain had to fall. Why it swamped the Earth and drowned the good. I asked why I was here.
I was a disappointment. As if it wasn’t enough for me to feel as though I was one, I was constantly yelled at by the man who raised me for things I didn’t even do, crimes I didn’t even commit. In eighth grade he screamed at the top of his lungs and got red in the face with his “I GET SAD SOMETIMES TOO BUT YOU DON’T SEE ME CUTTING MY ******* WRISTS!”
There was no reasoning with him. He didn’t understand that there was nothing driving my sadness that was physical. He didn’t understand that sadness can spawn from deep within your soul and make even the sunniest days seem dark and gloomy. He didn’t understand depression. He didn’t understand me.
After the third of fourth time he caught me I blew up.
I asked him why a slap is accepted as discipline and why yelling is considered a form love. I asked him why HIS GOD would make me this way if it were a sin. That’s where his god ****** up.
And I asked why my wounds couldn’t heal with a band-aid and why the sun doesn’t shine on me anymore and why the days grow longer each day. I asked why the birds didn’t sing anymore and why I couldn’t lift myself out of bed in the morning because I felt as though someone sat on my chest. I asked him simple questions.
I asked why it was so easy to break apart razor blades and why he kept the pills in plain sight even when he knew how I was. I asked why nooses were so easy to tie and why he never came to get me when I was still in bed at 6:38 pm.
I asked him why the sound of me puking my guts out wasn’t recognizable from his bedroom. I asked him why he let me do this two myself THREE TIMES already without even maybe CONSIDERING the possibility that there was something wrong. My first trip to the hospital was when they had to PUMP MY STOMACH because of all the pills I swallowed. He kept them in a nice little cabinet in the bathroom with a lock on the door.
He told the doctor he hadn’t seen any sign and she asked WHY THERE WERE CUTS ON MY WRISTS WITHOUT HIM KNOWING.
Simple questions were asked.
“Why are you sad?”
“How long has this gone on for?”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
To this I LAUGHED I LAUGHED AT THEIR QUESTIONS BECAUSE I NEVER BOTHERED WEARING SHORT SLEEVES AND MY FATHER SAW HOW MUCH TYLENOL I WOULD TAKE TO MANAGE THE PAIN AND HE FOUND THE BLADES BUT SIMPLY TOLD ME TO DISCARD OF THEM BUT LITTLE DID HE KNOW THAT THERE WERE MUCH MORE THINGS IN THE HOUSE THAT WERE MUCH SHARPER.
I asked them why the man jumped off the bridge and why that wasn’t an acceptable option anymore.