Content warning for explicit and detailed suicidal thoughts.

There’s a water tower behind my workplace that I’ve thought about flinging myself off of.

It’s rusted and covered in antennae and graffiti. I think about walking up to it sometimes and getting a closer look, just to see such a vintage structure up close, but I don’t. It feels a little too much like one step closer towards the plunge. I’ve thought about that plunge, about how my lungs would burn on the climb up, about the rust that would stick to my soft hands, about the break I might take to admire the view once I reached the top. I’ve thought about the swan dive down, about how my white lace cardigan would flutter in the wind, about how the ground would rise up to meet me in the penultimate high-five before the final embrace of the earth.

I don’t go see the water tower but I do glance at it sometimes. Admire the Nirvana spray painted next to a giant Honda logo. Trace the bare remnants of the city’s name. Think about the idea of falling.

My idea before that was a rope in the attic, either my home attic or the one at my previous workplace. The idea before that was opening my veins in my parents’ large bathtub. There have been many ideas in between—copying my dad’s plan of walking into the woods and never coming back out, swerving into oncoming traffic or off of high bridges, pounding my face against walls, running my car in an enclosed space, swallowing pills, squash, splat, bam, whap, boom.

The end.

I recognize now that it’s not normal for a teenager to be okay with getting hit by a bus and increasingly less okay for an adult to fantasize about rather than fear their own death. You have so much to live for. We love you. You have to live your life. You have to do something with your life. You don’t do enough. Why aren’t you doing more? Why aren’t you taking care of yourself? You have to take care of yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you. You have to. You have to. You have to.

Head in the oven. Rocks in the pockets and a walk in the river. Gun barrel in the mouth. Noose.  Drugs. Seppuku. The examples of my esteemed elders go on and on and on and on. Me? I contemplate rusted water towers beside churches. That’s poetic, in a way, isn’t it? Something about vessels of life-giving essence and a long fall from grace?

My suicide note would be the login passwords to my laptop and my various social media accounts so someone could tell my friends around the world what happened. There’s meaning in death. There’s bonding in losing someone. At last, she did something with her life. She made the tiniest divot of an impact—pun absolutely intended, assuming bone fractures concrete after falling fifty feet. Publish the works she hated so others can hate them, too, but we must read them, because she killed herself. There must be answers here, right? Right?

Find things to live for. You have to make your own meaning. You have to take control. You have to. You HAVE to. This shouldn’t make you stop, it should motivate you to do better. Do better. You have to do better. You can’t let this keep you down. You can’t keep making excuses. You can’t hide behind your illness. You can’t just lay around and do nothing. You don’t do anything. You don’t contribute anything. Every day you should wake up knowing that you are surrounded by things you didn’t pay for. Every day you should remember that you don’t pay for any of this. You need to do more. You need to do more. You need to do more.

I just want to sleep.

Maybe after a swan dive.

Find things to live for?

My baby niece’s laugh. My youngest sibling’s brioche. Hamilton. Lipstick. Finishing at least one manuscript. Collaborating with friends. The feeling of Sunday dinner with the whole family. Seeing Trump out of office. Sparkly rocks. More dice than I know what to do with. Black lives mattering. Writer’s group at a coffee shop. Not having to wear a mask one day. Mom’s cancer recovery. Maybe another sibling marriage. Birthdays. Funerals. Other excuses to consume potato salad. Making aligot the right way. More reasons to use gruyere in everyday cooking. Yoga stretches. Novelty mugs. Christmas lights. Halloween candy. Morning glories. Universal health care. Renaissance faire swords. Squashy overlarge sweaters. Unicorn themed products. Glitter. Florida beaches. Nail polish. Getting gray hair. Growing out a buzz cut. Playing video games. Feeling safe enough to hug people again.

The feeling of falling versus the feeling of inaction. Both are stagnant. One has a destination. But chances are that destination doesn’t have peanut butter fudge shakes and mozzarella sticks.

So, no, I don’t walk to the water tower. I don’t walk anywhere else, either, but at least I don’t walk to the water tower.