I told myself that I needed to die, and went for it.
I stepped off the chair underneath me, hanging by a strong, thick rope from the ceiling light.
I'd been gearing up for this for ages, convinced that I couldn't be who I was. So many reasons to not live swirled in my mind. My parents. The bullies at school. The time where I got too drunk, ended up being passed around, and had to rush for a morning after pill with no memory of what I actually did. Just the vague sense of being violated. Of spiraling down into some bottomless pit with no way of getting out.
Oh, and the being gay part, and not wanting to admit it. That didn't help much, either.
The one thing that made me hesitate so many times was that my mother would never know why I hung myself. It's not like we share much. So I'd prepared a note on the side, explaining. I was so overwhelmed with thoughts of my own despair, of being sneered at, treated like trash, having hopeless, miserable parents, that I knew that this was the best thing to happen. I believed I couldn't handle it.
I needed to get out of this constant cycle of misery.
But once I stepped off that chair, felt my body fall taut, and the rope constrict around my neck – the first thing that went through my head was sheer panic. Pain pressed against my skin, horrible and stifling, and it blazed through my skull.
Instant regret came for what I had done.
I don't want this pain.
I don't want this death.
How had I been so stupid? How had I convinced myself to want this? Why had I been so weak, and ended up taking that last step?
Why forget that I wanted to live?
I should have realized the rope tightening around my neck would hurt. That the pulse struggling to pump blood past my neck would be like a pestle against flesh.
Time slowed. An eye-blink took minutes. My mind raced as regret soared, along with the sudden, deep realization that I didn't want to die. I convulsed, desperate to claw myself out. The animal part of my brain was fast suppressing the part that thought and processed things, as if it knew it couldn't trust me to make the right decision. After all, I'd already denied my own survival instincts to get this far. The terror was so absolute, so awful at the impending notion of my own violent death, my own mortality, that mindless, animal desperation took over.
I clawed at the rope and tried to scream, but couldn't. There was no air. Everything in my throat burned. Thoughts came back in bursts between the struggles, through the panic.
The terror becomes so great that I actually piss myself. The liquid is warm and clings to my pants, but there's no room for shame, for humiliation, because nothing matters but my own survival.
I wanted my mother, my brother, my father to come save me. Just anyone. I wanted them to hear the chair thud as I knocked it over. They'd come and pound on the door, look at what was happening, then shriek and get me down. Then I'd lie there as I was hugged and kissed, and tears would stream down their faces. I was angry and scared that no one came, disappointed, convinced in a way that no one would come when I needed it.
Of course no one would come. Why did I expect any different?
I regret not doing anything with my life. I regret that I couldn't see past my own self-loathing to understand that I had so many years to get over it, and so much more to do, because why the hell did my stupid self pity matter in the looming shadow of my own death?
It's so close, so real, knocking there my door. It's no longer some concept, some idle dream that I could die and everything would be at peace, and the suffering would stop.
I remember then after those seconds in eternity, though it can't have been longer than a moment or two, of a disconnectedness. Everything blurring, slowing down further, a black and painless cocoon enveloping me. I was heavy and light at the same time, I was drifting and drunk – and I realized then that this was it. This was the touch of death. And actually, it wasn't so bad. This was more like what I expected. Closer to the peace I desired, imagined. There was no outstretched hand of God, and there wasn't really a “tunnel” like some people described – but I do recall an absolute clarity of mind, my thoughts tumbling over memories that I'd forgotten I even had. Snapshots of my life.
Pockets of memory, delivered to me before the grave.
It's true. Those bubbles, that life flashing before your eyes – it's true.
All those memories, bad and good blurring together, as a film of everything that made me who I was, or as a cruel reminder that I still had more memories to make, and these were the only memories I'd ever have. It was all a muddle of good and bad, and the reasons leading to my death seemed so, so small.
Is this all I am?
Then came the thud. My focus sharpened. The ceiling light had snapped, dragging my body down to the ground, collapsing it in a heap. I wheeze and claw at the rope, taking welcome gasps of breath, greedy for more.
“Fuck!” I lie there for a few minutes afterwards, fixated on that word, unable to do anything else.
Fuck.
It didn't matter that no one had come to save me, that I had felt terribly betrayed from the lack of rescue. At that moment, I knew with that same clarity in that place between life and death, that I couldn't waste the life I had.
Not now, when the will to survive still blazes within. The relief of surviving makes me giddy and weak.
Alive. What a powerful word. It's an emotion all by itself. Alive.
The terror inside no longer screams. My neck throbs, a dull burn. A reminder.
Shakily, I tidy away the rope, bile coating the back of my throat. Explaining the ceiling light might be more difficult. I wonder if a part of me hoped the light would snap – of course something so flimsy would struggle to hold my weight. My thoughts keep revolving back to the fact that I might have been seconds from blacking out, seconds more from dying. Asphyxiation is not a fun way to go.
Then again, why should it be fun?
Still dazed, I take a quick shower, though I spend most of it just staring blankly at the tiles. Touching my neck hurts. I have to adjust the water so that it doesn't add extra pressure to my skin. In my reflection, I can see it'll develop into a blood-spotted rash. A necklace that will show the world what I've just attempted to do.
I then slam my pants in the washing machine, putting them on a quick wash with some other clothes.
I grab my scarf from a door hook and wrap it instantly around my throat, leaving it a little loose so that it doesn't chafe. I walk into the living room – and hear a door shut behind me.
My mom, going into the bathroom. No dad – he's at work. No brother – fuck knows where he is. Daggers of irritation go through my brain. She's not checking on me. She doesn't notice me at all.
I could have died in that fucking room, and she probably wouldn't have found out until next week. It's that thought which propels me to dump on my coat and walk out the door into the cold afternoon.
I walk fast, breathing to match my pace, heading to the one spot where I've always been able to find a sense of calm. The little pond in the woods, full of murk and green and sometimes frog-spawn and tadpoles. It's not a particularly lovely place, but it's quiet, and you can't hear the sounds of the cars in the distance, always whooshing.
Everything's a scrambled mess at the moment. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe I should curse at myself, or just do something manic and stupid, just to make sure I actually am alive, and not still attached to my ceiling light.
For all I know right now, maybe I'm already dead, and this is just the afterlife where I get a moment to just process my own stupidity, see and smell and feel the life flowing around me.
I glance upwards. Fucking hell, the sky is so damn blue. There's so much color everywhere, and all those smells mixing into my nostrils, diesel and last night's rain on the asphalt, the flower shop and the faint aroma wafting from within, along with people wearing stupid clothes that don't suit them at all. How did I not notice all this before?
The fuck was I doing before? I don't know. I honestly don't know.
I tremble as I make my way through the alley, snaking into a side entrance to the woods, shoes sinking and crunching over fallen twigs and leaves. They make such a distinctive crackle when stepped on, and when I'm aware of my breathing, it's throbbing. The dull burn is there, and I suspect it will be for a while.
Finally, I'm by the pond. It's murky, and not the season for frogs, but I can just about see my reflection in the water when I sit now, elbows over knees. My blond hair's a scraggly mess, deliberately grown to cover huge chunks of my features, and to darken my blue eyes. Deliberate effect, may I add. I wanted to make myself look mysterious.
It's not the face of some poor, tortured angel I'm looking into, however.
My mind flashes back to those pictures I sometimes drew of myself slumped over, wings broken around me. Glorifying my misery in a way. Did I really do that? How stupid.
I made out that I'm a person who doesn't deserve what's happening to me. I just needed to be saved by someone. A nice boy who smiles at me, or the forbidden love I'm not supposed to smile with at all. Another girl, soft and steel all at once.
Funny, really. I wanted people to feel sorry for me. I wanted them to feel so bad at what was happening to me, that they come, comfort, hug, and say I don't know how you deal with it. Giving me the attention I craved.
My reflection scowls, wearing disdain, or perhaps disgust. I manipulated these people. I wanted them to panic as I said I was thinking of killing myself, just to hear their concern, to persuade me not to do it.
As a result, I pushed everyone away. Because no one wants to deal with something so exhausting for long. I told myself it was inevitable. Everyone would turn their backs on me in the end.
Didn't exactly make it any easier for them to stay either, did I?
I wouldn't stay near a person like me.
The realization slams home. I'm dazed, my heart a hammer in my chest. Drifting off into the stratosphere.
There's worse than that revelation, though. I thought myself better than everyone else. Smarter. Kinder. Going through more shit than they could ever dream of. My pain was more than theirs. Their silly little worries were nothing compared to mine, to being passed around like trash, ignored by those who were supposed to love me, and mocked for my appearance. Oh, and worse, worse... I stare into my reflection, digging into my soul, into the darkest, twisted monster inside. How many times did I wish my mother dead? My father? Just so I didn't have to deal with their shit? So I could have the tragic story of a girl who lost her parents?
Oh...
I'm ugly inside. And I never before wanted to see it. I never wanted to even understand it.
This is who I am. Not that angel. Not a kind person brought low by life. But a person who won't take responsibility for her own actions. A person content to blame other things for my life. Like my mother. Like my father. A person who complains, but never does anything about what she complains about.
And thinks, somehow, suicide is a romantic way out. Something for friends to cry over, and say how they wish they had done more to help me.
This is me.
And fucking hell, I'm not nice at all.
I start trawling through the memories I lie about. Like that time when I was sad that my gerbil died, and hysterical to my mother about it – but I was the one who dropped the gerbil from the top of the freezer, to see if it would land like a cat. Or when I once played with myself as a twelve year old, because the water from the shower head felt strangely nice when I aimed it there, or when I sat on the washing machine for those tingles, or clicked my way through the kind of porn that would make people blush.
I did all those things, and more.
But I also rescued a puppy out of the trash. An injured little creature with three legs that's now alive and well with someone down the street. I called the hospital for a homeless person I spotted lying on the ground, because everyone else just walked past. Her hands were turning blue. I spent time rubbing those icy palms with mine the whole time we waited for the ambulance, though I don't think she was conscious enough to understand what was happening.
I've helped with homework, comforted my sobbing mother, told my dad to pursue his dreams when he talked about them, helped my brother get over some nasty reactions. I was kind to a friend when he needed it, because his dad had kicked him out in a drunken rage.
I did all those things, too.
So maybe I'm not terrible, either.
I...
I don't know what I am.
I thread my fingers together, trying to make sense of the epiphany in my brain. There's a taut excitement there, humming in my chest, my stomach, like those nervous butterflies that come with love.
Can't I be both?
The good things... they don't take away the bad things. They don't “make” up for the bad, or cancel them out. But the bad things... they don't necessarily take away the good things, either, do they?
I saw all this when I was dying. The memories, good and bad. My brain probably doesn't process good and bad the same way I try to verbalize it. They're just memories, attached with emotions. That's all.
I still don't know what to make of my suicide attempt. Other than the fuck bouncing around my head.
It's probably the best way to sum it up.
The sun dips lower, murking the sky. I should probably peel myself off the ground and head home. Before it becomes too cold and too dark.
The slimy pond in front of me seems to take all my jumbled thoughts away, until I'm left with a me that feels connected to the world around. A me fully aware of every breath, every heart pulse, and the phantoms aches and itches over my skin.
A me that wants to live, actually live. Not crushed by the past or fearful of the future. I should just find a job, move out, stop being around my parents all the damn time, stop crying over the fact they don't want to change.
I should –
Snap. Seconds later, I hear a kind of gurgling, high pitched rasp. Instantly, I snap out of my reverie, the life I'm trying to figure out for myself. All those tentative attempts to figure out what I'm supposed to do next vanishes.
The high gurgle resonates through the air again, along with a distinctive thunk. Like something hitting a tree.
Instantly, a cold wash of fear goes over me.
Oh no.
Someone else is here.
And, unless I'm completely overreacting, being too damn sensitive, it sounds oddly like the kind of sounds you'd expect from someone trying to kill themselves.
What are the chances, I think. What are the damn chances.
Either way, I'm looking for the source of that noise. And hoping I'm mistaken.
Because I don't think I want to face death twice in one day.
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