Where do we break? Between composure and infantile wailing? Euphoria and irritability? Comfort and pain? The pain that pushes you to the point where suicide makes sense. The threshold is lower in us. They try to raise it with pills and therapy and sunshine, so it can’t easily be breached, but it dangles over me, just out of my reach.
I jump for it over and over, wishing I had longer arms or legs. Sometimes I’m weighted down and can barely get off the ground. And if I’m lucky it soars out of sight and I am happy to not have it rest so close to my head.
That line, that threshold, the difference in us is that we see it. Discuss the risk and benefit, what society won’t admit. This makes us real. We do not pretend it is out of reach, that breakdown, that violence, that final breath. We know it is closer to us, our eyes are open.
Admitting it’s existence pushes the breaking point a bit further away. But it is still near. There is comfort where there is pain. It’s an angel and devil, not so far away. That lower threshold, some of us reach it anyway.
americandenial 