Don't die

Just repeat as necessary. Prayer, mantra, intervention, self-hypnosis. All the psychic power of the tone-poem dervish of the whirling mind brought to bear on one thought, one idea, one heartbeat, one thing that must be known out of the ocean of that which cannot be known: don't die.

Don't die. Don't die. Do not die. Just do not die. Repeat as necessary, no matter how enticing the invitation, how reassuring small the guest list. Mindful of this one thing above all else - don't die.

Lather up the scrubbing bubbles of the simplicity of the phrase, rinse, and repeat: don't die. Do not go out and die. Do not lay down and die. Do not curl up and die. Just don't die.

If you're capable of it and you've got the necessarily lustrous body for it (some of us are thinning), add the creme rinse of contract: you can't die because of your mother/because of your friends/because of your ghod/because of the mess it would leave for whoever finds you/because of the one you love. You can't do that to them, so don't die.

Unfortunately, all the shibboleths of the demiprofessionals (suicide hotline phone answerers, bad therapists, cops called to your house by terrified friends or lovers, moderately informed friends, late-night radio talkshow hosts) are like baby shampoo - unequal to the task of deep mindful cleansing at hand.

Permanent solution to temporary problem? No, that is incorrect. Rather, permanent solution to the current acute outbreak (among how many excruciating outbreaks? how many must be borne?) of a recurrent, seemingly incurable and permanent disease.

Selfish? This is a charge simply too stupid to bear much scrutiny, except to point out that the very last thing most of us are feeling at this moment is a surfeit of self. Quite the contrary. The idea is to get very, very small indeed, smaller than a concept, smaller than a notion: certainly we are already smaller than an identity.

Mantra, self-intervention, hypnotic prayer, numbing repetition until the correct drugs are found, the right cocktail mixed, until the tumblers fall into place, until the therapeutic/pharmaceutical philosopher's stone transmutes the base metal of dosage and talk into the gold of a quiet mind: don't die.