Whole

Hello, I’m Tiffany, your resident town hermit. Welcome to my fellowship—a haven where you’re free to talk about taboo subjects you can’t anywhere else. Learn more about The Untangling here, or subscribe to never miss a post.

Dear Inklings,

(For those sensitive to these topics, this essay is about suicide, so if you need to protect yourself, feel free to skip this one, and I'll see you next time.)

You can push back the dark as long as you can, and when it finally closes in you can face it with your head held high.
—H.G. Parry

There’s a lie I’ve been told and that I tell myself, and it is this: When darkness envelops you, those around you are better off without you; remove yourself.

The first time I overdosed, I was seventeen years old. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision as the end of a conveyor belt I didn’t know how to get off. If you asked me what happened that day, I would probably say, “That day, the defenses failed. That day, the reasons ran out. That day, I told my brother about the closet and he laughed at me.”

I would say, “I was always the strong one. And that day, I couldn’t be anymore.”

I’ve been Sapphire and I’ve been Emerald.

But I don’t want to be a gem, set apart and placed on a pedestal from which I’ve inevitably fallen—to be crushed underfoot by the very ones who gave me those names. I’ve learned how fleeting such beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is no compliment to be valued by someone who carries little but darkness in them.

They meant it to mean I was precious, no doubt. In the beginning, they would treat me so. Tender words, gentleness and gifts—later transformed to anger and possessiveness.

Perhaps this is why I’m so wary of praise untested by time and action.

That day, I went back after school to an empty house, and swallowed the pills.

Sometimes I think about what it is to stay behind when everyone else has walked on. Because I think for most of my life I have felt like I am waiting in the town of cats, where the train keeps passing by but never stops, as though someone missed telling me that I should have boarded it years ago, and now it’s too late.

My soul carries stories long gone, of all the people that I have known. They beat against my chest, sporadically, sometimes too fast, sometimes stopping for a fraction of a second, sometimes a little too long—the testimony of a heart that is wearing itself thin trying to keep me alive.

I don’t know where I stand, whether I have any right to insert myself into the narrative of others. There have been times I have felt the stark constant of un-belonging. I am mere breath in the morning mist.

That is contradictory, perhaps, but I can’t seem to make up my mind where I want to be. It seems I always have one foot sliding into shadow, while the other desperately digs its heels into the earth, hoping its realness is enough to hold me fast.

Once, you traced my scars and kissed them from my wrist to elbow. You told me I was beautiful.

But when I look at them now, I realise I don’t want to be beautiful.

I just want to be whole.

No one was supposed to come back for hours. For some reason, my dad came home from work early that day. He found me.

The one who called me Sapphire once sang with me among many others. Voices once in harmony, then turned cacophonous. He was loving until he wasn’t. I was happy, once.

I was happy with the one who called me Emerald for a time, too—someone who shared a grief with me. They told me they could see why my son loved me so—and I was grateful—until the moments I wasn’t enough, and they said Renley would have left me if he’d still been alive.

Oh, that’s what happened.

I was happy.

Then, the ghosts returned.

And, I realise I am still trapped in that town of cats.

There’s a lie that is loudly proclaimed when I’m in the depths, and it is this: When you are this depressed, you are not only in pain yourself, but causing pain and trouble for those you love; remove yourself; their lives are better without you.

Yet here I am, naming it as a lie, though in truth, I still have trouble discerning it as such when it’s happening. Such as this day, when the words of those who love me come from too far away and can’t seem to reach me.

I spent that day in and out of consciousness at the hospital. Charcoal forced down my throat then vomited back out. Even in the haze, I heard the annoyed huff of the nurse, a parent’s voice: “Have we not given you enough that you can stop causing such trouble?”

The same ones that said, "Hide your scars. Don't embarrass us."

Of course. Of course you are—troublesome. You can’t even die properly.

The thing about overdosing is, it's slow and painful and scary. Too much time for someone to step in and stop it. Not my preferred way to go (but sometimes the only way).

I believe it in those moments—that I'm the black hole he called me (as well as Sapphire before he stopped loving me).

Because your love is not the charcoal that will absorb all the poison in me.

Because in a split second when the lie overpowers your love, I still swallow the pills.

These were not the memories I meant to write this day. Forgive me.

This day, I remember my therapist telling me I’d suffered more tragedy than the average person. I’ve never found that helpful. How does one quantify tragedy? There are always many who have had it worse. However, she also said I was still determined, that that was not such an easy feat.

“Determined,” I mused.

“Yes, to find beauty and joy. To stop the cycle with you. To continue to love. To let yourself be loved.”

I suppose I am—determined, I mean—because closing down my emotion all those years ago made me no safer, only emptier. And to continuously reach scarred hands to the possibility of true connection is sometimes worth the risk.

Because I’ve let a few see me as I am, and they have stayed.

There are days I don’t feel like a monster. And on the days I do, trying to believe that I'm not.

That people don’t always leave.

That I deserve to exist.

This day, let that be enough.

With Love,

If you're struggling, the U.S. suicide hotline is available: call 988 or https://988lifeline.org/

About Me: Tiffany Chu is a Taiwanese American writer based in San Diego. Her essays and short stories have been published by Open Secrets Magazine, San Diego Writers Ink, and Chicago Story Press. She writes about evergreen themes of grief, belonging, and what it means to be human. She's been writing this publication, The Untangling, since 2023. Order my books here.