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A Decision to Die.
I sat there in English class. Both books open. Trying to listen to the Professor as she mumbled incoherently about forming a good thesis, and definition of something or other. But it wasn't her, it was me. For in between her fragments and comma splices, whispering antagonistically in my head was the quote from Saul Bellow, in an early draft of HERZOG, "Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die but dont poison everything...." So I gave in. Break time and I gathered up my belongings and walked carelessly to my car, apologizing to myself for wasting the $300 on a class I knew I wasn't going to be around to finish anyway. So there it was. Tuesday, April 13, 1999, approximately 9:07 PM, I sat parked in my car at a kids park, drinking the home made cocktail of 4 boxes of unisom and a newly prescribed bottle of the antidepressant, Trazodone, which by the way as you can see doesn't work. I had one intention and one intention only at this point in my life, thought out both rationally and philosophically....and that was to die.
The decision to commit suicide did not come hastily. To begin with I used my God-given, life-expierencing, very own rationale. According to Websters NewWorld Dictionary.
"RATIONALE: the ability to reason logically, as by drawing conclusions from inferences and often connotes the absence of emotionalism."
"All right so I stole it form a dictionary." Regardless I used it. I thought about life without using my emotions. I thought about people who pick their noses while driving in cars on the highway and then act as if no one can see them. I thought about turtles without shells and it must suck to be naked and homeless all at once. I thought about being a small kid and not being able to protect myself from all the bigger people. I thought about God and how he created and then walked away, murmuring something about how HE has forgiven US. I thought about how, if even humanly possible, I could forgive him. Then I thought about death. That "thing" that lingers over us like our very own shadow, that strange "thing." And while thinking about this "thing," it dawned on me. It wasn't my shadow anymore. It no longer attached itself to my feet and trolleyed behind me, in front of me, nor on my sides, somehow, someway, when I wasn't paying any attention "it" crawled right on up inside me. "It" rearranged the spaces inside my brain to fit itself in..and slowly it consumes me. "It 'didn't need my emotion. "it" didn't need my inner most feelings. All "it" needed were my thoughts, my experiences, but most of all..it needed my reasoning. Death understands. Death knew what I thought, how I reasoned. Death knows what rationale is, and knows just when and how to use it. When one decides rationally to commit suicide, then one must find a way to justify that act of committing suicide. I have learned that most that think about suicide tend to blame others for their suicidal thoughts, attempts or actual death. Here are some examples: 1. My parents are too hard on me, I just cant hang anymore. 2. My spouse is an idiot, I just cant do it anymore. or my favorite. 3. Life just sucks! Yes, now that's it...lets just blame it on the whole entire world. Utterly ridiculous. Now like I said, one rationally decides, to partake in ending the life one has given you, one needs to justify this act. Yes, I did this. And I thought about putting the blame on others. But I rationally thought how unfair that would be. So I brought Philosophy into it. I slept with Kierkegarrd, played with Nietzsche and toiled with Sartre. I learned who we are all ill creatures, how man is the most vicious animal of all, and learned that I was no superman. And then I read it. I found the justification I was looking for. The black and white writing that put everything into its proper perspective, and it ended with this:
" How unwillingly we think of things which powerfully injure our interests, wound or pride, or interfere with our wishes, with what difficulty do we determine to lay such things before our intellects for careful and serious investigations....in that resistance of the will to allowing what is contrary to it to come under the examination of the intellect lies the place at which madness can break upon the mind...if the resistance of the will against the apprehension of some knowledge reaches such a degree that the operation is not performed in its entirely, then certain elements or circumstances become for the intellect completely suppressed, because the will cannot endure the sight of them; and then, for the sake of the necessary connections. the gaps that thus arise are filled up at pleasure; thus madness appears. for the intellect now imagines what does NOT exist. yet the madness, which has thus arisen, is the lethe of unendurable suffering, it was the last remedy of harassed nature, i.e.., the will. the final refuge is suicide."
and there it was. the decision to commit suicide using rationale and this act justified philosophically and with all in place, what more can be done? acceptance of the consequences that will fooolwo. and whether one fails or gets it right there will be consequences. and i will name just a few. Depending on ones beliefs., if one succeeds in the act of suicide, there is a God to then deal with. and most likely he will be an angry God. spending your lunch money on candy at the corner store instead of actually lunch when in 3rd grade would not compare to the anger this father would most likely feel towards you after you destroy what he has given to you, your life. But if your an Atheist, the it dont really matter you'll just turn into a big ball of energy and end up floating around somewhere anyway, but what is worse then both of those put together is this...."PEOPLE". Now if one fails at suicide (which I think is worse than any angry God or a being a big ball of gas mind you) is that one then has to deal with "people." People who want to stick you with needles, cut your clothes off, and they dont care if you just bought them for your death. People whose jobs it is to stick tubes down your nose and throat and then get pissed at you because you throw up all over them. People. And for all you blamers out there...there is the people who started you thinking about suicide in the first place! But I accepted this anyway. And after this rational decision, the philosophical justifying of it and the acceptance of the consequences. I have come to the conclusion...that next time I think I will jump!
The
Journal
September
For
a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be
lostnot till we are lostdo we begin to find ourselves. - Thoreau,
Walden
Its
a trick to turn around once and know you are lost!
Knowing
the crows crying in the dark, knowing that your supper wont come again
tonightturn around once, eyes tight, the thoughts in your head. But you are
not of our kind Doctor. I always
turn around twice with my eyes sealed and everything always goes gray and my
mind flashes of strange happenings of, of the untold and I wish the unreal.
opening my eyes I am always afraid to look-the inward look.
I search this gray and choke on the grapes and the thorns!
Almost
Mid September, you and I Doctor, have walked thought these antiseptic tunnels in
this pink palace (military Hospital) and have stood separately in broken lines
and waited while they unlocked the doors.
And what the hell is Shibboleth?
My hands are now empty, I am slowly unraveling them from the lives they
workOf course I love you and why wouldnt I?
God, what large children we are, so stupidly silent, noisy and alone...
am I still lost?
Today
I watch the gulls strike at the top of the sky, up there goading the whole blue
world. Inside my head I watch a
child play and a single destructive memory comes hawking in, riding the current
of blackness, this current of hunger hangs almost carved out of silk.
Seven, the world is full of them. A
world of beasts thrusting at them rocks as the sevens hold out their hands
for their brothers crumbs. Father
do you remember me? I hear this and
see it again; can you see this Dr. Brown?!
Of course not and I am pissed that you cannot.
I
laughing, he lifted me high atop his shoulders, small at the rough legs of the
strangers. Was not afraid. He held
my hand. Then I began trembling for
this was the sound where it began. My breath pounding up to see and I climbed
into the air. And I have written of
this before but not so vivid. Where
my nervous fingers were forced to touch the moving head, lungs, breath, my face
swinging over the human bed and screaming from inside let me go, it hurts,
let me go. Let me go.
So he and they gave me back to myself all ash and a bony shell, I never
heard me rattle when I walked until much later though.
Rattling like stones in a bucket, they had blest me with fire, for it was
the way. I remember the cathedral
of spells. I remember when something cried deep within and now I want to throw
away this bony shellcan you hear me scream Dr.Brown when I look at you?
Your kind face, your arms folded, the September smell on your sorted
clothes. Unfortunately I see,
smell, taste and feel it all.
September
13, 2000
This
is Wednesday. I have tried today to
breathe it all back in. But life is
a trick. Life is a kitten in a
sack. A sack of time death has
avoided. How distant everything is
today and tonight I will spill toward the stars with these empty years and have
a hang over in your office tomorrow. Can
you hear me scream when I look at you Dr. Brown?
I close my eyes and see him standing up anonymously, straight and among
them, between their sand pails and nursery rhymesa gunDr. Brown can you
hear me scream when I look at you? And
does the current of my breath, which at one time in one other letter was 6 or 7
days long. I am becoming rage; a face that I clearly recognize and I
dont feel that you would any longer blink in surprise at this.
To
un-speak again. Hopeless is such sanity can I touch some face that I recognize?
What was it all for? Others
have traded life before and refused to not speak. You Dr. Brown are a visitor.
A fragile guest. If only I
could touch your cheeks like flowers. I
bruise against them, I unlearn daily, and I break from them.
You Dr. Brown are my inheritor, and with my head down will hand you off,
trembling the selves we will lose, Suicide says, Go child, who is my sin and
nothing more Dr. Brown can this be so?
Today
I spoke up and interrupted you, warning you of the wars that are about to come.
If there is a God I would he is testing meagain.
But we both know this absurd. And
I tell you, you will tip you boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour
sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall as you stop
passers-by to mumble your guilt while your ears diethe after-math of my
suicide?
Nawww
you wont react that way, but it was much the same for me when I was 13 and it
was left for me, in front of meHuman brains on a white wall that have slid to
the floor look like spaghetti and red jello-o.sorta.
I remember when they picked her up off the floor to put her on the
coroners gurney how the rest of her brains feel out and the chunks of bony
skull(excuse me while I puke again)
Everything
has changed now, the measure that I have lost, silks my pulse.
The air rings for that astonishing rite, how ironic I told you Dr.
Brownhow this untimely lust has tossed this flesh at the wind that was past
and that past and the past again which is now the futureforever and ever.
I am a fist of my unease just sitting hereit keys my out of time
luck and Luckless appetite. Can
you hear what I say? Can you hear
me scream when I look at you Dr. Brown?
Tiffany
just called. Wants to know if its cool she comes over tonight. I wonder if she ever thinks how there must be more to living
a brief bright bridge or a slow Braille touchwhy me? Why now? TO be
taken to a place so almost parallel as in my youth.
I filed in as an exile, looked at, as almost alien, then our sameness
spread across the group of the room, the sameness it still fucking survives.
Its all in the senses ya know, evil knows evil!
Words didnt even have to be spoken; only this time I am an adult.
Unfortunately Dr.Brown and without your consent or complete awareness, you are
caught now in my dying and I hope you can hold us up well, and hear the last of
my confessions.
By
instinct I am arming the waiting wave, its like a giant whose mouth is hung
open. I ride on the lips observing
my children paddling their ages in, under the glare of the noon chipping its
light out. My young, young
children, so innocent and happy, if there is a God I think for them I will thank
him for keeping them oblivious and ignorant to the way life truly is.
I dream for them that they grow to be like a balanced wavegigantic and
straight.
July,
the last time I was assaulted, there was no balance to help me.
The odor of death hung in the air like rotting potatoes.
Inside my head I saw the others reaching for each other then lay down
deep into what I call, the blackness, and it was I who burst through this
perfect skinlike a bean bag, out flung, head loose as I lay thereI think
we I die again and live again.
Tonight
before I went in, I laid on the lawn, green grass wrinkled under me, the wise
starts bedding over me, looking up into my window a funnel of red heat running
out from the sunlamp in the bathroomI told the stars my questions and thought
God could really see the heat and the painted light, elbows, knees,
dreamsdamn I am high!
September
15, 2000
Father,
this years jinx rides me hard apart. I
know they shocked your heart 10 or 12 timesboiling it like a stone.
You left me here to shuffle and disencumber, you left me with boxes of
pictures of people I hate to know! I
touch their cardboard faces, their eyes as thick as wood in this album, I will
never know exactly what these faces are all about so I will lock them into their
book and throw them out for they have all overslept.
And I wonder in this hoarded span can love preserver?
Whether or not it can, I outlived you and how I wish I could bend down my
strange face to yours and whisper in your dead earNO, I will NEVER forgive
you.
Blood
running from my mouthif this is hell, the hell is not much anymore.
Neither special nor as ugly as I have been lead to believe.
Child
what are you wishing for? What pact
are you making? Enough!!!!
September
16, 2000
No
other place to fleethis scene of the disordered senses.
September
18, 2000
With
this keyboard I type with my hands, my selves and with these dead disciples, I
will grapple though rain curses my window and a faint whisper of let the
poems be made. I went to
bed like a horse to its stall last night, in bed I cradled my salty knees and
kissed the children goodnight through these solid walls, I can feel my heart
pump like the ocean tides. Voyages
only I own, no passport but I wish I was whiskey fortified though I dont even
drink. It sucks to use your own
bones for crutches. I think I think
too much. I wonder if fish swim past the eyes of God?
I wonder if he is the one that says,let them pass.
TO conjure up my daily bread. To endure, somehow to endure the rest of
this night. Ya know I am tired of
being a woman, tired of my mouth and breasts.
I have been open and undresses, we move our arms and legs together as if
all one skin. I am no more a woman
than Christ was a man. I think of the intense sensations...sex is great but I tell
you this in thought only. Listen!
We must never! Yea, yea and all those thingssex its a language of itself.
The breathing.
I
wonder if you can hear the unsaid clearly.
I doubt it because you cant even see the unseen at all Dr.Brownalthough
today we were closeyour acting like a teenage adolescent, like one of kahi
patients, thinking he was invincible. But
Dr. Brown, I dont existtherefore I AM!
I am a God and I have quit gathering myselfs in like cut flowers and
asking them how they are and where have they all been
To
lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for
greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land
more kind than home, more large than earth
Thomas
Wolfe
It is
called waiting on the edge. Dr
Brown hear me now, in my hand lies unblessed a black rosary, though you cant see
it, and I am an unbeliever. Permit
me this grace, this crossing over, submerged in my own past and apparently my
own madnessI think only my hands are alive.
I want to feel your mouth touch mineto breath life into me? Yea right!
Closer
and closer comes the hour of my death as I rearrange my face and unravel
undeveloped. I have entered a
strange place without words...its funny without words one may be handed bread.
My tender physician I am in this domain of silence, the kingdom of the
crazies and the sleepers who sail over a terrible hardness.
Twenty weeks or twenty days ill cross toward it.
I am 27 hours out where night goes on forever and I think it sucks that
God has peeled my life back to its original start!
In one
hand Dr. Brown I will now have to hold my silence from you. There will be no track for you to follow anymore. Only
a peculiar waiting. There will be
nothing to pick up. There will be
nothing. We inhabit here, number by
number pushed in and out like a needle, and I will inherit the darken...calling
it like a Jew at the pearly gates and you will inherit my journal.
The
mirror...i look in my eyes like two shadows, like that of sparrows, the do no
age. The smile, all wit, all charm,
invincible. The face, I wish I
could pull all the roots out of it and find her, how can they say she is me and
I am her part...YUK. And just where
the hell is she anyway???
We all
have animals that are half hidden, that are browsing continuously, where noting
is obsolete and everything is possible...the beginning of the end.
I keep
hearing the same message, who cares about you, who cares. No one has ever
seen me explode like a pistol. NO
one has actually seen me fall apart, or come undone.
Sad as I sit back inhale and exhale, wheezingthat no one is even
worthy.
September
22, 2000
A
strange place this odd home, where my face sits in my hands so full of distance,
so full of an immediate fever. Once
the Romans believed that noon was the ghost hour, but its not noon, its the
night with a full moon. They enter
and say, your bones are lovely, and before their strange hands I had that
already formed. Let your body in,
let it tie you in, in comfort...standing still at the doors, they are so full of
themselves, like white stones. Yes
I have the instructions.
Thought
I never touched, after the tequila and southern comfort, the drugs and bled the
red bloodin the morning I vomited outside behind the glass sliding door.
I heard a hyena laugh out of nowhere.
Will it be today that we argue and shout about how YOUR LOSS IS
GREATER THAN MINE! YOUR PAIN IS MORE VALUABLE! or will today our skins meet
delicately in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lockand will one of
us shout MY NEED IS MORE DESPERATE!
I
would touch you Dr.Brown. Your
pulse brooding under your shirt, each shoulder well built, your arms, thin
birches, the white teeth, the tongue that has never met meso I will speak of
your eyes, each colored iris, and the quick pupils that follow intently. Eyes can be ruined by mercy and lustand the heat, the heat
can undo itself, everyone undoes themselves at one time or another, everyone has
walked naked. How strange that you
are so tender Dr. Brown, I wonder f you are human.
If you have excitable muscles, and a ripe neck where its sensitive toward
the underside of the jaw, and have you ever had to grit your teeth arch your
back and pushing in and pulling back fighting it, grabbing the hands, and
intertwining the fingersits all in the breathing remember, eyes half open,
shadows move along the wall...yea I wonder what it would be like if you were
human.
Every
bed had been condemned but not by morality or law, but by time.
I love
you too much David, and only this morning your body sat before me with its
shoulders gathered out like a Greek chorus-both of us coiled in this slippery
life. That was this morning, but
this is now and I sit alone. You
have a tongue that comes from your lips, half animal and half bird you say
caught in the doorway of your heart.
Yesterday I started following your rules, making the priorities right,
passing by your red veins and blue veins, my hands down your backbone, hands
between the legs where you display your inner knowledge.
Last night I watched your face after love, close the pillow, half-asleep
besides me, while my fingers drew little lines on your chest, while my fingers
tried to touch your cheeks, while I drew I LOVE YOU on your arm, as I
whisperedhey wake up and you mumbled shhhh, im tired!
Two days ago I told you a little known grotto...several.were people that
are not hallucinations but are very real. I
entered into their domain wondering if again I could.
THEY let their bodies lose, all their loneliness or what ever it truly is
called, they did not mind, it had nothing to do with me personally.
I calmly trailed over them, all adultstoday I showed you what I had
told you, as water so clear you could read a book through it, but now I know
that water is a strange thing that sits only on a tongue as in a deep womb.
You have given me a new grotto, where every color again is black and
white; you say, look! You are a liar! Look! You fucked me over whore! Look!
You can not be trusted! Although I never touched. I was only the taker of
pictures. My eyes once again shut
down ashamed again, as you take my car keys and become my keeper again telling
me I have to sort out my feelings
After
all this, after hearing all the years of this. And these are the words that ring
aloud in my head, screaming like a toll bellDavid you should have been
careful for what you have wished for, again I sit here dumbfounded and confuses
and again having to you...apologize for something you wanted.
I
think I suffer according to the digits of my hate.
David why dont you give me a report of the condition of my soul?
David, why dont you give me a complete statement of my actions?
Number my sins on the Grocery list so I can see.
Its funny for some strange reason I cannot walk on water. Your silence makes me a clairvoyant, this silence always
leads in the assistance of my death in one way or another but its something you
cant ever see as you walk out of the room ending the argument with a typical
fuck you. I was left alone,
quite alone and using up the darkness. I
rolled up into a ball on the couch and there I went to bed...I really do need a
stand in for God I think.
September
24, 2000
Tonight
the horizon slowly bleeds itself and goes out of sight, and I wonder about this
lifetime with myselfI could as the sky but I would rather ask the first star.
Why am I here? Why do I live
in this house? Who is responsible?
Eh? Then the darkness, as black as
a bruise and the boy is here, sitting in the chair on the back porch with me.
I wonder if I talk to him, if I would be talking to God in someway, I
mean he is dead and this is how it went:
Me:
Will you morally make an assessment of me?
Him:
Put on a clean shirt before you die.
Me:
You want me clean God?
Him:
No blood, no sweat, no sperm, and no tears.
Me:
What is death?
Him:
What is life?
Me:
They can both kiss my ass, and why are you here, and what are you waiting
for?!
Him:
How much time do you think you have left?
Me:
If your God then you know.
Him:
its coming and I know your dateand dont forget to go to the
mailbox.
Me:
You know that whole time I laid in the soiled, cold and prayed for
youwell and me too...
Him:
So what! And dont forget
a clean shirt!
We
have begun our decent and we have begun to plug up the eye sockets to keep our
Gods in. My skull is starting to
ache from the crowding and my lungs hurt like hell...not a good thing.
Suffering is great, almost as great as sex, I bet Jess would agree.
Hell they both lead to sleep eventually so who cares. Idiot!
So why shouldnt you Dr. Brown enter my element for a moment?
Unusually awkward to walk, it is without grace, and there is no
rhythmnope you wouldnt fit it. Its
cool now how everyone is finally starting to see that an artery of this soul has
been severed and this soul is beginning to bleed all over them, messing up their
clothesselfbe careful with your words, even your sick, premeditated, what
you think to be miraculous ones. Fuck
you self! This time they wont fail me, I have too much I want to say and no one,
I mean NO ONE can stop me now...self but you know that words arent good
enough, yea whatever and off your knees. And what was it that David told me
todayoh yea You put yourself in this position. no its not check
mate. Yet, but soon.
Now
that I have written many words, I find the effort useless.
Feeling this hunger so acutely. I
know I should make the call, but I am too tired and doubt I could even make it
to the phone anyway. And what
exactly would be the point so im going to let him tend to the kids as I drift
off to sleep...i pray.
September
27, 2000
Death
sits whit his key in my lock. Not
one day is taken for granted anymore. Even
Nursery rhymes have put me in hockif I die before I wake. Each night in bed my husband sings Baa, baa black
sheep, and we pretend that all is certain and good, that this will never end.
Dear
dead kid, I consider you my best friend. Would you like to play dress u or
jacksI think we even have pick up sticks.
But surely if we did and if I told I would be in the hospital, here in
this house there are other bodies, whenever I see a two year old near a pool.
Dr.
Brown I am scrubbing the remainder of me off you.
I have eaten the cross and digested its lore, I have placed my own head
on the kettle because in the end death wont settle for anything lessyet I
have one more errand to run, I need to find a place that advertises Cognac and
Razor blades...untie our bones...oh yea and Dr. Brown your done with our case,
turn to your next customer and forget our face.
The
end of September.
-KillASoul
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