This is Not (A Suicide Note)

This is the letter I daily want to write, the bullet I won't bite. The bullet that years ago never fired, the .44 magnum that filled me for a time with endless ire.
This is the letter I'll never send, because your heart in this way I refuse to rend.
This is me, alive and unliving; me, present and forgotten.
Me, feeling redundant and replaced in every aspect of life.
Me reaching out to the ones who said they'd be there... to be slapped away.
I hope you never understand how it is that the people you see daily are the first to forget you; the first to make you feel that you're mundane and plain.
I hope you never understand what I mean when I say it sometimes feels like you're less burden dead than alive... that the single thing keeping you alive is that which makes you ache, makes you wish you'd die.

I hope you never understand seeing the signs in yourself, only to realize you're the only one that does...

I hope you never feel the ache in your heart that resides, heartbeat to heartbeat, in mine.
The ache that says, in a thousand bitter tongues,  "Everyone has something more important than me," or perhaps denial is more serene, "I don't want to die, I just want something to happen to me."
This is the letter I never sent.
This is the letter you will never read, because I am stubborn, I am me, and I refuse to let the demons win this fight.
I stand before you, not as someone meek, not as someone whose name will be read with a weep in an obituary.
I stand before you to speak, I am here to read, because I refuse to again make myself bleed. I refuse to give my destructive demons that lead, I refuse.
I will say it again, again, again, and again... because that is the only way to keep the demon out and let the weak seed of hope win.

I refuse to dim my light.
I refuse to let my self destruction win this fight.
I refuse to be a statistic, a tragedy, anything but me!

I.
Refuse.

Because I have come this far.
I've written this much.

I cannot count on my hands and feet the lives I have touched.
My tears do not make me weak, they make me human... because this is the letter I never sent.
This is the letter you will never read, because I know there are a lot like me. There, in this fetid world, will always be.
They are the ones I want to reach; they're the ones I see. They're the ones who need to know they're important to me.
This is a letter I hope you never need to read.