Life Blood

I stare at my life as if down the barrel of a loaded gun. I'm asked, do you want kids? And I stare blankly at them, picking at the nail cuticle I've been nursing, with it bleeding, for two straight weeks, the longest commitment I've ever made to something on my body. A pregnancy, they ask. Do you want to get pregnant? I go back to my nails, my denial, my entire upbringing, and decide a nail file is too much effort.

My psychiatrist said that I'd have to go off my meds. What, so like, go apeshit? Give up my sanity for something that might not even make me happy? I go to a map of the universe and ask, in what galaxy does that occur in?

I'm in my early thirties. I didn't think I'd make it this far. I had letters written to my close family and friends years ago, the ones I'd send to them when I decided to die. I go on rants. I ask, why on earth would I bring any living thing into this world? For what? So we can all suffer together, quietly, writing suicide notes on our phones? I go back to the map of the universe and ask: point to where it matters, where I'm given permission to pass that suffering on to someone else?

I ask nothing of the universe, except to offer it little prayers. I offer it little prayers in traffic, I offer it little prayers when I see children get shot on the news, which, if you've been watching, is basically every day. I ask myself: is this what I want for a child? And the answer, since the day I wrote my last dying notes on my phone to now, is: no.

This is bleak. This is very, very bleak. I ask myself: if the universe wanted me to bring life into this world, it would let me know. And then my nail cuticle bleeds, and I go back to picking at it, and to the world where I am neither comfortable, nor sad, just here. Drawing blood where they could be life, where there could be something more.