Suicide is glowing eyes on the edge of the forest.

One of my starkest adolescent memories, likely the moment I transitioned into feeling my teenage years began, was when I heard that Kurt Cobain had shot himself. Having little actually in common - I was in eighth grade, unmelodic, un-rebellious, and free of crippling physical and emotional pain - I identified with him totally. That someone in whom I had invested a chunk of myself, in whom I saw a reflection, could do this instilled in me a worry I have never fully shook. If he could do it with all his success and acclaim, who could be immune?

Suicide then snuck in through windows when I forgot I had left them open. I visited exes and friends in psych wards, after they swallowed a bottle of aspirin or cut their wrists across rather than down. Then, it was playing chicken, who would blink first. Death doesn't have eyelids and was never going to flinch. Suicide was a game and we never took the consequences seriously because no one suffered more than the few lost weeks of school until our parents' insurance no longer covered the involuntary commitment.

Melissa was the first to know someone who successfully killed themselves, a boy name Kevin for whom she never fully ceased mourning and who is buried in the same cemetery where now reposes her ashes. I remember Kevin's death as unexpected. Because he had been so blithely himself in the hours prior, none of his friends suspected that he would hang himself. His mother found him, tried to revive him, but she had been far too late. Melissa and her friends would visit his mother, went to Kevin's birthday party the year after he died, but Melissa eventually found Kevin's mother's attachment more worrying than endearing. Melissa and her friends backed away from these communal howls, instead mourning privately or not at all. Until she died, Melissa state that she still missed Kevin but, like a prayer, the words became rote.

Half the girls I dated before seventeen had scars on their wrists or thighs or would, when safe in their vulnerability, admit that they had considered destroying themselves or merely hadn't found the initiative yet (a couple implying that they couldn't possibly decide to do this so long as we were canoodling, but if I should happen to break up with them...). I grew so used to hearing this refrain that I had a script to get through the interaction, kissing their brow and telling them how glad I was that they remained alive. Even in tumultuous breakups, even when we said horrible things to cut the other person, I would never have thought to mentions this commonplace disaster again.

When I graduated from my first of three colleges, one of my friends hanged himself. We were never that close, but we had skipped a class together once so we could sit in the spring grass and feel infinite. He stepped on my nerves on occasion in what might have been his attempt to flirt with me. He had eyes that always seemed squinting, an adolescently chirping voice when he greeted me with my full name, hair so frequently dyed and bleached that it looks like straw, and a thin mouth. In toto, he reminded me of a pet shop chameleon. When news of his death filtered through the grapevine, the popular blame was that his mother would not accept that he was gay (though I do not know he was gay, since he told me a few times he was bisexual). He was in college, likely transferring to another in the area upon the receipt of his associate's degree, prime time to explore one's identity and sexuality. This is not the time to give up the fight. Instead, he wrapped a bedsheet around his neck, but it was not because he liked boys. It was because he was suicidal, a fact I knew but which seemed to abate in the last few months of his life. I later realized this was because he had made his decision and set a date.

Melissa had threatened suicide several times in her adulthood, seriously enough that she was institutionalized. She found excuses for her attempts - one lover left her, two more did, her birth control had unbalanced her - but these were only triggers. She saw therapists intermittently, when she had insurance that could accommodate or she had no other options. In her last few years, she complained she needed new ones because her current one wouldn't believe she needed the medications she wanted. If her underlying issues were confronted and processed, she didn't bother mentioning it to me. When she was spiraling at my apartment and threatened to kill herself, I called 911 and the police came to take her to the hospital, but I saw another future where she turned up dead the next day.

When she died, I did not suspect a car accident or homicide. My question, "overdose or suicide," presented the only possibilities. I am not sure how different they were in the end, except that she ended in an opiate haze rather than in the misery of ropes and razors (though she would have committed suicide by overdose; drugs gave her life and it would only be fitting that they take it away).

When a partner left me because she could no longer deny that she is a lesbian, she told me she considered suicide as a valid alternative. This was not a metaphorical exaggeration. I assured her, even though this cancellation of our affair devastated me, I was glad she was not dead. I could handle losing her in this context - we are friends and pen pals now, as I hope we always will be because I adore her - but I could never recover from the world losing her, particularly over me. She was not suicidal as a persistent condition, but it whispered to her when trapped.

I was moody as a teenager, but I was never suicidal. I do not think I could have been suicidal then because I thought everything was so interesting, even when I cried my eyes out over the smallest triggers when hormones and neurochemicals conspired to torture me.

Someone - I assume Kurt Vonnegut because the nihilism suits him - said that he used suicide as a motivational alternative. "I could have breakfast and go to work, or I could kill myself. I guess I'll go to work, but no promises about tomorrow."

Suicide is one moment of crisis where one finally makes the wrong decision. You fight it from the moment it bows in introduction. Even if you get healthy, it is always a specter in the corner, a possibility, an option.

My therapist told me how I ought to call her if I am in crisis. I have not had a crisis in months, at least none about which it would be worth calling someone. I tried to explain to her that, when depressed or anxious, I want it out of me, not legitimized by discussion and debate. What I think is not logical. Treating it otherwise spirals me further downward. What would she even say? I am aware it is not something I would care to think about or feel. These are not startling revelations. For the most part, I need to live through it, trusting that there is another end since there always has been - what could be more reassuring than an established pattern? Especially in May, when the blooms have finally remembered themselves, it is confusing to tell me to call her outside our bimonthly visits. My therapist acknowledges that my mental health is weather-contingent, though the nurse asserts that Seasonal Affective Disorder is not real (which is, in part, why I do not consider her my therapist and why I only visit her every other month to have her tell the drugstore to continue refilling my prescriptions).

Amber can't know the worst of me because my illness hurts her. She can't stand that anyone would treat me the way I do when I am depressed, though, to be fair, I mostly go about my business to my greatest ability and just feel disgusted and disgusting. Since I know these thoughts are false, just my brain trying to hurt me, what is the sense in subjecting her to them? What would be the purpose to interrupt our life to have her tell me again that she isn't going to leave me and that things are okay. Her saying these things changes nothing but bringing her into this pain with me, worrying her. It's best that I keep the performance going if I am clear that the commentary track is meaningless neuroses.

I have never been suicidal, just alone and desperate, unable to talk to the people in my life because it would be an emotional burden that will worry them longer than I will feel low. Telling someone what I am going through and having them say, "Why are you like this? How long have you been like this?" as though I am an infectious hypochondriac does not make me feel like opening up.

My therapist does not quite know what to do with me, since I tend to present more balanced during sessions because these give me someone to whom I can talk without it existing outside that room. I seem fine, though I have learned never to say anything too extreme because she will then suggest more frequent sessions. I already find it an imposition to drive somewhere other than home after work. If I had to do it more than once every two weeks, I would not do it at all.

Especially during the spring and summer, our sessions are mostly just waiting until the fall comes and my emotions dip along with the sun.

I don't know what I am supposed to say to my therapist, so I chat amiably. I tend to have a paper on which I've written topics bothering me, but I can run through them all in ten minutes. She doesn't ask many questions of me. She talks of cognitive behavioral therapy, but I have encountered Eastern thought before and have gone to more work trainings than I can remember on these subjects. She asks if I meditate. I do as much as I need to, particularly when thoughts begin to spin out of my grip. She asks if I look forward to getting back to exercising outside and I tell her I went for runs in the middle of below freezing days. I eat fairly well. I see friends when I care to, I take my meds as prescribed. I have checked off the entry level advice.

The few times in the last decade I have found cause to consult a crisis hotline, I have answered the necessary questions about suicidality. No, I am not suicidal. No, I have no lethal means at hand and cannot even fathom how I would go about that. I am just having a hard time and need to talk to someone to ease the pressure, the toad claw pricks in my throat, the tension that will not leave my neck, this 9-volt electricity behind my eyes, pebble stabs in the soles of my feet.

Soon in Xenology: Mummies. The interview.

last watched: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
reading: Abduction by John E. Mack
listening: Childish Gambino