The Memory of Light

The mental playlist with such hits as “I’m a Monumental Failure” and “I’m Lazy” and “I’m Bad and Worthless” and let’s not forget the very popular “I Don’t Belong Anywhere in This Here Universe” keeps on playing.

“I won’t try to kill myself … while I’m here.”

Words, I remind myself. They are just words.

The thought of going home scares me. I am grateful for the forgiveness I hear in my father’s voice, but in my experience, our house is not a good place to figure things out.

“Somewhere in me I probably had the strength to not kill myself. But I was tired of looking for strength. Tired of being strong. That’s what I did to make it through … each day, go through the motions of being strong. I put on strong every morning. I’m sick of faking strong.”

They are two different questions: Do you want to die? and Do you want to live? But in the darkness of my mind, not wanting to live and wanting to die don’t seem like two things you can pull apart. They’re wrapped up in the no more that I feel right now.

“Do you want to die?”

The directness of E.M.’s question takes my breath away.

“Maybe that’s not the right question,” Gabriel says kindly. “Maybe the real question is, do you want to live?”

How nice not to care what someone thinks of me.

“I thought of dying a couple of times the past two days … when I was home.”

“Listen. Don’t worry about those thoughts. You can’t control them. What you can control is what you say to yourself when those thoughts come.”

All throughout his speech, his voice has a tone of friendly authority. It’s the voice of someone who knows he doesn’t have to yell to be feared.