Deathwish 044: Summer
“Everything I had ever been was a mouth”
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I have always taken baths. The first time I can remember attempting suicide, I was six years old. And when I say “attempted,” I mean that I would hold my head under the water of the bathtub, lukewarm, like a womb, and pray and pray and pray to whatever I believed in that I would have the will to stay under. I would feel my little lungs ballooning in my chest. I didn’t know yet that a person, not even me, couldn't have the will to drown themselves. I’d come up, gasping, my whole body a lung.
Coming up felt like failure.
I thought about the inevitability of ending. It haunted me.
I was good at being an underwater girl. Where I wasn’t so good was above the surface, even as a child.
The deathwish I was born with had a home somewhere in my veins. Some days, it still does. When the ghosts quieted, I dreamt of an end. Only an end. Sleep was the closest thing to escape.
I dreamt of blood coming to the surface of my skin, up and out, looking like art. I had always wanted to be beautiful.
I dreamt of my flesh bruising, I thought, if only I had a noose, I’d be able to hold my breath.
I dreamt of handfuls of little chalk marbles, carrying me away, somewhere else. Anywhere but here.
As I got older, I learned the sleep of near-dead girls, sometimes, awake, trying to break into where my mother kept my pills locked up for just a few more. Everything I had ever been was a mouth. I slept through it. I did not overdose. If you have the will to sink, you probably have the will to stay.
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Summer was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, and currently lives in Modesto, California.