Suicide Note
By the time you read this you will have realised that I am dead. I have been dead for several weeks. You may have noticed the strange smell, well that's me, decomposing beneath the rose bushes, human compost making the petals that little bit redder. But don't feel sad or guilty, that isn't why I am writing this, I just want to explain, to help you come to terms with my death. But you may be dead too now, time does strange things.
To begin I would like to verify that my death wasn't a sudden thing; it wasn't the result of a bad headache, poor test results or a baby faced guy leaving some boy band. If you know me, and I mean really know me, you'll know that I could never be that fickle. But then how well can we know one another, it's not like we can crack out a can opener, peer into each others brains and say "ah so that is what you meant" and have the world make perfect sense. Things don't work that way. At least psychoanalysts would have us believe that we are full of layers- but layers of what? Skin, hair, blood, guts, large intestines, small intestines, bowels, molecules, atoms, parasites nibbling away at the core. Us multilayered machines with layers of reasons for our existence, layers of meanings for our words, actions, thoughts- well here's a clue, let me break it down for you: human beings are by nature selfish creatures, "all about me", we delude ourselves into thinking we are good, because good people are liked and well we want to be liked. So we reach a compromise between our desires and other peoples, our desires and what we should desire, what is politically correct. But sometimes we misread things, don't know what is right, or simply our desires get the best of us. Priests, Saints, Buddhists, Mormons and other religious fold work on this basis. Do right or you go to hell or better yet, get reincarnated as a slug. If I go without sex for 50 years(altar boys don't count) I'll be first in line for heaven, laughing my ass off as all you sinners burn below. And God? Let me tell you about God, he's the biggest egotist of them all- getting the whole world to jump through hoops for his own amusement, because he can and then turning away the bible bashers for one small indiscretion like stealing a penny sweet when you could barely walk, or thinking about the weather girl in a naughty kind of way. And all you modern girls and guys out there who think God's given up on the whole sanctity of marriage stuff, contraception being the devils work and showing your bellybutton in public places think again- he's a bit of an uptight fucker like that.
I am wandering off topic though, I really should explain why I am still here, and how much pain it causes me when you look through me with distant eyes. Or walk past my body laughing without a glance, as I stand above my corpse counting the ever growing population of maggots that has taken up residence in my gut.
What was different in life though? I was a transparent object, a piece of glass with no name & you were my very own baby faced boyband member growing inside me; a still born child, false hope; a cancerous growth poisoning my ability to stay immune. I must stop here and interject, it is not your fault, this is not some doomed twisted love spell- I am not that fickle. And for anyone else that may find this, while I would not recommend ______ as a friend, acquaintance, employee or otherwise, he is certainly not responsible for my death- though you'd think after three weeks he may realise I was gone.
The death
My death began eighteen years ago, I have many theories as to what happened but it all boils down to disappointment, and middleclass boredom. There was nothing to see that could excite me with child like enthusiasm and wide eyes, I'd seen it all, done it all- nothing could scare or delight me. Perhaps if I'd believed in God then, but it really takes a booming voice in the sky telling you that you're not on the list to seal your faith. I was not superstitious so I couldn't conceive of the possibility of ghosts, gods, goblins, witches or banshees- a shadow was simply a shadow, and children screaming about virgin apparitions was simply too much sugar or a desire to be in the limelight(I still hold to that) for if a dead virgin chose to convey a message about love and peace why would she tell children with overactive imaginations and a tendency for the melodramatic. Anything worthwhile would be exaggerated ten fold, you should love your fellow man would be ended with "or the red skin monsters will come from the ground and eat your insides on toast", or worse still they could describe her as having bad skin or being "old" with a simple flicker of their twisted little tongues. The idea of immaculate conception wasn't an easy thing to swallow either. So they say only Mary, Joseph and Elizabeth saw this angel, and suddenly both Elizabeth and Mary are pregnant, an angel succeeding where Elizabeth's poor husband had failed for many years in fertilising her eggs. This always struck me as the most elaborate threesome cover up in the history of mankind, I honestly can't think of anything that would top it.
Again I am straying from topic- what I was trying to say is I couldn't believe in incredulous stories; though I've come to discover that there are ghosts and there really is a spiritual entity in the sky with a VIP's only badge, but peoples exaggerated versions of events made it too hard to grab hold of. So I did what any good catholic girl would do in my shoes and jumper out of an aeroplane(wearing a parachute of course), swam with sharks, bought a cat, pierced my skin with sharp unsterilized objects and hoped beyond hope, that I would wake up the next morning and think "this is it, this is what it means to be alive" and I would walk outside and the perfume from the flowers would smell like a cliché poem, the colours would be brighter, newer and I would enjoy each day as if it was the first and savour it as if it was the last. But after waking up after each near death experience & gasping for that breath of life saving oxygen I found the air tasted that much staler, and each time I hoped to suspend my death to draw my heart beat as a line on a page. But I woke every time and the days dragged on. That's how I met him, in an internal state of war, battling my inbuilt death.
He smiled softly, his mouth curving crookedly across his face in an adorable unsymmetrical way that would turn off most of gods creatures, but to me it was perfect. He asked the time, I was sure it was a pick up line, all the cheesy magazines I had read assured me it was. So I stood there, gazing into his khaki green eyes and thinking maybe he would give me the kiss of life and when I opened my eyes it would be all new again, but instead he mumbled "thanks" and walked away. I saw him again a few days later. I even smiled and said hi. He turned around looking confused and a little put out, his forehead crinkled into little mounds as he muttered "oh hi" in a manner that could be translated into any language as "who the fuck are you". It was the thought of him though that stopped me setting my hair on fire that night, when the flame before me danced telling me about the magical things it could do, and I watched it mesmerized believing its words. I wanted to see if it could dance and dance, make my body pulse and burn with fever, to shock my nerves into feeling new things. But when I blinked my eyes I saw him beneath my eyelids, smiling at me and saying, "don't" & I could see that there was a possibility that he and I would share that kiss, and maybe it would mean something.
And it did mean something, though not exactly what I hoped. I was at a party, intoxicated with drink and other undesirable products responsible drones tell you to stay away from. The music beat through my head, blurring my surroundings, drowning my thoughts in top twenty floor fillers. I didn't see him until he was right beside me. I'm not sure if he remembered me, it's very doubtful, but there he was slurring what I presume were words though I couldn't swear on it. And the next thing I knew we were kissing, pressing lips fiercely together with a strength and speed that said "I need to feel something", a desperation that said "I need you to hold me", and I did hold him, and I felt...something, everything, but the next morning when we woke up there was a silence. It echoed between us, saying what I feared to say. When we did speak the words tumbled like obstacles between us, awkward stumbling blocks prohibiting communication. And his breath was stale. His lips- corrosive. So we kissed softly, slowly with a tenderness that said "I feel bad for not loving you" a guilt that said "goodbye" and we parted ways.
A few days later I started to plan a new adventure, and soon found myself in Venice renting a room in an old Palace with damp walls and steps that went down into the canal. The air was moist inside, paint peeled from the walls, hanging sharply from the corners of rooms, bubbling curiously beside my bed. Somehow it suited me- I liked the stale dampness, the corroding beauty reminding me of that kiss, the aftertaste, the morning after, the numbing emptiness of life. I would lie there and think about that moment when I thought life might seem fresh, and with each memory I would press my finger through paint bubbles, listening to it crack and remember how predictable human nature is, how monotonous life can be.
That is how you found me, thinking of that moment, watching tourists pass by my window in gondolas staring adoringly into each others eyes, not realising how foolish they seem, how beneath their blind fate, their "love" was a moment relived, an experience shared with a multitude of robots, animals designed to follow the same pattern, the same process to preserve life- for the sake of it.
When you came I understood that glazed affection, I smothered you in kisses and swore never to let you go, I joined the human species and fell into the routine. And for a while it was perfect, we travelled the countryside looking at art galleries, sitting on swings and watching people go by, listening to their words of admiration as I paraded you- my prodigy- my pride- my life. And we did live, everyday was an eternal life studies class, we couldn't get enough until that day.
You called me on the phone. It was over you said. I had to learn to live by myself, you needed your own space. So you stopped calling me so often, and he- he called me everyday using words like "bitch" and wouldn't understand no matter how many times I tried to explain. I didn't know how to find him, and if I did what would I have said. So you used words like "hate" and lawyers gave me letters that said you were no longer mine- and you went away with him to follow a new life studies class. When you moved back in three years later it wasn't the same, you had facial hair and a nasty tongue. Everything I did was wrong, everything I wore was indecent, everything I said embarrassing. So I cried and you called me manipulative, I grounded you and you called me names and threatened to run away to your fathers. You brought home girls with flower names and eyes that never smiled, girls that wore pink and orange together with fake tan and manicured names and they found everything so wonderful, talking about the poor children on the news who just needed some hugs. But you wouldn't hug me, wouldn't touch me- it was always "mam I'm not a baby" and the roses seemed a dull red, scentless and life said "this is it, this is all there is" and the flames danced and danced and said they could make me dance too. So I put the fire in my belly and lay by the roses to see if they could change colour, to see if I could change colour- but no amount of iodine could bring my wrists to life. The stale air grew tight in my little lungs and I saw your life flash before my eyes and I knew I had been dead all this time, and when my eyelids froze and my eyes grew glazed I saw your future grow brighter without me in it. And as the beating in my head, the beating in my heart blurred my surroundings and slowed to a final standstill the roses above me grew a little redder.
