Suicide By Overdose
The Most Beautiful Violence
**Warning: This content contains graphic material and can be potentially triggering for those who are sensitive to suicide, death, violence, and drug overdose. Reader discretion is advised. **
Numbers on the bathroom floor
Empty bottles speaking louder than prayers
My skin, a roadmap of collapsed veins and broken promises
Each needle mark a telegram sent to nobody
The body becoming archaeology while still breathing
I had become a ghost long before I decided to leave
Walking through life half-transparent
Substance filling the void where my voice should be
Chemical courage, chemical calm, chemical catastrophe
My reflection a stranger I no longer bothered to greet
Memories dissolved in amber liquid
Days measured in milligrams and crystalline promises
The weight of disappointed eyes heavier than chains
Each morning, waking surprised to still exist
Each night, begging not to see another dawn
That night
I did not write notes or make calls
The decision settled in my bones like an old friend
Finally, permission to stop fighting
To unclench the fists that had been holding nothing
One more hit
Bigger than before
A liturgy of powder and spoons
My heart already saying goodbye before the plunger pushed home
The last communion between flesh and poison
Darkness bloomed like ink in water
Not peace, not yet
Just the muffled sound of my body forgetting how to be alive
Time folding in on itself
Stars collapsing behind my eyelids
Floating above myself
Watching the blue creep into my lips
The surrender so complete I could taste it
My soul already untethering, drifting toward some nameless elsewhere
The quietest violence I'd ever committed
Then light
Unwanted, intrusive
Someone's hands pressing life back into my chest
Narcan flooding my system, dragging me up from the depths
Resurrection a crime I hadn't consented to
I emerged gasping
Resurrection brutal and unwelcome
Birth in reverse
Thrust back into the world I had tried to leave
The weight of existence crushing down again
Lungs burning with the audacity of air
Who saves a ghost?
Who decides which prayers deserve answers?
Stranger's hands that wouldn't let me go
Eyes I couldn't look into
The terrible mercy of being found
Vomiting out death
Choking on the return journey
Every cell screaming in protest
The symphony of withdrawal already tuning up
Second chances wrapped in agony
Days passed
Weeks
The withdrawal a second death
But slower, more deliberate
Neurons relearning how to speak without translation
Until one morning
I noticed the sun through a window
How it painted the dust in the air
How my lungs filled without effort
How silence no longer needed to be drowned
Now gratitude comes in small moments
The taste of food I can actually taste
Sleep that isn't chemically induced
A heart that continues its steady work
The luxury of ordinary pain
I carry the name of my savior
Like a stone in my pocket
Smooth from constant touching
A reminder of the life I didn't want
That waited for me anyway
Sometimes I trace the scars on my arms
Palimpsests of a different story
The body remembering what the mind tries to forget
How close I came to becoming nothing
How someone refused to let nothing win
In sobriety's clear light
I see now what I couldn't then:
That even in my most determined unbecoming
Some ember refused to die
And someone saw it, cupped hands around it
This breath
This moment
This second life I didn't ask for
Now precious beyond measure
The most beautiful violence: being forced to stay.
