They were the petty years. An agonizingly slow life where nothing change. But that was. fine. I didn’t need to change. I only needed the ability to bear it. I managed, any feeling I had about my situation hit the outside of my heart and ricocheted throughout the rest of my body to rot elsewhere. There was nothing to do about it.

On an uneven ground I stood. As temperament of the King determined a day at court, I myself had a volatile liege. I stayed good, still, and careful. Not just with my father but anyone I can into contact with. My father instilled in me the fear of giving a wrong look, or using the wrong tone, and with it I formed the unique ability to make myself as small as possible. As a child I had the habit of shrinking into corners, quiet but observant, and of walking careful and quiet so the sound of my shoes on the floor wouldn’t set him off.

My life was easier that way, but as the years passed I grew restless. The solitude comforted and then devoured me as the days stretched infinitely before me. It was all to me a perpetual dance I grew tired of performing after the hundredth hour, but continue it would, and I could not stop it. What was the point of playing music or studying history if the only thing I was good for was to live and die exactly where I stood? If five or ten years from then I would be the exact same person suffering in the same place?

I would wake up, attend my lessons, call on my mother and brother, avoid my father, go riding and scream into the woods because I knew no one could hear me. That was my life in the countryside. I had no friends except my brother. There were no neighbors of our status that were received. Life continued in the same unfaltering cycles. I tired of it. I tired of his heavy footsteps, tired of the endless flatlands around me, tired of the marks on my mother’s skin, and the bottles of gin I used to drink the days away.

I tried. I tired desperately to be a good son. I was quiet, submissive, respectful, and paid attention to my studies. I never did anything on purpose to displease. I tried to make my mother happy only for her to be as miserable as she was before. I would plead for my not to hurt me just to get the living shit beat out of me anyway. Who cared? No one cared. What was would be. I didn’t know what to do about it - until I did.

At first, I never actually wanted to kill myself. I don’t recall where the idea came from. It was an odd joke, a game, a what-if I suppose. Except the images kept coming and sunk their teeth into my mind. I would stare off, unfocused, and I thought about them. It was only time until I took those thoughts more seriously.

When I imagined death I did not think of pain. I only thought that my days of a foggy and leaden head would be gone in an instant. Under my timid and harmless facade I was cold inside. That darkness of mine comforted me and I kept it hidden to myself because it was mine alone. It may not seem that pleasant but a cold warmth is still a warmth. I desperately wanted to disappear behind the veil and the only thing I needed to do was succumb and fall into it.

The sky was clear. One of my father’s horses kept stomping his legs, huffing and irritated from having been in the same place for over an hour. Wisps of white clouds passed by as I listened to the forest sounds around me. The laudanum rested in my hands but I shook far too much to open it. I focused on an image in my mind’s eyes - of my body in a forest, decaying and weathering until I was nothing more than bones. It all seemed so peaceful to me then.

A sore lump formed in my throat. My stomach twisted in on itself. I looked up to the sky for some sort of sign but the clouds passed me by. In my mind’s eye it was easier. I would only open the bottle, drink with no second thoughts or worries, but the reality constricted my lungs and covered me in a cold sweat.

I didn’t know how long it would take. I didn’t know if I would even be in any pain. I didn’t know if it was even enough to kill me. The only thing I knew was that it made my mother tired and calm and I gathered it would give me a calm death too.

I laid there long enough that I shook no longer from fear but the chill. I grew more and more uncomfortable in my position though the thoughts still gnawed on me - that it would only make me fall asleep and before I would know what was happening I would no longer wonder. The painful possibility corrupted the peaceful image my mind painted. It wasn’t long before a wet drop hit the center of my forehead. Rain did not match my vision. If I did it I would have to wait until the morning - weather permitting. I told myself if I felt the same urge I would do it again. I told myself that every time I thought about it seriously. There had yet been a time where I didn’t calm down enough to keep living.

I went home, the back of my greatcoat wet and muddy but if anyone asked I would only say I fell in the mud. I made haste to my plain room, where I put the bottle under my mattress next to a bag of coin. I no longer thought of it. I changed my clothes and warmed myself by the fireplace. I decided I would live. For now. Just live - nothing more.