If I didn’t kill myself in high school,
I won’t let an old bully with a bad spray tan
Winning the election with his tiny annoying hands
Break my five year suicide sobriety.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
It’s nobler to live.
It’s braver to keep picking wildflowers in the summer
And making hot chocolate too early in the fall.
Goddamn you, my death-bent brain,
It’s stronger to keep taking those fucking antidepressants at night,
Even though every day there’s a new headline
About some choice that idiot is making
That seems to be begging you to hoard those little pills
And take them all at once,
Please close the tab that keeps NPR on 24/7
And get some sleep tonight.
To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To wake up in a too-cold apartment
Because the heater works too well
And your roommate gets night sweats,
But at least waking up cold reminds you
There’s something worth getting up for,
Even if it’s just turning the heater on.
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
The real calamity would be no more days
In antique shops where you find old cameo lockets—
You might go back to the queer bookstore in Edinburgh,
You might get to do more film shoots with your best friend,
There are gay bar crawls with friends that never mind
That some days you are too quiet and don’t feel like dancing—
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
You have won too many debates with your father
To let your stubbornness fail against a man
Not when you promised yourself joy out of spite,
And success as a weapon against the people
Who told you to go to hell at the pride parade
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
There will still be sunrises and sunsets.
You have to take another shot at seeing the Aurora Borealis.
There are other ways to escape a president
That promises fascism.
Your father taught you better,
In his lessons from living in Berlin in 1991,
Your mind is clearer than it was when you were thirteen
And couldn’t see beyond your friends forgetting your birthday.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
You will not be weaker than a man
So scared of minds like yours
That he’d dismantle the Department of Education.
If he’s going to kill you,
Make him do his own dirty work this time.
He’s got to look you in the eyes and gut you himself.
Make sure your blood is on his hands.