Windward Review Vol. 20 (2022): Beginnings and Endings

In a way I’m supposed to be dead. There have been a lot of me’s that have
died. The last death was just (almost) literal, and now I’m haunting. Really, I think
that the me that could have gotten it right died already, or maybe never existed.
I don’t know how to feel right. I don’t think I’m capable. Now that I’m not-dead I
have to do therapy, I have to do the work. I know the work. I did it before. It didn’t
stop me. I knew I would hurt people who loved me, and I loved them and I went
ahead with it anyway.
Maybe life isn’t suffering but that’s definitely a big part of it. So, it’s easy
when you think about it like that, it’s easy to think killing yourself is rational and
once you do it it’s hard to not think of it as a solution for every kind of suffering.
Even the mundane kind of suffering. I want to make a decision and stick with it, I’m
tired of going back and forth. At least when I’m dead I won’t have a choice. I know,
in a way, that things can get better, that I can have that life worth eulogizing. The
issue is that even though I can feel happy it can still be taken away. If I come to love
my life then I can lose something I love and that terrifies me. At least here I have
nothing I care about to lose.
People talk about self-love a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to say
that I love myself, but I think that saying it doesn’t matter so much as doing it. In a
world where I would love myself, I think it would look like this:
I’ll break something and forgive myself. I’ll look at a mirror and just see
me and a mirror and keep going. I’ll feel pain and I’ll let it sit and then I’ll move on.
I’ll live my life and not just look at it. I’ll do what I need to do but don’t want to do
because it’s for me. I’ll be alright with unraveling something and starting over again
and again. I’ll want to stick around. I’ll be able to open my eyes in the morning and
see something that’s mine. This is how I would say “I love you.”
In that world my eulogy would be this: “Here lies Logan Waters, they were
a person and they loved themself.”
Draft 5: Week 7
When I was on the way to my grandfather’s funeral I was reading a book
of fables for kids. I got to this one about a Persian king. He asked his wise men
for something that would make him happy when he was sad and sad when he was
happy. They gave him a ring inscribed with the phrase: “This too shall pass.” And
when I read that I started to cry. Like bawling, snot dripping down my face and
everything. My mom had to pull over and she couldn’t get me to stop. Eventually
my mom just let it all out too, climbed into the backseat and held me as we both
just wailed and screamed. My aunt drove us the rest of the way.
Everything I can think of saying sounds cliché. I say I’m sorry (I am). I
explain why (you won’t understand). I say goodbye (this is a goodbye). Every time
I’ve tried to write something like this it ends a mess. I can’t do it. I know there’s
something not right in me, something broken. Something that other people can
have but I can’t. If I just knew what it was, if I just knew what it was then I’d be
okay, because then I’d finally have an answer.
This too shall pass; this too shall pass. I’m begging you to say it with me
Dr. B, this too shall pass? Threat or promise?
87 Windward Review Volume 20
87 Windward Review Volume X X 87