♒︎     The Mythological    ♒︎

Here, by the flow, I know I am one move away from the idea of feeling no pain. But it is a leap into mental nothingness and a physical dissolution into all the bodies of river life, not peace. There is no peace in suicide; an ecological death, perhaps, if only we weren’t dredged out, split open, organs weighed and then cremated.

You see, I know too well that trauma cannot end at that point, when my life becomes void, because it rips through all those you love; the clever puzzle-solving daughters who love you, the impulsive rescuers who put their lives at risk by trying to save yours. I am fortunate, I guess, in that I could never bring myself to do it, now, for this knowing. But it also a place where I could never find solace. My experience of surviving my mother’s gentle shift of her weight from a chair (no sudden leaps required), is what kills my own thoughts of a death submerged in what I would otherwise cherish—river as life in perfect flow. My fiery neurons quieten, dopamine deactivated, thoughts moved squarely to the responsibilities to loved ones in the tracks of my brain, used-up proteins floating away the myths into the oblivion of my very own bloodstream.