Trigger-warning: this poëm and commentary are about suïcidal ideätion and attempted suïcide. Read no further if the subject-matter might cause the reader pain or injury!
*
Suïcida
Suïcida, I am crazy to love you
You make me lonely;
You make me blue.
My head is splitting
What am I going to do?
Look what you have done to me!
Depression engulfs my mind;
Happiness no longer can I find.
I want so to break free
From you, but also from me.
Suïcida, please let me be!
Insanity, Eternity closer to me loom.
I take the elixir in my empty room
I swallow more and more;
The Siren calls me from her distant shore
Oh, listen to that soporific call!
The Depths entrance me
I fall, I fall
Only to be embraced in Your life-giving love;
From Hell, I am lifted to Your kingdom above.
In my deepest despair
Lord, You were there,
For You are the One
Who will always care;
Whatever happens,
However I fair
I have no need to worry,
For You are eternally there.
*
I wrote this poëm in my late teenage-years, as such it is an example of juvenilia. At the time I repeatedly attempted to kill myself. Severe, serious & on-going abuse from both parents was seriously impacting my amour-propre. It did not help me that they constantly re-iterated that I should never amount to anything. (I eventually went to university - something they did their darnedest to prevent - and qualified to become the teacher, the vocation I had desired to pursue from my junior-school years.) They never did anything to inculcate self-worth; they never expressed love (storgē); with a couple of rare instances, they never publicly supported me. The folk who are supposed to love a child, did not; rather they actively hated me. I never had the predisposition, the energy nor compulsion to hate, but I certainly had no respect for those that begat me.
The style in which this poëm is written feels like an atavistic precursor to my current poëtic technique. Nevertheless, rather than tweak these verses to align with my current beliefs, I consider it best to leave this creätion as is.
I no longer believe in a theïstic G_d: in that sense I am an apostate. Were I to scribe these verses now, the final stanza would not even be a thought nor even a reflection upon my past self.
However, whilst this poëm is an amalgam of several suïcide-attempts, the one that comes to mind when I re-read it is when I spent a night throwing up after taking an overdose of any and every painkiller I could lay my hands upon in the familiar bathroom-cabinet. A couple of close friends only know that I saw an angel and he repeatedly punched my stomach so as I should vomit the sirenic concoction. I threw up until the dawn’s rays. Then I slept. I slept one of the calmest, most contented slumbers of my whole sentient life.
At the risk of sounding unhinged, I have seen angels (and ghosts and rarely dæmons) throughout my whole life since being a small boy. Angels have appeared at times when I have been crushed one way or another. But, of course, the existence of angelic beïngs does not support belief nor unbelief in a divine entity.
For many years I have described myself as a humanistic pantheïst. Pantheïsm in this sense is the belief that the divine permeätes the Cosmos. Many of the elements in our atoms were creäted in supernovæ prior to reaching Earth. Hence we are all part of, all one with the Universe. I also believe in mankind, hence the qualifier in respect to humanism. Man can be evil, but humankind also has the option to do Good. And, as a Quaker, I truly believe that the Good is worth believing in. We can all be better than we are, individually and collectively.
As a tonic to my anxiëty & depression, I have ended here with words of Hope.
I continue to battle my desire for oblivion…
No comments:
Post a Comment