"I want to kill myself but I don't want to die."
"I don't know which I'm more afraid of: that one day I'll wake up with the will to kill myself, or that I never do."
"I don't wanna kill myself I just want kill the part of me that wants to kill myself."
My therapist said to discuss things with my inner child, but I don't think I was ready for the responses I'd get. You're supposed to use your adult mind and coping skills to appease your inner child so that you can really begin to heal. The problem is, I'm too fucked up. I don't have any coping skills and my adult brain is filled with all the ways I'm fucked up, and the world is fucked up.
"Why haven't you killed yourself," my inner child isn't supposed to be leading the conversation.
"Because I'm scared to."
"Why"
"The same reason you are."
"Aren't you too old to be afraid."
"Aren't you too young to be so eager to die."
"Aren't you?"
This arrogant little, I see why my grandmother was angry all the time. Or, maybe she was just depressed. Maybe she didn't know how to deal with her issues either. Maybe beating the shit out of me was her suicide? No, that's stupid, some people are just assholes. I don't know how to go through life without letting them dictate my mood.
"Do you want to play pirates?"
"What?"
"We used to love playing. You never play anymore."
"I guess we can play."
"Cool, we can play Pokemon next."
I wonder how this is helping at all as I swing my imaginary sword, at my imaginary inner child's imaginary sword and making loud pirate sounds. I don't know if this is the calming idea my therapist had in mind, because it certainly isn't calming. Distracting maybe, I don't know remember what we were discussing before this.
"It doesn't matter what we were discussing, we're doing this now," my inner child calls out between swings.
"Are you reading my mind?"
"I'm reading OUR mind," he taps his head with a finger.
"Then you know this isn't working right?"
"I don't know that."
"It's just a distraction from the issue at hand."
"What's the issue"
"That I want to blow my brains out."
"Now who's being an arrogant little asshole," he stares at me waiting for a response.
"So what do you suggest?"
"Nothing."
"That's not exactly an answer."
"But you already know the answer. You don't want to die."
"Yes, I do."
"You're just not happy. If you wanted to die, you'd have been thinking about it even when we were playing pirates."
"If I'm not happy, how do I become happy."
"Stop doing stuff you don't like, and start doing things you do like."
He makes it all sound so simple, as if I could just change my entire life tomorrow, on a whim. This is the guidance a child brings, my therapist must be out of his mind. I'm paying him to tell me to talk to my imaginary friend.
"I'm not imaginary, but I am a friend," he's lying on the ground staring at his hands now.
"What do you want from me?"
"Why do you lock yourself away from people all day?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"You sit in your office, with your door closed. You never talk to your coworkers, then you go home, never talk to your roommates, and keep the door closed. You don't go where people invite you and you never go anywhere new. Then you complain about how you're so lonely."
"I don't know."
"Yes you do. We haven't even had a girlfriend in a few years. Why are we so afraid of people."
"I guess, I don't really like people."
"Why not?"
"Because they're mean, they do bad things and they hurt."
"Not all people are bad. There's a lot of people that didn't hurt us. You just need to make some new friends."
"How do you do that?"
"Just go up to someone who looks cool, like they'd be part of your Power Rangers team, and ask them to play."
"You're an idiot."
"Takes one to know one."
"Approaching 26th and Longdear," the bus' alert informs me my stop is near.
"Same time next week?"
"Sure," he's gone before I realized what I agreed to.
Am I being held hostage by a figment of my imagination? Sure, I'm imagining a younger me, but still, a figment of my imagination. I do feel better, a little I don't know if I enjoy being chewed out by a younger me, but I'm not upset. I'm just crazy.
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