What Matters Most: Poems About Love, Loss, & Trauma

Chapter 40: Possessed

Introduction: This is not a celebration or glorification of suicide – there is help if you feel these feelings. I care and will demonstrate this to anyone who seeks comfort.

I asked my friend Jean
if I could speak to the Angel of Death.
I wanted to be left alone.

I walk about my days
as if inside a dream -
a dream within a dream.

Yesterday is now.
And I am back from the dead,
with the stench of death
Upon me.

I tried to make it end
back in December
took some pills
after the alcohol.

Three days later,
I was planning it again,
when I got out...

When a girl came out
and asked, "you can't sleep either?"

"You mean I am not alone?"
I wondered.

I kept trying to figure out if
this entire experience was "real?"
Is this really happening?

"Are you seeing or hearing things?"
asked the nurse.
"I wish" I said or "should I be?"

They laughed.

"That's the thing, nurse,
an entire normal population
is going about their lives
celebrating an idea,
a belief....
they think a man was born to a woman
without her having had sex."
A miracle they say -
the Christmas miracle.

And here I was in a psych hospital,
Isn't insanity the norm?

But ask me about why I tried suicide.
That's where things get strange.

It's like being possessed.
Most times the suicides do not speak.

Anne Sexton said,
"But suicides have a special language,
like carpenters, they ask which tools.
They never ask why build?"

If you ask, no, I didn't hear a voice.
nothing visionary
no hallucinatory sights or sounds.

Sometimes my world seems dead.
Dark. Cold.
Nothingness
echoes
and taunts me.

That's when death
speaks.

Disclaimer: I am not a person who believes in anything supernatural though the ideas do work in a figurative or metaphorical way. We all want to understand why is there evil. I chose to personify ideas like "Death," "suicides," or "The Angel of Death" as pure evil completely distilled of anything good as opposed to the good, found in people which encourages and celebrates life and joins us together, connecting us as humans.

If you are feeling this darkness, this despair, this isolation and a sense that there is no warmth, compassion, or goodness in the world, I get it and would say that you are listening to the wrong people. Some people just are not as instinctually compassionate, caring or empathetic as others. Some people are narcissistic and lack the capacity to empathize.

I was told by a friend who helped me to "pay it forward." I now work as a caseworker on a Mobile Crisis Unit, and I assist those who have undergone some crisis. A crisis is whatever you feel is a crisis. If you call our crisis line someone will come out and see you. I might be asked to follow-up with you, if you are residing in the area that I serve.

I mentioned the ideas of Anne Sexton from her poem "Wanting to Die." In that poem she writes "But suicides have a special language..." Well, I now understand that language and can speak it. This poem was inspired by a time when I had a suicidal urge. However, I may have spoken their language already. I will be able to understand and there are others that understand you.

This is a serious matter, and I would not dare to state that I have nothing to worry about any longer. That's why those who do have compassion, love, and empathy need to act and take the matter seriously. We need you to take it seriously when you know someone who is suffering. I certainly hope that neither I nor anyone else feels possessed by this force of destruction.