dear euodia

Bounce Back Canada is a suicidal prevention program. You are enrolled in the program through your doctor. The program assigns you a ‘coach’ who then calls you every two weeks to make sure you haven’t gone from passive suicidal to active suicidal.

Definitions giving to me by my Doctor:

Passive Suicidal: “You don’t have a plan to kill yourself but if you got hit by a bus tonight, you wouldn’t mind.”

Active Suicidal: “You have a plan, a date, and a ‘how’.”

You get 8 calls in total from your ‘coach’.

Why would I tell a stranger that I no longer want to live, when I know the ‘right’ answer to give?

Euodia, here is the truth.

a plastic shield

“[Plastic] is perhaps the hardest material there is. It is hard, because it refuses its environment, creating a sealant or barrier that remains impermeable to what surrounds it. It influences its environment while remaining mute to that environment’s influence,” (Davis 351).

Working with plastic, specifically vapour barrier, gave me an opportunity to use the object as a representation of myself and my mental illness; an indirect self-portrait. The purpose of vapour barrier is to protect something from the outside environment. It becomes a shield.

I feel understood by this object, this material. I feel as though I carry around my own vapour barrier whenever I leave my room, and although vapour barrier does not let ‘debris’ in, by default, it also doesn’t allow ‘debris’ out.