Still...no....internet. Dear God. It's been six days already. Not sure how much longer I can take this.
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All kinds of triggering. Discussing suicide, method and all that jazz. Consider yourself warned.
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In my head, that long piece of orange rope (eight foot? Nine…?); it’s a snake.
It sat, coiled in the darkness of my garage for months. Unseen. But watching.
I know that sounds insane. Maybe it is. But I can’t drive that image from my head. A thin orange snake, coiled in the darkness, in a box or the back of a shelf. Harmless. Just a goddamn piece of rope.
But playing on whatever darkness was in Tony’s mind to start with.
Someone who has known Tony his entire life told me that he was always fashioning ropes into the noose knot, whenever they were in his hands; for something to do. That might sound odd, but knowing him as did, it doesn’t seem odd to me. His hands were always busy doing something, making and moving and sorting and fidgeting.
Did I never see him tie a rope into a noose knot, or did I just never notice?
My mum tells me that my step father saw that orange rope, with a noose tied in it in our shed months before This Happened. He mentioned it to Tony, who shrugged it off… and they assumed it was something for the car he was working on. I would have thought the same.
Did I not ever see that snake coiled in my garage… or did I just never notice?
Charlie the shrink suggested buying a length of orange rope, tieing it just so, then just leaving it sit there. Desensitising myself to it. Proving that a rope is not a snake. It has no control over one’s thoughts. It cannot get into a person’s head and eat away at the decay in a big dark hole, exposing the raw flesh underneath.
As we know, access to method and means is prime risk factor for suicide. But it’s not the only risk factor. It’s not the thing that makes you take your life, right?
It’s not rope that does that.
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The jury’s still out on the “Do I go to Bunnings and buy a big-fuck-off rope?” issue. I’ll keep you posted.
For immediate help, please call LifeLine on 13 11 14.