(From Sept. 7, 2004)

 

Asking the same question today: might I perish from unhappiness? Is it possible? If I let go will no one dare follow? With what little words could I hope to lure them to this same piteous end? Even I loathe myself and would walk the other way.

 

Kill! (Who said that?) For time is killing. Kill yourself because you fear to hurt anyone else. Too much legality. Perhaps? Or does it not allow one to be sufficiently self-absorbed? Homicide, no matter from what angle, is always about someone else. Suicide: now that exposes true strength, will, the most disturbed of psyches. It breaches the very laws of nature. Murder of another does not.

 

I went for a swim today. How nice the water and stretch of my young fibers suspended above cool depths. The slide of filaments thrills as all release and I expand; they pull together and I contract. I smiled today and knew peace.

 

Now as I sit down to write, the sun is setting. No warmth in September’s lake after dusk. Darkness within crawls up my spine to hunch low in the brain. This sickness is maddeningly slow. The mind is a trap. Not like steel jaws to catch quick wolves. Snap and it’s over. She is a cleverly designed labyrinth. We lose ourselves and think to hear from a voice like God one constant imperative:

Run mousie. Run!