"What if"
A PERSONAL LOOK AT SUICIDAL IDEATION
By Jordan Davis
(Joshua Sortino / Unsplash)
2017 was freshman year,
College dorms,
New friends and old.
Freedom, independence,
Everything I’d craved.
And yet,
The dark cloud lingered.
Drops of burning acid
Bore holes in my brain,
So I filled them with
Questions of “what if,”
Visions of what life would look like
After I was gone.
Finals week brought
Stress and flash cards.
A study break with my friends
Interrupted by a phone call
From my best friend.
Hyperventilating from the other line
Filled me with adrenaline,
And before I knew it, I was
Running to meet her.
I followed in supportive silence
As we walked to her dorm.
She ran to the bathroom
And locked me outside.
Pulse pounding,
I begged for her to open the door,
Memories of stories told at sleepovers
Of her past attempts
Burning in my brain.
As she cried, screaming in pain
At something I couldn’t see,
Tears escaped my wide eyes
As the question of “what if”
Yelled at me so loud
I thought my eardrums would burst.
No more dorm sleepovers,
With face masks and air mattresses,
No more late nights at IHOP
Or car rides blaring Broadway soundtracks.
No more her.
These thoughts persisted like
An unrelenting wind
As my friends and I were ushered into the lobby,
Where we sobbed as security went to talk to her.
What felt like hours later,
We were beckoned back in.
And as we joined her on the bathroom floor,
My eyes went to her wrist,
Where a red line of quick but strong scratches
Stood in contrast to her pale skin.
She looked at me,
Her eyes missing the brightness
That filled up a room when she smiled,
That shone like a hazel moon
Every time she laughed at a bad joke.
And she said quietly,
“The keys weren’t sharp enough.”
As we huddled together,
Something deep in me started to shift.
As I got to experience what it was like
On the other end of the “what if.”
But in 2019, it shifted again.
After three of my closest friends
Collectively decided
That they wanted nothing to do with me.
I lay in bed at my apartment,
Alone,
My eyes swollen and head pounding
After hours of non-stop tears
And Snapchat conversations,
Looking for an answer I wasn’t going to get.
I asked the wall in front of me
“Why me?”
I felt as though the world had
Witnessed me at the happiest I’d been in a while
And saw it as a challenge.
That night became a deafening battle
Between the part of me that remembered
That night on the bathroom floor,
Where I swore I’d never think that way again,
And the part of me that was certain
That I burdened everyone I knew,
That realized that right when I had found
A version of myself that I’d actually liked,
It was ripped from me in the blink of an eye,
And there was nothing I could do about it.
One side started winning,
And I questioned how many pain pills
I had under my bathroom sink.
I was too exhausted to get up and check,
But since I have frequent headaches,
I came to the conclusion
That I just didn’t have enough.
As I lay there,
Staring at the off-white wall,
Wondering what to do next,
I got a phone call.
It was just a friend checking in,
But then after that, another friend called.
She invited me over, we made cookies and sang,
It was the first time I’d smiled all day.
But on the drive home,
The thoughts hit me again
And I drove slowly, because
I was crying so much I couldn’t see the road.
I fell back into bed,
Numb,
And wondering how I was going to face
These coworkers that had called themselves my friends
The next day.
But my real friends that stayed by my side all weekend
Stood as a reminder of all I had to lose,
Even after feeling like I’d already lost so much.
It’s now 2021,
And I haven’t had a suicidal thought
In almost 2 years.
I’ve had some low points,
But any time my mind has drifted
To its darkest parts,
To the depths where it seems like
There is no light at the end of the tunnel,
I remind myself that I wasn’t alone
On one of the worst nights of my life,
And I’m still not alone.
Today the girl from these two stories
Feels like a stranger.
It’s easy to get caught up in the “what ifs” of life,
Because it’s full of uncertainties.
It’s even easier to get caught up in
The negative ones:
“What if I’m not good enough?”
“What if I’m stuck, and I’ll never be truly happy?”
But everyday I try and remind myself
To reframe those possibilities:
“What if I do get my dream job, or the life I’ve always wanted?”
“What if it only gets better?”
The thing is,
I’ll never get the answers to these questions
Unless I keep going.
And so I do.
This piece was written and shared during the IDONTMIND Writing Workshop. Learn more about our free, nine-week course and be the first to know about the next workshop here. Visit Mental Health Connecticut’s YouTube channel for a video version of Jordan’s story.
Jordan Davis is a writer and a screenwriter from Missouri. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Missouri State University last year, and can't wait to continue writing and sharing her work for years to come, making people feel less alone in this crazy world.
