My November guest

[kaberett]

Content warnings: suicide, self-injury.

I know Harry more through the glimpses I catch of him in CK (through a glass, darkly) than I ever knew him in person; and I still catch my breath every time I remember that I didn't know he was a poet until two weeks after his death.

Still, I have his copy of Whipping Girl. He loaned it to me almost exactly a week before he died; I can't remember whether I hugged him, but I know I told him I hoped to see him soon, and I know that he'd asked me to answer a question the audience had addressed to him.

Apparently I laugh when I'm talking about horrors, in the same way that Harry did. I can't remember when exactly I last walked into a room and automatically took an inventory of ways to kill myself; I know now that that was something else we had in common.

(I think it was over a year ago - which stretches into ages, which shrinks into nothingness, because still, two years and two weeks ago, he burned clear and bright.)

Last week I was informed that my new GP practice won't put my psychiatric medication on repeat prescription until an individual GP has taken ownership of my mental health. I am torn between laughing and crying; I still haven't decided whether to sit my doctor gently down and explain that I know the LD50s, I know the causes of death, I know which I will never take (no matter how lonely) and which would combine together gently and inexorably and beautifully - and yet I have not considered this even fleetingly in over a year, and yet I have a track record of handing over my pills to friends if I deem it necessary, and yet--

-- I am determined that nobody should ever have to die the way Harry needed to ever again. This is why I shudder and break a little when I hear it said that assisted suicide is an attack on people like me. Nobody should ever have to die the way Harry needed to.

My doctors don't seem to be able to understand that I love and delight (in my lovers, in my work, in my life), and in the same breath I can ache to delicately, methodically scar myself.

Harry is still the reason that I say I am trans, and I am mad, and I am human, and is the reason I will keep on saying it as long as I have words left in me.

I cannot but light candles.

Comments

[untonuggan]

♥

[wild_irises]

This.

[cadenzamuse]

+1

[fyreharper]

<3

Oof.

[raze]

Just, *hugs* or whatever symbolic manner of comfort you find preferable.

[syntaxofthings]

Aching for/with you.

[jelazakazone]

Burn bright, darling. Walk that line carefully, as you do, and burn for all to see for a long time to come. <3

[calissa]

Thinking of you. And thank you for sharing this. It was beautiful in a bittersweet way.

[batdina]

I'd add myself onto that heart chain up there, but we don't know each other that well yet.

In any event, if you accept love from relative strangers, you shall have it from me. Or whatever else it is you need in this moment.

And definitely thank you for sharing this.

[redbird]

What batdina said.

Also, I thought the idea was that we should take responsibility for our own health, and/or that if my doctor is part of a practice, they back each other up, rather than assuming that nobody will be paying attention.

[shehasathree]

♥

[alexseanchai]

I don't know what to say but I want you to know I'm listening.

[hairyears]

And yet, against all that, there is so much love.

[emperor]

*hug*

[ghoti]

♥

[worlds_of_smoke]

*offers a hug*

[pretty_panther]

♥

[inoru_no_hoshi]

♥

[thefairymelusine]

<3

[khronos_keeper]

<3 I'm not sure how to respond to this without unintentionally sounding glib or trite, but... do what you have to do, but please stay safe.

[liv]

[I can't words. I can't even explain why this is so resonant for me, I can't bring myself to write down even the factual stuff. I'm sorry, this is almost an anti-comment.]

[kaberett]

[You are, as ever in my space, welcome.]