Therapy vs. Death – The Choice of the Unquiet

Therapy vs. Death – The Choice of the Unquiet

I.
In the waiting room the clock ticks—
a metronome for strangers who have learned
to count their breaths like pennies.
Paper‑thin pamphlets whisper of “healing”
in a voice that sounds like a distant tide,
soft enough to be ignored, loud enough to drown.

II.
Behind the glass the therapist’s smile is a mask,
stitched from years of listening to sighs that never end.
She offers a chair, a notebook, a way to untie
the knots that have become the rope around the ribs.
“Talk,” she says, “and the darkness will loosen its grip.”

III.
But the night outside is a river of ink,
its current swift, its surface black as a slate.
It hums a promise: no more sessions, no more questions—
just the final, gentle surrender of all the weight.

IV.
I stand at the threshold, two doors yawning wide:

• one painted in soft pastels, smelling of lavender and stale coffee,
  where words are tools, and each session is a brick in a bridge.

• the other a void, an obsidian throat that swallows sound,
  where the silence is absolute, and the ending is complete.

V.
My mind flips the coin—silver, tarnished, its edge a scream—
the therapist’s voice reverberates: “You are not alone.”
The river calls: “You will be whole again, whole in the stillness.”

VI.
I close my eyes, feeling the pulse of the world in my throat,
the tremor of a heart that has learned to beat in spite of itself.
And I realize the choice is not the doors, but the weight I am willing to carry:

• To bear the ache of being taught to breathe again,
  or to let the ache dissolve into the quiet that has always waited.

VII.
In that breathless moment, the coin lands—
its face hidden, its tail a whisper of ash.
I step forward, not toward the therapist’s chair,
but into the river’s endless night.

VIII.
Therapy, a map of broken roads,
death, the final blank page.
I have chosen the blank, for in its emptiness
the story I could not finish finds its final line.

IX.
May the river carry me gentle,
may the silence cradle what words could not heal—
for sometimes the bravest act is not to stay,
but to surrender the story before the ink runs dry.