I walk into the empty house and find myself gazing at my desk. I sit down and find a pen. Once in a while I glance up to see my previous attempts near the back of the desk; the fresh air hadn’t helped at all. It seems like an eternity until I finally throw the ballpoint down and examine the paper that lies on the desk below. “To whom it may concern…” the words fell out of my red pen and onto my last work, my confession and testament. As quickly as the thoughts arise they erase from my mind, the words seep out of the pen and onto the now crinkled piece of parchment that was thrown aside with the others rejected. I eye the clock, “10:20...” I stamp my foot impatiently; the words now fail to come at all. I pull out another sheet and jumble down, “I never wanted things to be this way.”
I blink back salty tears half because of the lack of concentration I had at that crucial moment and half due to the thought of the deed that was in my mind that night. I scribble out the previous words and begin again, “I’m sorry that I have to do what I’m about to do. I’m the product of this corrupt society; diseased, infected, inflicted with the sudden realization that life holds no hope for me…” I question that last sentence and decide to scribble it out and try one more time, “This is the end.”
“Damn,” my fist clenches around the pen, “Thinking about this is much easier then going through with it.” Five papers now crumpled and laid aside on my desk cover his picture, cover the one thing that might have brought me out of this depression, his two blazing sapphires.
His angelic face smiles warmly and almost melts away my aversion. I find it a threat to my soul to redeem him, after what he did to me. I want to slash at his fair skin; claw at it in hatred and in passion. His eyes perforate my soul and I cry out in remembrance of their resplendent power and their intense fervor. I look away in fear they will make me forget my pain, my agony.
His eyes were not so gleaming when he ran away, when he told me never to come to him again; his skin was not so beautiful, either. Thoughts swarm my mind and I think of the past, how it was when I first fell for him. “I am paying for my rapturous bliss, now,“ I sighed, “paying with my terrible angst.“
I stair ahead, wet lashes stick together and vehement tears beat down my feverish face. I lay the picture aside and look to the clock, ”11:00,” I mumble to myself as I gaze over my shoulder and catch a glance of my ghastly image in a mirror; sorrow has overcome my features.
Sliding my pale ink stained finger along the edge of the desk I hesitate before reaching out and clenching the picture in my hand. Now my ice-cold grey eyes find those jewels for a second time. My heart is overflowing with exasperation, I feel bare outside and in. All of my ambition expires; I suffer a casualty by his allure. The distance I feel between that picture and myself sends me back into my concentration, the image vanishes as I throw the picture in the pile among the failed letters. “Nothing could save me now,” I thought, “he couldn’t save me now.”
What could drive someone so mad as to claim the most costly gift of God, his or her own life? I believe the answer can be found in my childhood. Abuse, is a strong word; I remember the plain, scraggly child that I was, It wasn’t abuse, though I don’t deny that my childhood was slightly less than sunny. I recall dark days, and long disputes between my mom and step-dad. I wasn’t a well-liked kid; I had slight speech impediments that made me rather shy when I wasn’t in the company of my family. Children can be cruel in general, I was only miserable after realizing that people ostracized me; that comprehension came years later. Many things were hidden from me when I was younger, I believe that, that was because I was not ready to have them revealed to me yet; everything comes in its own time, everything makes sense when it needs to.
When I was thirteen I realized that dilemmas were sometimes more complicated than arithmetic problems and my world became huge. My young eyes, so innocent to the hurt and pain of others saw their first heartbreaking sight and wept their first real tears.
A mental health institute is no place for a girl of nearly thirteen to find herself, especially if she is there to see her mother. I feared nothing more at the tender age of thirteen than becoming that woman, that woman who failed her life and family. I was determined to not resort to self-mutilation and self-pity but I was unsuccessful, many times. Now I am determined to succeed where she has failed, I will really do it.
I pound on my head as if to tell it to stop thinking, it hurts too much. It isn’t my intent to tell my whole life’s story, I have a different purpose but the memories linger in my mind and crowd my thoughts until I set them free in a wave of ink on an ocean of paper. Feelings pour out on the pages and the desk becomes slick in spots from the puddles of emotion that fall uncontrollably from me as I remember all that had driven me to the position I was in. I remember seeing my mom strapped down to the bed, I remember her screams and even more intensely the silence that echoed through my heart the day I became thirteen, without a mother. The next couple of years were terrible and wonderful at the same time; the worst things that I ever thought could happen to me did, but I found the meaning of life in it all, I found God in the midst of all of my suffering.
Now it seems as though my life is turning around, my grades and social life are making a recovery but I’m losing the very thing that once kept me going; I am losing sight of God. I’m losing faith in the healing powers of love and I am falling at the mercy of my own nightmares, nightmares of being lost and alone, for eternity. I am ravished for human touch, the empathy of a fellow sufferer’s soul. No one understands me, no one ever has, and that affirms what I need to do.
Now faithless and careless I reach for my knife; something I still have faith in. I have faith that it can bring me to another place; it can bring an end to my sorrow. The note that lies atop the countless pages of reflection and regret read simply, “Goodbye, may God hand you a kinder fate than I have received.”
Satisfied I bring my attention fully to the throbbing blue veins below my chaste, pallid skin. I hear solely my own short painful breaths and I imagine the terrible rhythms of my heart, “Thump, thump, thump,” I am closed off to all of it now, I practice the strokes lightly on the place; a chill flows through my body and with the slight jolt the knife slips and scrapes my skin. Tiny beads of crimson liquid escape the shallow incision, I wait for more to appear before I take back the knife and count to three, “One…Two…Three…” The blade penetrates and burns deep into my wrist. I close my eyes and become enveloped in the sensation that it is giving me. I feel like I’m cutting away all the bad things that have happened to me in my life, unfettering myself from this cruel world!
I gasp for air as I clench my leaking arm; a spinning room accompanies my red puddle. As disturbed as I am at this moment I have a surprisingly clear head, I think of my mom and my friends, I think about the blood departing from my slowing heart and my drying veins. I face death fearful, but grateful, and at last I hear a voice.
“Don’t go.” It’s coming from the doorway, “What have you done!”
My grey eyes roll back just far enough to see who is calling to me, and I have nothing else to say to him. My body gives up, I grasp onto his hand as I release my soul onto its final destination and I go dark as he holds me screaming at me to come back, but he doesn’t know that he never could have saved me.