‘We shall dig graves for all that die in us…’

Three years and fourteen nights ago I was standing on the window sill. I chose an unsurviveable height, a quiet hour, a location as sparsely populated as possible within a city. This was no cry for help, no attempt to get attention – just a very straightforward way of fulfilling a death wish.

I remember looking down on the empty streets; being ashamed of the trivial thought that passed through my mind, this standard realization of how small everything is when viewed from a distance. I remember how I knew even then that it was absurd to wear perfume and make-up, to put on my best dress – after all, I was going to turn into a grotesque, dehumanized pile of body horror that would possibly haunt any passers-by forever. I remember how strong the wind was, how I had to put a stone over the letter I left on the table.

I remember the knife at my belt. Friend, I named it. I am an Odinist, and was going to die with steel by my side, to fight the way through Helheim.

I remember letting go of the window frame I was clutching; pushing myself away from it. I remember the one step that stood between life and death.

The step I did not take.

Some believe in the concept of possible worlds. If it is so, then in one of them I am a pile of broken bones, laying somewhere under the ground. If it is so, two people visit the stone that bears my name daily; they are old, gray, broken by their grief. In this possible world, many have forgotten me. Some others, whose life I touched, wonder how or why. They talk or write of how vital I was, how alive with the lust and laughter and singing and fighting. A dear friend I made a year after wonders what is missing from his life, and how could it be that he cannot find this twin soul, this ‘amicus alter ego’ in a more or less literal sense. Some idly wonder whatever has happened to me. Those who I loved feel a melancholy that is poetic and sweet; the stirring emotion that some say comes to a man’s heart when a woman he once had dies young and tragically. Some think of me during the third toast. Some mention my name at Samhain, few who knew that I have been battling with the will to die remember me during Einhejar. Some might even miss my voice, and remember this ‘Ombra mai fu’ I completely blew, or the ‘Tu ch’hai le penne’ I nailed.

This is the possible world, the world where I am dead. The world in which I have succumbed to the disease that twisted my survival instinct into something innatural and destructive.

This is the possible world. And, by the Gods, I struggle tooth and nail not to turn this possiblity into reality.

This is so frustrating to survive all the time. So exhausting. So very sad to see everything I touch turn into dust, so sad to realize that I am exactly in the same place I was those three years ago – trying hard, so hard not to do ‘It’ again, and again. And yet, here I am, clinging to the life that is dear in spite of all. Here I am, determined to forge a better fate. Determined not to create a void, not to turn my dear, dear parents into mourners.

If you are contemplating suicide, please do not do this. Stay. Stay with them, if you have people you love and who love you. Stay with us. Stay with me. Please, please, please stay. I love you for your sensitivity, for your soul that is so rich and so damaged and so unique, for the deathless courage you might even not know you have. I respect you because I know what you endured. I salute you for being here, for fighting your great battle. Please, stay. Do not create this void, do not cause the world to get even darker. Do not abandon everything you could have, or see, or feel. It’s nothing versus everything. I have learned that one step away from Death…

Please, please stay. Whatever you have been told, whatever you believe, we will be poorer for your absence.

Stay so I can meet you on a happier day, and so that we may laugh and cry and talk about it, sing our songs and tell us stories.

You and I shall laugh together with the storm,
And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,
And we shall stand in the sun with a will,
And we shall be dangerous.

(Khalil Gibran, ‘Defeat’)

I’m a woman, 25, with green eyes and brown hair, the name I was given begins with an O., the one I chose begins with an Y. May we meet on a happier day. May all of us survive.