Two moments
I’ve only wanted to stop living twice. In between these times, my life has seemed worthwhile, beautiful even, comfortable often too. But on those two occasions everything in my mind went so dark—I entered such a whorl of clashing thoughts that clanged together and pained me—that I didn’t know my existence properly, and hoped for it to end. In my twenties one night when I had been crying in my bedroom for hours, I sat up with a strange resolution, and walked in a sort of stupor into the kitchen. So many tears had dried around my eyes, which ached as I wiped the last few away. I looked in a cupboard and found some painkillers, and carried them over to the kitchen table with a glass of water. I got a piece of paper and a pen and laid them out ceremonially. It’s difficult now, such an upheaval, to try and get my mind back into the state that I was in; so hard to stand next to that person sitting alone at 4 a.m., and ask him what he was thinking. I know that I found it almost impossible