Every summer morning in Laingholm
I climbed down the steep track from
our rickety beach house to the beach.
I floated in tea-coloured water, spinning in
slow circles below the headland,
the sun in my eyes and mud in my hair.
Years later, after I'd left Laingholm, I
discovered that the water is very polluted
and you should never swim there.

*

I woke up in my car on Laingholm Beach
and it was mid-afternoon. I opened
the door and put my feet out in the air
and peeled open my eyes. There were
pills everywhere. Everything felt gritty.
A woman asked me, Are you alright?
And I said I was. It was true. I was alive.

The next time wasn't at the beach, I was in
my bed, apparently, but when I woke up
I was in hospital. The nurse called me a
stupid girl, which made her less compassionate
than the complete stranger who found me
in my car the first time.

When I got home my flatmate said I'm sorry
that happened to you. I mulled this over
for a while. I'm not sure whether it happened
to me or whether I made it happen, or
whether I was so discouraged that I just gave
up on everything.

*

I loved Laingholm but I needed to live somewhere
less full of moods: the skimming, then billowing,
then wispy vanishing clouds that skirted the sun;
the high-riding gibbous moons; the sky-glinting
sickle moons cutting into the night; and then, to top
it all off, the king tides pacing the shoreline, and then
the horizon-line, over and over and over — all of it
was too much drama, and far too much poetry, like
living in a landscape of ancient Atua come to life again.
I needed to be less in awe all day. I wanted to put my
feet up and watch television.

*

I moved to a little ramshackle white house in a
field set in the curve of the upper harbour. I was
still in the West, but now in the North as well, a
side of Auckland where the sand is golden, not
black, and the countenance of the land is more open
and gentle. Houses do not huddle in the bush and
fall into the sea in storms.

*

My boyfriend of the time is into cars. He owns
no less than eight vehicles, they include two utes,
a jeep, a motorbike and assorted cars and pick-ups.
Some are going and some are not going, only one
has a current warrant. I guess they are projects,
like all of my poem drafts that litter our study floor,
although the cars take up more room than my paper.

But he's a good man to have around because he
can fix things. Cars, gutters, fences – he even takes in
rescue kittens, although in the time we are together
he mainly just has the one cat, an adorable tiny black
and white mog called Pickle, the runt of her litter. He
rescued her then couldn't let her go. Anyway, in case
I've made him sound too perfect, he also smokes weed,
a lot of weed, so I never really know what he is like
when he isn't high.

*

The doctors have convinced me, thanks to my most
recent incident, that I need to take my medication
regime more seriously. In fact, it was made clear to
me that I would not be released from the psychiatric
ward unless I agreed to follow their plan. I did agree.
I was tired of trying to kill myself although secretly
annoyed that my previous attempts hadn't worked.
I did not tell them this. Instead I repeated over and
over that I no longer harboured suicidal thoughts.
That I realised I wanted to live. I could see they knew
I was equivocating but my words allowed them to tick
their boxes, so they went along with it. I went home.

*

When it comes to suicide, how easy you make it is
a very important factor. Studies have shown that
people have a propensity to throw themselves
over the low railings of high buildings, apparently
without forward planning. They suddenly see
their chance, and take it. If you gave a hundred
people a pill that would kill them painlessly and
said that they could choose to use it, or not, how
many would be dead by the next morning? I keep
reading that human beings have an innate will
to survive, but in some of us it is not well-developed.
Most days I feel like a garden where nothing will grow.