Have you ever cried so hard that your whole body just starts to sweat? My parasympathetic nervous system has never been my friend. Ironic, because of the name. The last two weeks I've been dealing with a low-grade depression that I've begun to regard as a pesky shadow that I can't banish no matter how much Vitamin D I manage to squeeze in. Asshole I used to date has taken this as the time to be a huger asshole, questioning if I have a life. No, dude, I don't. Right now? No. I have a chain of weights around my neck and I'm doing my best to survive but the last few months have nt been a life and if you had any compassion you'd know that. I hate that a fucking idiot boy affected me so much, but like before, I was already sinking and he just pushed me again. Now, I'm drowning. It's a catastrophic feminist tragedy, to be affected by a cruel man but it's true. He reminds me of my mother. Selfish. 

My whole body is betraying me. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. It starts with my mind. Oh god it hurts. Then my skin, oh god it hurts. Then I stare at my veins, my wrists, all the places where I know a pulse beats and it feels so warm and inviting to cut. Recently, this has included the stress veins in my neck. What warm red secrets do they hold? My skin is so warm, so sensitive and I can hear it begging me to cut, cut, cut.

In moments like these, I'm most grateful for my dog. The little mutt, with her big brown eyes rimmed with funny eyeliner and starting to get sprinkles of powder sugar, she needs me. So every morning no matter how much I want to rot in bed, I have to get up, always with a groan, to give her a walk. She's a darling creature, truly, the sweetest animal. Never a complaint, always a concerned glance. If she wasn't here I doubt I'd even get myself up to go to the bathroom. Is it still low-grade if you can't be bothered to walk the 10 meters to the toilet and imagine yourself instead as a corpse covered in your own piss and feces, to be found by neighbors who trace back the stench of decay? Is it still low-grade if you spent the last 10 days bawling your eyes out, an activity only punctuated by pause when the mutt needs to go for a walk? What is the scale here, what is low-grade, what is happening to me and oh god how do I make it stop?

I've become grateful for inertia. It's second nature now to just sit on the couch, immobile for hours. If I could summon the strength to do anything, it would be a quick dash to the pockets of scalpels I've hidden everywhere in the house and oh god, to let the pain out again in blood again. I have been self-isolating, been getting worse and lower and dirtier, but I haven't been cutting. Instead, I've been crying. Fetal position, curled into the tightest ball my arthritic hands can compress me into and just screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming. Occassionally a guttural, primal sound. Mostly, a plea of ascending volume. Please make it stop, I beg. Starting as a mewing kitting, ending as a screech. All the time, it's the closest I've ever gotten to a sincere prayer. Childhood with its sore knees crunching against grains of rice pales in comparison to the shrine of pain at whose foot I worship now. Make it end. Please. Make it stop. Please. I've done everything. The pills, the running, the therapy, the community, the busy work and still, as soon as I hold still, there is that hand on my shoulder, that ghost of a thought and it jerks me back so hard I get whiplash. Who am I even praying to? Jesus? Allah? Buddha? Fucking Santa Claus?

Wherever you go, there you are. That is the most threatening phrase I have ever heard. I'm my own biggest fear.

You know, a few months ago when I was in the Big Crisis, everyone was there. Even my ex who I despise was calling my friends trying to get my dad's number so someone could get to me before I did something irreparable. When I found out about that, honestly, I was outraged. How dare he care. It made me feel like scum, because I didn't. We abhor each other but he wants me more alive than I do? Ridiculous. But now? It's quiet. I go days without talking to anyone. Job contract completed and if class is canceled, I just sit at home until the scheduled mutt walks then I rush back home. How embarrassing every time too, since those guards saw me strapped to a gurney, screaming and bleeding and crying back in August. Now I asked them if my food and groceries had been dropped off. The holiday decorations are up in the lobby. I want to drive the little wood spikes attached to the candy canes into my chest. Passive suicidal ideation. Passive self-harm thoughts. Passive, for now. And horribly, I know that since the spotlight has shifted and I'm back in class and whatever, if I kill myself now then no one will know for days.

I am so goddamn terrified all the time. Who will walk my mutt if I fail again?