I WISH I WERE DEAD NOW.

March 14, 2007

I wrote this after a call that still haunts me—a crack apartment, a patient unraveling, and a single line I’ll never forget: “I wish I were dead now.” She didn’t say it for attention. She meant it.

Back then, I was angry—at the drugs, the squalor, maybe even at her. But mostly, I was afraid. Because no one starts there. You slide.

It wasn’t a story about addiction. It was about despair—and how sometimes, we’re the last witnesses to someone’s quiet surrender.