slurp

the real question
is not why people who are really really unhappy
kill themselves
but why do people who are really really unhappy
keep on living?
i think the answer is complicated and certainly involves
the fear of death but
i think primarily what keeps them
going is hope/belief/optimism that
something good is going to happen.
and that they'll feel better.
the expectation that they won't feel this bad forever.
so they give it another day, and if that's not
enough, they give it
another.
and then yet another. and,
every once in a while, for
most people anyway,
something nice does happen,
a spring day that welcomes you into its
arms instead of excluding you,
great sex (together or alone),
a conversation you thought you'd never have you
do have, and you end up feeling tingly and good
and alive for several days thereafter,
an unexpected sum of money comes into your life,
an old medical problem clears up,
you see a great movie,
you cry for the first time in ages,
you realize you feel sort of even-keel instead
of really awful,
you wake up & feel older & you're glad because
you sure hated the way you felt when you were
younger,
you sit alone staring into blank space & you feel calm,
and without even really thinking about it
in any definite terms at all,
you just settle into the habit
of putting up with the crap and
sucking on the good stuff.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem first appeared in Nerve Cowboy, Issue #18, Fall 2004. It also appears in my book String Bean, published by BareBackPress in 2018.)