by Ria //

Editor's note: this story contains references to suicidal ideation and self-harm

I recall things cyclically. Memories of prior years drift into the current one as each season melts into the next. Like a newspaper ripped off a table by the wind, tossed against my face so the print flashes clear on the other side of my glasses. My past selves whisper into each others’ ears and into mine, and suddenly I am aware again of the subtle ache of an IV, or hysterically typed diary entries, or the way my stomach falls when seeing a sheer drop.

Three years ago, I spent December hospitalised yet again in KKH’s eating disorder ward. Any light in me was wrung out, crushed further each long moment to moment. Some patients around me wept during mealtimes, shakily clutching cutlery, and even the aggressive competition I’d fostered to carry myself through the days withered, softened by the dawning realisation of how abjectly pathetic we all seemed.

So much misery in this room, I’d think repeatedly, like a broken record. Babies and children multiple rooms away would wake us up in the early hours, crying loudly from sickness or pain. So much hurt in this place.

My final stay there lasted nearly a month; I learned from other people who had been warded that even the initial week in that unit was enough to break them.

December two years ago is blank. The whole of 2023 is a haze, a heavy fog that does not dissipate unless it’s to unveil brief, devastating scenes of the worst aspects of myself. I exchanged a year of middle-term memory for a chance of relief from chronic active suicidality via electroshock therapy. The treatment helped, my diary entries tell me, but I do not remember. 

One year ago, I was on a ledge. I think I was on a ledge. I don’t remember. 

I piece the timeline together with contextual clues. Turns out the electroshock took away a bit more than a year of memory.

But I do recall this. It's after Os. I’m in my school uniform wearing the varsity jacket all the other students recognise me by; a novelty, because accessories—including outerwear—have never been allowed in our school. Wearing the jacket is an obligation, because the teachers have had endless meetings with my parents addressing my wrist-to-elbow ridges of self-harm scarring. Wearing the jacket is also an overheating hazard, because I’ve been strictly forbidden from removing it by school staff, and unknown to any of us, my medication causes heat intolerance. 

Did secondary school go out in November? Did students return to school for anything in December? I don’t know. I do know that in my palm I grip a paper bag containing a jar of homemade shortbread. The pieces are haphazardly cut, comically mis-sized, each somehow different shades of brown. I’ve put in too many sea salt chunks, so in some bites you get hit with straight sodium. There might be a card in the bag to the friend I intended to pass it to. A Christmas greeting, likely. But my friend hasn’t shown up at school today, and somehow a teacher’s outburst has ignited every neuron in my mind, enough of a final straw to make me stagger to the apartment blocks across the street and jab wildly at the elevator button for the seventeenth floor. My heart ripping itself in two in my chest. Inconsolable. 

The psychiatrist’s acknowledgement of borderline symptoms came… a few months later? Actually the borderline thing could’ve been December. God. 

I put my schoolbag down. I pull out my note. I have prepared notes pre-emptively since I was fourteen. I take off the jacket and survey what the police will find left of me. I have a pencil case stuffed to bursting and a bag of textbooks that breaks my back. A battered PLD. My phone. The note. 

The jar of shortbread. 

The paper bag is neon pink and has not read the atmosphere of the room. I pull the jar out, look at the multicoloured cookies inside. Only the prettiest ones in the batch for my friend’s family, especially for her little sister who idolised me.

Then I think: She’ll never forgive herself for not coming to school today. 

Then I think: The police are going to take my things.

Then I think: What are they going to do with the shortbread? 

It could be the cruelest thing in the world, when the last gift from a deceased person is also perishable. Almost a second loss when it is gone. What should I do with them? Eat them as they were meant to be treasured, leaving the final one, or two, or five behind in remembrance? Keep the cookies? Let the whole jar fester? Momentarily I consider eating them first to save my friend the suffering. Unfortunately, even in my near-final moments, I am too fearful of food to eat passable butter cookies. 

I have had a motto since I was fourteen: You’ll never regret a suicide attempt.

This had powered me through the years post-hospital, living day by day just to take another shot at ending it the moment I was left unattended. Anything to make my mind go quiet. Every split second I wasn’t held, watched, or restrained was a beautiful chance. 

This chance — where nobody is watching, or knows where I am, with a definite chance of success — is something I would’ve killed for even a few months earlier. 

But instead I sit down there, right by the balcony. I hold the shortbread. The air is cool all the way up here, wind whipping at my hair, my shirt. I could knock on a stranger’s door and offer it to them. But it’s for her, a stubborn little voice wheedles, I want my friend to have it.

My limbs are like lead after a few hours. I have cried and stopped and cried again. I have called hotlines and put the phone down, and made excuses to my mother and my social worker about where I am. I do not want to be saved. I do want to step over the balcony. I just do not want to give my friend the worst gift in the world. 

I stand up. I go back down the elevator. I go home. 

I have gotten onto many ledges since, and if I haven’t been restrained, I have stepped down alone. In the short term I’ve regretted it, screamed and cried and suffered over it. But I do know why I walked away. I walked away because there was a playground below and I could hear children laughing and clapping thirteen storeys up and despite all my hatred and misery I couldn’t do something like that to them. I walked away because a close friend had ongoing finals, and if she flunked anything because of my death, her family would not spare her any grace. I walked away because recently a little cousin who reminded me of myself hugged me without any adults telling her to, and I didn’t want her parents to have to explain to her, later on, why my line in the family tree ended in an X. 

I view it as a sacrifice; that if I continue to survive, and subsequently suffer, the people around me get to have a tomorrow that remains bright. 

But I love the people around me. I find out over and over again that I am still willing to hold the weight of the sky for them. So I look down, and then I look back.

Ria is an aspiring illustrator who enjoys meandering library trips, video essays, and indie music albums. she is currently studying graphic design and saving up for plane tickets to visit loved ones.

Read more of our Tapestry Stories here.

Image by Aline Ponce from Pixabay