I still think about dying after I wrote a book about surviving
*tw for suicide and abuse
Let me tell you how writing Good Girl and Other Yearnings did not heal me.
I still think about suicide like it’s a cup of coffee, just another unkickable craving. I still see my little-girl-self hiding behind the purple velvet armchair, drawing lines with the drag of my finger while my mother shouts, dealing out punishment. I am still there, counting blows. I am still there. And at the same time, I am still in the backyard with my sisters watching heat lighting striking scissors in the sky. And still cross-legged on the bottom of the pool, pinkies up.
Because (you know) the past doesn’t vanish; it calcifies. What happened happened / what happened happens.
I’m there, and I’m also here, standing at a charging station at JFK, reading Good Girl. Anti-anxiety meds have me floating in a funny way, like a clump of algae surfing a ripple. Touch me. I am glossy and green and full of ideas.
My sister, from whom I was estranged for three years, messaged me today about my book. I didn’t know how she’d react or if she’d even read it—one of the contributing factors to our falling out was that she didn’t see our family the way I did, hadn’t agreed on the shape of the story. But she loved it, painful as it was to see it on the page. It was a strange relief to hear this from her.
Have you ever rehearsed disaster so many times you forget it hasn’t happened, and then the opposite arrives, the miracle, and you feel like a guest in your own life? Like Where’s the bathroom? Can I borrow a sweater? Thank you for having me.
Like everyone else, I like to be seen and understood and I hate to be seen and misunderstood. People have been reading my book and telling me they understand—sisterhood, safety, survival, goodness, wanting to die, and at the same time, wanting nothing but life, all of it in big messy heaps.
When I read messages like this, I get what I need. Not healing. But a kind of growth.
Thank you for reading and supporting my work.
Thank you for this stunning review of GG&OY in Only Poems.
And of course, thank you for buying and reviewing Good Girl and Other Yearnings.
I love this take. We always tend to think that getting the thing we want will fix everything. Everywhere you go, there you are or whatever the saying is.
Hey Isabelle,
Before the age of twenty, I thought everyone thought of suicide on a weekly basis. It was the most ordinary thing in my head. But then one fateful night led to an appointment with a therapist who told me, for the first time ever in my life, that no, it wasn't normal. Part of me still suspects it is, but for the sake of the ones walking about me, going to and fro, I hope it isn't.
There is no one thing that helps, and in a way nothing really helps, but I hope you go toward the good and the good toward you.
Best,
Mahdi