Nine year olds dream about lots of things: Prince Charming, unicorns, and fairies. I dreamt of being a neurosurgeon. I’m thirty-six now. I’m sitting in my makeshift office, intended for a dining table. I don’t have a dining table. My dining room office occupies 1/5 of my 632 square foot, one bedroom apartment. I don’t own a car in my name. I don’t have a savings account. I never got a college degree. I’m now disabled. I’m on 17 medications a day. I have, on average, 6 doctor appointments a month. I can barely keep up with the dishes and laundry. Essentially, I doused my dreams with gasoline, and set them on fire, and with it, hope went up in smoke.
My nine year old self sits in between my ears, behind my eyes, surveying the damage, climbing the rubble, looking for dreams, sifting for hope. She brings me my tattered dreams and ashen hope, collected in a charred metal tin, and says,
“See, you can still do so much. Take these tattered dreams, and ashen hope, and grow something spectacular.”
Original photography by Harmony Greenwood
“I don’t think I can be a neurosurgeon anymore, though,” I respond with matured sensibility.
“I don’t want to be that anymore, anyhow,” She vacillates, “I think now I want to help people like me. People who hurt inside. People who need to be loved, but no one wants to love them because they are too hard to love. I think that’s what I’m really good at. I love you, a whole lot.”
Dear Suicide, 