I’ve had this post in draft mode for days but I figured the NSA would probably take it for a suicide note. Not that they’d do anything about it … but, you know, I’m sure it would be in a giant file on me somewhere and could bite me in my pudgy pork roast butt when I least expect it.
But anyway, Paris Jackson. My heart breaks for her because I completely get her suicide attempt. She apparently swallowed 20 Motrin and took a meat cleaver to her wrists.
When I was her age, I took half a bottle of Excedrin. I got a really good sleep and had a migraine for the next three days as I came out of it. No one knew. I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone about that. I was just so sick of the bullying and bullshit of high school that I really didn’t see the point of going there every day to be existentially tormented.
If someone had told me that working for a living was the same way, I would have taken the whole bottle and finished the job!
Anyway, the kid got committed to a mental ward. She may still be under her psychiatric hold. I don’t know. I assume it was a cry for help — I think it happened on the four-year anniversary of her dad’s death. Which is still a clusterfuck in all of our minds. I can only imagine being young and confused and publicly tormented simply for being who she is — a beautiful reminder of what was good about her famous dad’s life.
But, institutionalization.
That’s what happens when someone comes out alive when they didn’t mean to — you get the “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” cuffs.
We as a society declare them as absolutely nuts, and brand them for life as mentally ill. The smarter among us pinpoint it as one time in their lives that they experienced mental illness. But I feel bad that the kid is going to have this mark against her for life.
I don’t get that. I think if you are aware enough of what you’re doing … that you understand this life is ephemeral and you want to get back to your Source where everything is perfect and you need/want for nothing … who’s to say you’re not the sane one and the rest of us who keep enduring all this crap aren’t the crazy ones?
I had a hard week. Not suicidally hard. But hard nonetheless. I had a couple of flip-outs and was glad they weren’t witnessed. Yet I just wish somebody would ask sometimes.
By Friday afternoon when everyone was mad that my shit wasn’t done (last I checked, I was the only one who hung out till 8 p.m.), I was so calm, it wasn’t even funny. I just hadn’t been looking at the clock. I was too busy trying to pull everything together. All I can do is shrug and work a tiny bit faster.
Everyone else was trying to get home because of the thunderstorm in progress. Like, didn’t I care enough about myself to get out? (Everyone asks this of me.) As if I really wanted to have four hours’ worth of work ahead of me so that I’d have to make the drive in the dark. As if it’s up to me what can wait and what can’t.
I care about myself. More than everyone on this planet combined. I just … don’t know what to do.
I wish things could wait. I wish having a lunch meeting didn’t add two hours to the end of my day while everyone else frolicked home at 6. But I’ll never work in this town again if I don’t (and I don’t think I’ll work in this town again even if I do; this field is strange like that), so I guess I just wish people wouldn’t remind me that they have plans and care about their lives and I should make plans and care about my life too.
So, Paris. I give ya credit, girl. Maybe things will change for you. I hope they do. But I fear that all cries for help, whether in the form of pills or self-injury or public blog entries, just paint you as a liability when all you want is to make someone give you permission to care about/treat yourself with respect and reverence and love … the way you deserve. The way they don’t hesitate to treat themselves.