LAWLISMEDS

My mind has been convincing me to kill myself for years. It usually whispers it, faintly as if I am supposed to think of it as a subliminal message. But it is just a trick to get me to submit. I think my mind knows that I don’t like to be told what to do. So, it devises a strategy, or a series of them to get me on its plan. It constantly whispers “jump”, then when everything around me is falling apart it concocts a plan that makes the most beautiful mythological and artistic sense to get me to comply. My mind understands my flair for the dramatic, it knows how impulsive I can be and it understands that any plan that sounds like magic can convince me. My mind is genius. Suicidal ideation is the psychological term for suicidal thoughts. A study conducted in Jamaica to determine the sociodemographic, risk and protective factors of suicidal ideation among young people from age 10-15. The study revealed that suicidal ideation was higher among girls than boys and saw a link between ag...

That night I lay in bed, my lover to my left as the kind of security that love creates wrapped itself around me in the warm yellow bed room. I, like most of us, brought my phone to bed, scrolling to unwind, or to catch up on the news or the gossip of the day; then the news hit me. It felt like an anvil fell from my phone into my chest leaving a heavy pressure there that even now I am unable to move. His face rested on my phone screen with the words RIP right above him. I tossed the phone to her mostly out of fright but also to share the news. She looked at the screen and said, “No.” She returned the phone to me quickly, “that’s not true,” she said. He was more her friend than mine. But in that moment, we both wanted the same thing; we both wanted it to be a hoax. After all, the internet is known to do even more cruel things than that. As I scrolled it became truth. Nothing was going to change it. He was dead. For me he was a symbol more than a friend. A symbol of something that is ...