Eight Seconds to Live

Breath in eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Hold one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Breathe out: eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

When you want to die, life happens eight seconds at a time.

What do you do in those next eight seconds? I bathe in silence.

Filling the tub with deliciously hot water, armed with earplugs, plunged into darkness. I breathe. Deep long breaths to start. Loud filling the space until I am ready to listen. My breath goes from healing my brain with oxygen to calming it with silence.

This is where depression tends to come knocking loudly into the mind. I am not here for debating, for recaps, or what-ifs. This is the time to practice being silent.

Most of us are terrible at being truly quiet. We fill our minds with songs, tv, scroll endlessly online, and it’s empty chattering. Or we go out and socialize with those drowning out our existence with chemicals of dependence and disassociation. Waving glittering masks at each other while partaking in the ritual of happiness. Endless nights in conversations about television shows and ephemera robed in costumes of someone else’s idealizations. Waiting always to fill the space with the noise of our anxieties.

The gift of eight seconds at a time is that if you get here then, in theory, nothing matters anyhow. You stamped your card expired. As such, you have every right to tell your mind to shut the fuck up. And you might as well listen.