Wednesday, August 27, I tried to commit suicide.

My wife was out with her lover at the time. We had just gotten back home after a vacation. As soon as we set foot inside the door she made a phone call, took a shower, put on her best clothes, and left. I didn’t know they were lovers at the time. I didn’t even know who he was.

I tried to visit my friends, but all of them were busy. I wonder which ones knew what was going on but wouldn’t tell me. But I knew anyway. I knew but for rationally. Rationally I had no idea. But the other ninety percent of me knew.

I decided to work, but the power went out. That’s when I turned to the drink.

About an hour later I was holding a butcher knife in my hands, laying on my back, wondering what the best method for getting it into my heart was.

Funny, when there’s already a knife in your heart, the best thing it seems to do is get a real one in there as well.

I decided to call her. I didn’t know where she was, but I had a good idea. Turns out I was wrong. She couldn’t be at her usual haunts. She couldn’t get caught.

It was instinct to call her. She was always the one there for me, even when nobody else was.

She told me to go out and drink a beer.

I lied on the floor with a butcher knife suspended above my chest. Lightly swinging it between my index finger and thumb.

I crawled under the desk for a while and cried. It was like I couldn’t adequately cry. I couldn’t flood the streets with the amount of tears it would have taken.

I called her again. Desperate.

She was thoroughly pissed off at this point. Surely, I was interrupting her good time. His tongue down her throat. She told me, “Get a grip.”

I threw the phone against the wall and destroyed a few things around me. I wanted to tear every belonging, every piece of work I had created, I wanted to tear it all up into a million pieces.

She heard it all.

I still hadn’t managed to kill myself an hour or so later when she came home. I had called everyone I knew, my best friend, a friend across town, her parents even. Her mother called her and she cried to her, told her that I had a knife and was drunk and high. If only. Her father told her to stay in a hotel for the night. Convenient. At least she got some that night. I passed out on the floor. I should have jumped out of the goddamn window.