HA&L magazine issue twelve.2

Leaving the Light On • by Anita Dolman 1

 

Hamilton Arts & Letters





Abstract painting: being longing by bill bissett. Image of a red face on a pale pink background. Article title: Leaving the Light On by Anita Dolman.

 

PLAY AUDIO VERSION: voice of Anita Dolman  


I don’t know the exact age I was the first time I seriously considered killing myself. According to the tests doctors use to assess a patient’s risk for suicide, one indicator is having a concrete and specific plan.

That means I was at least twelve, since it was after I’d moved into the larger bedroom, at the front of the Southwestern Ontario farmhouse my parents had bought when I was two. The two-storey, yellow-brick-and-fieldstone house sat atop a hill overlooking the rest of the farmstead, its many barns and outbuildings surrounded by pasture, forest, and croplands stretching in every direction. The nearest town was Wingham, a twenty-minute drive away, weather permitting.

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[Distillate © HA&L + Anita Dolman {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]

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