To The Moon and Back

𝟑𝟔 | 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐚

C O M A

An area of dust or gas surrounding the nucleus of a comet.

T O T H E
M O O N & B A C K

I STARE AT the silver blade. At the sharp edge. The edge that could take my misery and pain from me in an instant. I take in the way that the yellow light from the ceiling bounces off the metal. I pinch the thin sliver of silver between my fingertips and suddenly, I'm taken back to the first time.

The first time I tried to kill myself.

I sat in the bathtub for hours just staring. I wish that I could say that I was thinking about my mother and my father and my sisters. I wish that I could say that I was thinking about all of the things I was going to miss like seeing my sisters have children and watching my parent's becoming grandparents. But I wasn't. I wasn't thinking at all. For the first time in my life, everything was silent. I could hear the rain outside. I could hear the thunder. I could hear the steady beat of my heart.

Just as I can now.

My door was locked and so was the bathroom door. My phone was off. I had submerged myself in warm water. And I just waited. I wasn't waiting for someone to find me and tell me not to do it. Fuck, I wasn't even waiting for the right moment—because God knows there isn't one. I was trying to build enough courage to do it.

Is this going to hurt? I remember thinking. What if it doesn't work? What if I don't go deep enough?

I inhaled deeply, and, I know that they say you can't remember pain, but I remember this pain. It hurt. It hurt so bad that all the emotional pain I had endured every minute of every day leading up to that point, was incomparable because this stung.

But I couldn't stop there.

I had to keep going. Four times, both arms. And then I laid back. It stung but it eventually faded. I watched as the water turned red. I felt the life bleeding out of me, literally. It was like all of the pain was leaving my body and mixing with the water.

And for one last time, all of that painful water swallowed me whole. I feel light. Weightless. I felt tired and calm. I felt peaceful. And then, I woke up in a hospital room and had to face everyone's faces of disappointment and the pain returned. But this time, the pain bought its friend who is far worse.

Guilt.

Ever since then, I have craved to feel what I felt in those last minutes of being on earth. The peace. Because in those last minutes, you feel the most loved, the most normal, the most worthy you could ever feel.

As a child, my mother used to bribe me to get me to go to school. Go to school every day, and on the weekend, I will take you to buy anything you would like, she would say. I would attend school every day, just to get that reward at the end.

So, to think that I waited over sixteen years for this. For this very moment. I spent years upon years barely surviving, until that moment. I could finally get my reward.

The thing is, I didn't even hate going to school because I was being bullied, but because I hated being away from my mother. I used to get picked on because up until I was ten, I would proudly hold my mother's hand everywhere. The kids at school would watch her perfect my tie and adjust my jacket before I would come into class each day and then they would call me names.

But never once did I give them the satisfaction of knowing that they were getting to me. It only hurt that they were saying such terrible things about my mother. And then one day I told my father about these boys and he told me to tell them to fuck off. He said that they're just jealous because I had a mother and they didn't.