The day you die is the most important day of your life. The sunset of your dog days. The cold climax to your weary autumn. This is “Last Supper” day. So will it be fillet mignon…or Fritos?
Do you remember that that scene in Girl, Interrupted when Britney Murphy’s character kills herself? They find her body hanging from the ceiling, swaying to a 45 of End of the World by Skeeter Davis. On loop. Now that’s just goddamn brilliant.
When it comes to suicide, a carefully selected song will trump any suicide note. A song says so much more about a person than words ever could, without telling anything at all. Imagine if you killed yourself to Beautiful or like, Dimmu Borgir? Yikes…
No.
I was 12 the first time I wanted to kill myself. I remember that it was a hot summer day and I was sitting in my backyard wishing it would rain. Pour! Drown the rotten sun and wash it down the drain. I slapped a mosquito and it popped, birthing a bright blood flower to stain my white shorts. I marched into the bathroom and ransacked the medicine cabinet.
WHY weren’t there better drugs in my house?
I found a bottle of aspirin and decided it was good enough. I swallowed six, and took the bottle into my room. Everything sucks. Nothing is fun. I’m ugly. I’m a loser. Everything is BORING. I had a cassette tape of Soundgarden’s Superunknown that I stole from my best friend’s cool older brother. I put the tape in my yellow Sony Walkman and listened to it for the rest of the day.
Yes.
It’s the 20th anniversary of Superunkown. But can we forget about “Black Hole Sun”? Let’s talk about “Fell On Black Days.” How about “The Day I Tried to Live.” Or LIKE SUICIDE. Hearing that record for the first time was like this:
I want to die, but goddamn it’s not so bad. It’s NICE in here. So cozy. Like settling in, giving up. Forget chewing gum and reading Seventeen, wearing crop tops and frosted gloss, praying for inspiration or, like, even just to GET it. I don’t get it. I don’t get why I should care about “big beauty no-no’s” or the latest Brandy single. There is no “getting it” with a song like “4th of July.” FINALLY. It’s okay to wear black and smoke cigarettes and stay inside.
A really great record opens doors. And in came the gothy gutter girls. The fucked up girls who read Sylvia Plath in Grade 10. They worshipped Kurt, hung mutilated Barbies in their bedroom windows. They bragged about their miscarriages! I swear these girls dropped fetuses like acid, in the shower, in the toilet, all over the muddy yellow road. Rather than trade makeup tips, we swapped albums like Mellon Collie or Meat is Murder.
Gradually, they fall away. Their fetuses took, and they ballooned into piggy versions of themselves. They dropped out of school, and waddled away. But I was still there, coffee in one hand, copy of Prozac Nation in the other. Dousing the sun with The Downward Spiral.
YES.
The last time I was really depressed, I had insomnia every night. When you can’t sleep, it’s all you think about. Soon, you’re unsure whether or not you can’t sleep just because you expect not to. I tried all the sleep hygiene hacks. But I still found myself sweating through every hour until morning, heart racing, mind playing Fur Elise or, like, the Facts of Life theme. Over and over and over and WHY.
When you can’t sleep, you get up filmy, like you haven’t showered. Even though you have, and washed your hair too. You’d do anything to feel clean, to sleep. So you cave.
I begged my doctor for help. He wrote me a script for Zopiclone, and it worked. Put me right to sleep. Only I had to take it every night. If I tried to sleep without it, I’d end up with my heart in my ears.
The pills made me really sick every day. Hot and cold and dead all over. My stomach eating itself like I haven’t thrown it a bone. And now I can’t, cause it will bunt it back at me. My blotchy neck and itchy eyes. Prickly nerves, piercing my thoughts against you.
I rode the train on the way home from work every day, trying to articulate thoughts in my notebook. Listening to Seventeen Seconds over and over on my iPod. If you write the word apple in cursive over all your other words, it renders whatever you’ve written illegible. appleappleappleappleapple. appleapple. appleappleapple. apple. ap…
again and again and again and again…
I think there are people who don’t have suicide songs. If they feel bad, they probably do things to cheer up. Like go to the beach. Eat ice cream. Pet a pooch, phone a friend. Crank some Santana or SUBLIME. They don’t hate the sun or dream about the best song to kill yourself to.More About Cheap Swiss Replica: replica watches.
I remember one of the last days before I finally quit the life that was stealing my sleep. I was on my way home after work like a corpse, notebook open on my lap, pages of poison apples in bleeding black ink.
I got off the train, my iPod playing a soundtrack for my zombie walk home. Outside, the rain was lacing my face and hair in that lazy, provocative way… And “Limo Wreck” came on. I thought about doing it. About how I’d do it. Like a car crash, a silent slide into a bottomless trench. Satan’s cement stew.
Then I thought, what if I skipped that song and put on, like, the Beach Boys. Maybe the sky would clear and I wouldn’t hate the sun. I dig a mean psycho beach party when I’m in my glory days. Candy striped bikini, sandy thighs. I wish they all could be California girls… I pass the yards of my neighbours, soaked and sagging under the sticky grey sky. I wish they all could be California girls…
Magda Wintar
June 19, 2014 at 8:44 am
That stuff reads a bit too familiar… anyway, I think I’d have to write a song special for that occasion. Like a one hour long song, on loop. I’d also live stream it on the Internet. Because why the fuck not.
Jimmy Castillo
June 15, 2014 at 10:14 am
I wondered where my Soundgarden tape went