Transparent

I have just started reading Jill Bialosky’s stunning History of a Suicide and already, only ten pages in, I sense her sister’s feelings as inescapable. Clearly, I am identifying more than I should with the woman who took her own life. At one time, I feared that Cat, my angry and unpredictable Part, would kill me when I wasn’t paying attention. She gave me plenty of cause to think that. Then I would have the splintering, shattering sensations of who am I?  Because it’s so settled to decide to die, it drops into place so neatly and extinguishes the terror so explicitly. It’s such an obvious, happy solution. It also scares the shit out of me, this me, the not-Cat me. This part knows that no outside person, no family member can ever comprehend the breadth of that experience or save my life. As much as I love them, they were irrelevant to my predicament. When our loved ones intuit that their words are empty and they cannot pierce our emotional pain, they are right. I have so much sorrow now for the person I was, who knew she had to be alone, and for all those who still are.