Dear Someone Who I Will Refrain From Directly Naming Due To Possible Confusion But Do Know That I Have Your Name In My Mind Every Time I Say 'You',

There were things I've never told you and things you never told me,
but I think we can both agree that
I was a suicide letter crafted to the wrong tree.

Your sweet heartbeat became my favorite song, but unfortunately,
I'm not one to sing along
to the things that make my heart tingle.

Your lips were fire that favored mine of ice,
but I preferred bullets,
the thought of them had me enticed.

There's a lake near my house.
I liked to call it my "exit strategy"
because in its vicinity
I remembered how to forget to breathe.
It was a place where the rules need not apply,
and in that lake,
is where I let the water almost steal my life one night.

But I hadn't written a letter yet.
And in my mind, letters are an outlet for your sweetest hello and hardest goodbye.
But that night I was insistent on wanting to die,
craving the bullets, my mind
wanted to give away my last greeting
and say hello to goodbye.

I paced back and forth,
light shimmering off the lake and its ports,
I was not going to go out on a bad note-
and certainly not without one at all.

I skipped on my way home that night,
the first time in my life I had something to excite
my heart and my blood. I had paused for a second, just a second, and wondered
if it was ironic that the one thing I was looking forward to,
was the one thing you dreaded to see.

An unfortunate side effect of suicide is that someone has to find you.

I use the word 'someone' loosely.
The air will find me before any one person.
The air was the first to greet me
and will be the last to touch my lips.

We have been through a lot together.
Often times I had screamed away the oxygen from my body,
but it kept coming back despite the fact it knew it would be attacked
by airborne blood particles and shiny blades.

But, soon enough,
I was able to sit down,
grab some fuzzy socks,
and gather all the thoughts from my mind and place them onto a piece of paper that one unlucky someone would find.

But my tactics weren't working.
There seemed to be a war between my head and my hands,
a constant battle of who really held the pen,
and it seemed like my head was winning
because after 3 hours of just sitting
I still had a rather empty sheet of paper with just one word: dear.

It then occurred to me that I didn't know what I was doing.
And no, I don't mean the suicide, I mean the suicide letter.

My whole life I had been taught that silly rhyme about headings, greetings, and bodies.
But closings and signatures were more my style.

How do you explain to someone why you decided to kill yourself? It's not like they can just jump inside my head and sift through my reasonings for purposeless endings, no, my hands place as an ally in this situation.

After long deliberation with the four walls circling around me like jet planes,
I realized I had been focusing on the wrong battle. And no, I don't mean the suicide letter, I mean the paper.

I was being uncreative.
How, should I say, basic was it to write a suicide letter?
Almost laughing at my obscurity, I crumbled up the paper and threw it in the empty waste basket.
This is the twenty first century for god's sake,
what was I doing with paper and a pen?

In that moment, something seemed to dawn on me.
Perhaps it was because the sun was rising, but I like to think it was because the sweet smell of pancakes had become apparent in my room.

In that moment, I realized that there was a remarkable human being downstairs who woke up earlier than they would have liked to cook me a breakfast they didn't know if I wasn't going to eat.

I often think about what would've happened had I gone through with my plans that day. I would have eaten the pancakes, gone to school, come home, done my homework, checked Instagram, gone to the lake, and experimented with the taste of bullets.

I am still tempted.
The thoughts of it still cloud my mind every once and a while.
You see, depression fades like your own shadow.
It is constant.
But, with the right light, I believe it can be put off for a while.
And I like to to think you are my kind of light.

Even so, I was somehow able to craft this letter for you from the collaboration of my head and my hands, with the assistance, of course, of paper and a pen.

These thoughts hold a permanent spot in the back of my mind. And no, I don't mean the suicide, I mean

you.

With utmost love and thanks,

                       your wonderful failure and beautiful recoverer.