Turn Off The Lights

January-

As I write this, it is raining.  It must be cold.  I can't tell.  I blame it on the weather.  A snow storm of shivers frosting their way up my spine.  Sometimes- I think there is a winter evening resting against the naked inside of my body.

February-

No body will blink an eye if you say that you hate Valentine's Day.  Make something up about how you think it's silly that the world has to assign a day to value loved ones when it should be always.
No one will guess it's the loneliness you aren't fond of.

March-

You are only a teenager.  You are only a silly woman's youth.
Think nothing of the way you pull at your skin like a reflex.  Think nothing of the way your mind clucks at the mirror.  Think nothing of the way you only ever want to sleep for weeks on end.  Think nothing of yourself.  Think nothing.  This is normal.

April-

If anyone was to ask what hating yourself is like,
Tell them it is being able to appreciate beauty because you always have the ugliest thing to compare it to.  The taste of copper pennies hiding in your cheeks, tin foil resting on all your fillings.  Tell them, that hating yourself is a finger jammed so far down your throat that you can't remember if you were aiming for an eating disorder or suicide.
Bulimia, or suffocation.

May-

I often wish for comas.
Sometimes I bump my head on purpose, just to see how closely God has been listening to my prayers lately.

June-

I am in the back seat of the car.  My older brother is driving, telling his friend about the biggest cliff in Haida Gwaii.  About the sharp rocks underneath.  He's using big hand motions, when they should be on the wheel. He's laughing- I do so occasionally, so he doesn't look into the rear-view mirror and see me curls into the corner of the leather, as if bracing my body for the blow.  My mind is a police scene- blood, sharp rocks, uncontrollable.  My mind is uncontrollable, and I am throwing myself.  Over, and over, I am throwing myself.  I can feel the rocks plunge through the surface of my skin like a diver.  I can't breathe.  I am throwing myself and I can't stop.
I hope we crash.

July-

Smile as pretty as you are capable.  Wipe that suicide off your face.  Everyone can see what you are thinking.  You are as easy to read as an open diary.  They will turn your pages, crack your spine, read you for all that you are.  Hide you between the mattresses.  Throw you into the fire when no body is home

August-

Do not think of all the reasons you could possibly be unwanted.
How your hair doesn't curl quite right.  How you are always filling the silence that everyone is savoring.  How there is constantly too much of you in all the wrong places.
Instead, turn off the lights, when you shower, and forget why you do it.  Instead, turn off the lights and try, to let someone, somehow, love you.  Feel the hopefulness of being wanted, even if only ever in the dark.  When someone tries to touch you, do not flinch away.  Welcome it as if they just might hold the savior in their fingers.  Instead, turn of the lights, and remember who you were.

September-

I tell all the internet forums, that the only reason I haven't killed myself yet, is a fear of the pain.
No one says anything.
They have seen this all before.

October-

On the day you realize your mind has left you, take it like a car you saw coming.  Like you are the only one who survived the wreck.  Do not sob for your lost ones; be grateful for this sudden silence.  Lie on the side of the road- half of your face still on the windshield of your realization and wait.
In this world, you are so small, and helpless.
Someone will put you out of your misery.
You broken legged-horse.  You brain-dead deer.

November-

The only reason I haven't killed myself yet is a fear of the pain.
Like an answer to prayer,
I remember the sleeping pills in the medicine cupboard, and suddenly, I am so tired.
I want so badly just to sleep.

December-