almost

that was gonna be me

ya know?

well it almost was

but sometimes

i feel like it really should have been

if only i had tried hard enough

but wouldn’t you know

trazodone is actually really

hard to overdose on

so it seems safe to conclude

that when the paramedic told me

i was lucky i had woken up

he was lying

the bottom line is though

that i thought i was ready

to be that person who so

many others knew

went to school with

grew up with

but then they all would have

continued to age

while i became part of the earth again

and while i was certainly

gone for those few hours

before i woke up

soaked in sweat

tangled in my sheets and

the realization that i had failed

my heart was still beating

and when i was pulled under again

fear gripped me tighter than

my depression and

suicidal urges ever did

because i didn’t want to die

i was only sixteen years old

my sister was in the room

right next to mine

and i wondered what that would

have done to her

if she had found me

and that makes me hate myself

just that much more

but failing that

being an almost statistic

waking up

and voluntarily being admitted

into the psychiatric ward

it made me a survivor

it meant that i wanted to live

and i do

i really do

but there are so many

other scars besides the one

on my skin and possibly some

internal organs

that run like deep grooves

inside of my psyche

and i sometimes wonder

why people that want to die

that do kill themselves

are treated like they did not

want to live

when they wanted to live

the most of all

why does wanting to

have the pain stop

make them bad people?