A live hummingbird
Every morning, I drive to school underneath a tangle of telephone wires. As my car zips down the straight-a-ways and clacks through the curves, the wires eventually open up to a view of the althetic fields. I pull to a stop a short walk from the school on a residential road, exchange some harsh words with my brother, try not to trip over the pink bicycle left in the sidewalk, and march into school under the ominously tattered American flag.
Around ten minutes earlier, I've just dragged myself from a tangle of sheets and blankets and cat to the shower. I manage to stay in bed as long as possible - I mentally plot my path from shower to dresser to refridgerator and then car. It's infinitely harder to drag myself from bed on Mondays than later in the week, but only because clean sheets are more inviting than anything on the planet. When my bed is neatly arranged and fresh and the rest of the house is rousing into chaos, it makes sense to stay in bed as long a possible.
One morning, I woke up earlier than usual. Through the fog, I could see the sun out my window. It glowed red, and hung so low and north on the horizon that I was surprised. Suddenly, the sun shut off. I shocked myself awake enough to sit up. "The sun couldn't have gone out!" I thought. "It just can't do that, it will be cold here." I strained my eyes to see through the fog. Off in the distance, the sun was beginning to rise.
My sleep addled brain slowly comprehended that what I thought was the sun had only been a street lamp, shutting itself off in the wake of the real sun. I was still sleepy, and thought "How sad it would be if that sun died out. We'd be in a lot of trouble." Early in the morning, I think that the obvious is a great leap of reasoning and brilliance.
I called a suicide hotline in late December - only a few days before starting this journal. For months, I had been asleep, and woke to realize what an awful state I was in. It was like watching the sun shut off. I slagged through the last weeks of school before vacation, and thought that Christmas break would fix everything.
Got home from school today and kept waiting to feel better. I kept waiting, cause all week i've been just saying "If I make it through this week, I'll have vacation and I'll recover and I'll be alright" But I got home and started to feel oppresively sad. My dad got home and started commanding us about the chores we had to do, snapping at me for stealing his Chet Baker cd, yelling about the clothes and the dust and the mess everywhere, my grandmother's gonna be here in two hours and the house is a wreck.
And I almost started to cry in front of him, but I crawled inside my closet and curled up and started weeping. Nothing poetic about being curled up in the closet between plastic organizers and polyester prom dresses. I felt him moving about with the vacuum cleaner; arhythmically like a rodent.
I've thought about suicide a fair ammount, but I figure everyone has. I've never thought about it in terms of myself until I was in my closet. Coldly and analytically.
I had no plan. I had bought no razors or pills, nor had I set a time or place. When I told the sickly sweet voice on the opposite end of the hotline this, I felt like I was causing a false alarm. As though I wasn't really suicidal, as though bad thoughts weren't enough to warrant the phone call. The woman coaxed me into giving the phone to my parents.
They wrapped me up with blankets and tea and psychiatry. I've read since that it's still serious, even if you haven't lined up a date and bought sleeping pills. Thinking about shutting down your life means that you aren't necessarily in any immediate danger, but still have a truck load of unresolved issues. When I met with the psychiatrist, within an hour I felt perceptibly better.
Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint where the depression originally sprang from. I'm still not completely sure, but that isn't what's important anymore. It was acute, and now it's over. I know where I am going to be next year. Even if it's ten minutes before school starts, I haul myself out of bed. I start books even though I know that I'm going to finish them. I row and row, stitching small waves in the river. The sun has not shut off, and I'm not hurtling desolate through space.
I've been meaning to write this journal entry since the beginning, and I couldn't bring myself until now. I decided I'd write about this in History the other day, actually. Instead of bothering to pay attention, I sketched out a rough draft. I didn't feel like pulling it out; I was too sore and sleepy from crew practise to move much.
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I went driving today. I passed a woman trimming her hedges and tending her garden. Only it wasn't a garden - it was a patch of barren earth and a hedge of dying twigs. A step away from her was Hillside Liquor, followed by Sal's Package store, and then the house without a roof. I watched the way she threw her back into the work. She was the most vigorous thing in the entire stretch of earth.
I thought about it. I drove around more, and watched for people tending their lawns. A woman looking on proudly at her daffodils - although she probably had little to do with the yellow blooms. Many men riding lawn mowers, many men pushing lawn mowers, many men exhaustedly staring at the hedges and gardens. All of them, even if their garden was scraggly and grey and littered with the hints of poverty, were so proud.
2000-04-08, Sad entry
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