Posted by Atticus on August 10, 2004, at 20:17:15
In reply to Re: poem ... Almost 6 ****Trigger****, posted by Jai Narayan on August 10, 2004, at 19:32:23
I'll never tire of getting your feedback or of responding to it, Jai. No need to fear that. Atlanteans stick together. This was sort of the "bookend" poem to "Spots," which, as you may remember, details my efforts to get help when I realized the enormity of what I'd done, and includes a pretty graphic description of the actual suicide attempt. It's strange, as I observe in "Almost 6," to be part of this odd, secret tribe to which I and your sister belong. I think seeing the marks on Eleanora's wrists really jolted me because of her age. But we formed a very close friendship during the time we were both in the ward. I refer to this as my "Lost in Translation" friendship (if you haven't seen this movie with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, I highly recommend it), where a man and a much younger woman -- both suffering from an intense sense of psychic, emotional, and physical dislocation -- form a powerful platonic bond. I felt very protective of her, yet often it was she who came to my emotional rescue in that strange, strange place, where everyone somehow ends up feeling like they're the same age. I hope your sister is doing well these days, and you continue to succeed at fending off any urge to follow in either her or my footsteps. I'm the oldest sib in my family; I sometimes wonder if the extra pressure to succeed placed on first children (which was certainly the case with me, though it eventually backfired and brought about a state of complete rebelliousness) makes us more susceptible to doing these kinds of things if the chemicals in our brain are a bit dicey to begin with. Though there's tons of mental illness coming down my father's line of the family, as far as I know, I'm the only one who has the dubious distinction of attempting suicide. I also wonder if there's any significance to the violent and bloody methodology that "cutters" like your sister and I brought to the task, or if it's just a matter of what's available. Last fall, in a period of about two weeks, three people in New Jersey laid down on commuter rail lines and killed themselves that way, and I considered it, but in the end thought it made too public a spectacle of the act. You referred earlier to how methodical your sister was in her attempt, and I was too, even pulling out my copy of "Gray's Anatomy" (purchased to help with my drawing) to study the arrangement of veins in the wrist and forearm. In that warped state of perception, it all really does feel like problem-solving. Please do keep writing, even if it's just to chat about whatever's on your mind on the Psycho-Social-Babble page. :) Atticus
poster:Atticus
thread:376045
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/376164.html