The End of the Gifts

This isn’t my secret, but I’ve thought about the poem a lot. When times were hard, and things didn’t seem like it would get better, there’s doubt sometimes. And why wouldn’t it be now on everyone’s mind?

Writers, television, movies romanticize suicide. 13 Reasons Why was a horrible way to depict the aftermath of it. Like justice was being done because the girl died and left tapes, and there was justification for the act done. It’s dangerous, showing the past with the present because it doesn’t feel like Hannah, the girl who killed herself, is really gone. The flashbacks, the glimpses of her like she would be back, are tired, triggering images that can send people the wrong message about what the aftermath is for people that have taken their own life.

It’s not pretty. It ruins the lives of the people that love you. It will make them blame themselves. It will make them hate you for not reaching out. You won’t be there to feel validation for the pain you’ve caused the people who you think deserve to feel the pain of you being gone by your own hand.

THERE’S NO GOING BACK.

There’s only a corpse to bury and the cleanup after. I’m not trying to guilt trip you, as I know sometimes existing is just hard. But we can forget about the realization of all that comes after. You can’t haunt the people that have made you feel the way you do into submission or feeling bad about it. It’s even harder to explain why you think it needed to happen in a way that will make it okay to the people you love that have been left behind.

I’ve been thinking more about the aftermath of suicide after Anthony Bourdain died. What drove him to do it, how his family and friends must be feeling, how the world is still reeling from his loss. I’m still reeling for his loss. It’s devastating, and I never even met him.

So think about if even one person will feel hurt about your loss. And how you will most likely shit your pants when you go, because we lose control of our bowels when we die. How your stuff needs to get packed. How the family will have to talk to the people that will visit your wake about how they didn’t know it was that bad.

And I’ll keep myself to this poem when the bad days roll around too.

“Fuck the poets of the past, my friends. There are no beautiful suicides

Just cold corpses with shit in their pants

And the end of the gifts.”