Mary sat down at her desk. Everyone had left for work but she had skipped school, called in sick. Her mother had wished to stay back but she couldn’t. Today was the last day and this the last hour. Eli took out a notebook, tore a page and picked out her favorite pen. She stared at the paper for a while and just breathed. In and out. In and out. Then she finally inked the page.
To Mum
‘By the time you start reading this I would be gone. Cliché yes, maybe but I’m just stating the facts. Facts…….. Yeah. To dive into it “Life’s a gift”. Or at least that’s what they say but sometimes I can’t help but wonder whether it is. I don’t know how to explain this to you, how to make you understand. And perhaps I can’t but I’ll try. It’s not sadness, not depression nor any other purple, blue-black feeling it’s just that….that…that I have lost my will to live. Does that sound stupid to you, it probably does, but not really, to me it just sounds indifferent and that’s exactly what I’ve become, indifferent. I don’t care anymore.
At first I loved everything then hated and then the lines all blurred, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two and sometimes I used to think I care too much and now….nothing. I’m like an empty vessel and that thought to me gives me an unusual feeling of safety. When you don’t feel anything you can’t possibly hurt. Although I’m not sure how much more mental hurt I can bear to the point of it becoming physical. So in a confusing way I’m hurting and it’s overwhelming yet not enough for me to feel anything real. I find myself waking up in the middle of the night in a bed of tears, find myself sitting on our tiled bathroom floor in a pool of blood, find scratches and bruises on my body I don’t even remember making. It’s like I’m losing time.
You know….you know I can’t breathe sometimes, I gasp for air and think that I’m suffocating and then I black out. When I do come back I go about myself as I usually do. I don’t know how often or when this happens it just DOES. Everyone says that the people who kill themselves are cowards, afraid to face real life and maybe, just maybe we are. But none of these individuals can ever possibly imagine let alone tell you, the courage it takes to pick up a knife and cut a vein or jump off a building or pop a pill in a mouth knowing what consequences it will bear. Sure, this courage is not as you know heroic or brave or inspiring but it’s not fake either it’s simply different.
Some say that we don’t know what we are thinking at that point but ,trust me, we do and that’s why we do it. My story is frozen in time and it has been for a while. All my memories are fading and one day they are going to be forgotten and I’ll be lost. I’m sorry but it is become incredibly difficult to find a silver lining in this cloud. My life has become bleak. Every day is black and white and it’s like a part of a movie playing in a loop. It becomes boring. You’d call me an idiot, call me reckless, mentally unstable for doing what I’m going to do(or rather have done) just because of boredom. But boredom kills, remember. And it’s just……I can’t tell what’s it like till you experience it. It’s like at first you hope that something would change that someone or something will turn your world, give you a reason again. Something you like, hell something you love so much that even if it ruins your life you wouldn’t complain because you would know that it is worth the trouble. But when nothing ever comes you’re left hanging by a thread. And when it’s like this for a long time you start wishing that you’d just fall, fall and keep falling.
You must be asking why I couldn’t come to you why I couldn’t tell you what I am feeling. To be honest you don’t deserve this, you don’t have to clean up this mess, you don’t deserve to pick my pieces up . No I refuse to accept that. And if I had talked to you about it, you would have told me to wait, wait since I was still young, wait because good things will come my way but waiting gets tiring, frustrating even and after all this having absolutely no guarantee of…….anything, it’s hard to keep hoping. Maybe I should have caught Hope and Happiness and shut it in a container, a jar, a bottle..
I was always wishing for someone to rescue me. My prince, my knight in shining armor. But life is not a fairy-tale. You fight to live or you die and ironically I’m dying TO live. This may not make sense to you but weirdly it does to me. I don’t want you to see me not when I’m like this I want you to remember me as the happy child I once was I don’t want you to see me lost, walking in no direction, broken, snapped… Going nowhere and returning nowhere. I look in the mirror and try to find the once playful girl but I just can’t seem to locate her she’s long gone sometimes I wonder if she was here at all.
In all this confusion I put my fist and the broken shards of glass fall to my feet symbolizing what I’ve become. I wish that when I close my eyes the whole world should disappear. Vanish. Cease to exist. Everything should go back to being cosmic dust. Particles floating aimlessly in this vast universe. I talk to people but the only people I want to talk to are not real as they live inside my head and I remind myself of that a thousand times but I always feel safe in my imagination like no one can hurt me. How can they if they can’t reach me.
I’m losing my mind. I’m questioning everything that makes me happy and I don’t want to do that, don’t want to hate. I know that you need me but I can’t be there not when I’m falling apart. Quite spectacularly I might add. All the time I’m hoping to meet everyone’s expectations when I don’t even know whether I’m asleep or awake while I’m working myself to death and for whom??? I’m sorry that I let you down but I’m running out of time and you..you are too far away gone for far too long. I’ve forgotten how to breathe normally without panting for more as if my lungs would give away the very next second. I’ve hit rock bottom. I spend hours in the shower just standing, wondering, and crying looking for a way out. Any way out just to make all of my pain go away. After school I don’t feel as if I’m going home.
Shakespeare once said that life is a play and that everyone’s an actor but I ask-when, when do we get a break, an interval, respite, a pause cause all I feel is that I just jump to form new personalities to get along with different people. Forgetting who I really am along the way. If you would have noticed me feeling down you would have tried to save me but you can barely see me you don’t even know what goes inside my head. But I don’t blame you how could you know when I didn’t have a clue myself. And I want you to know that I tried that I gave it my all to find happiness but the thing is that I’m unable to do so and I know that, I’m okay with it.
Without happiness there is no reason for living and I’m tired of living for others this may be selfish to you but…after all for me the key to happiness is a box full of lies. I concentrate on my faults so much that I apparently have forgotten my blessings. I leave this letter to you because you are the one person I know will be beside me irrespective of whether I win or lose. The monsters are fading, mum; I can finally see the light. I can’t remember the last time that I laughed so hard that my face had crinkles all over it that my eyes were watering and that my stomach was hurting. There’s just so much pain in this world of ours so much pain that I am not able to stand it anymore. I succumb to it.I know I won’t be coming home for a long time but please know that I won’t be alone. The angels are with me. I’ll always remember you calling to me. Your sweet voice singing me to sleep. I’m sorry I’m very sorry but mother dear I’ll be waiting for you. We’ll meet soon. Goodbye.
Love you to the moon and back
Mary
–END–
