[NSFW] LET'S WRITE... (SUICIDE)

I don't know what to list as a trigger warning, but I'm writing from personal experience so there's bound to be some doozies in here.

Read any piece of Victorian prose, any ancient extant tome by some classically named male chauvanist, and it's safe to say that you'll have copious descriptions of the condition known as the broken heart. There will be descriptions of wailing women, morose men of questionable sanity ranting at ravens, and smarmy swordsmen holding moldered skulls up to a limelight. Perhaps these artists knew personally what heartbreak was, but if they did, their writing is devoid of its true nature. The wailing and screaming is true enough for a week or so, and brooding may come and go, but what is never told of is the all consuming coldness that envelopes you. Occasionally, writers hint at it, but never go in depth. There was one though, Aleister Crowley, whose writing very expertly detailed the detachment, and the sense of utter helplessness in dealing with his wife's severe alcholism, which threatened the life of his infant son. My heartbreak is connected to death, but Crowley's description of his own heartbreak is the only real description I've ever read that so closely mirrored my own.

When your heart breaks, it really feels like it tears, and like it's being held open, raw and bleeding. The pain eventually subsides, but you never recover. It becomes a dry taste in your mouth that never really goes away. When she died, I suppose that what is written in poems and plays was true, if for a little while. She couldn't breath. It happened all the time, but she was always able to get it under control. If I could have just reacted a little faster, she'd still be alive. Instead, she clenched her hands up to her chest while I panicked. I did what I was told and laid her on the ground, and she laid there sucking air like a fish and I did everything I was told and nothing helped.

They told me I did a good job, but if I did such a good job, why was she in a coma with brain swelling on a hospital bed? If I had just been a little faster, she'd have gotten the blood she needed to her brain. Her lungs might not even have collapsed. Have you ever seen death? Have you ever seen how the body turns gray and flattens out? Or do you still think people look like they're sleeping? Every night, I dream about her, and every morning I wake up feeling emptier inside. She left behind an autistic son, whose father taught to hate her. He wouldn't call or answer the phone and the father taunted her and made fun of her about it. Maybe she was as tired of living as I am now.

Do you understand how tired you get? Heartbroken people are tired. We don't go out. We stay up all night and do nothing, just chatting on the internet, maybe finding hobbies to occupy the empty hours of the day, like making games, but we don't do much of anything else. I'm tired. I'm tired of waking up. All I do is spend my time online anyway, playing games or chatting about things I barely know anything about. I've stopped people from committing suicide before. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel necessary. Sometimes I feel like I just don't have to wake up. I feel like I can just wind life down and then just not tighten the spring.

I'm just tired. I don't want to wake up anymore.

"Dad, you've fallen asleep again!" the woman says with a laugh and a smile. She doesn't think I notice, but I recognise the brittleness of the laugh, how the smile is plastered on. They think I don't notice, but I do.

They tell me this woman is my daughter. I only have their word to go on, but to her credit she does bear a slight resemblance so for the moment I'll take their word for it. 'Family' crowds around me, like vultures circling their next meal. No doubt at least a few of them are only here out of a sense of obligation, a way to guarantee old Grandpa will leave them something in his will.

It's not that I don't appreciate their efforts; I'm sure some of them have come a long way to be at my bedside. I'm only sixty, but a tumble down the stairs and an ambulance ride later I'm feeling about thirty years older, and my joints creak in agonising agreement.

What can I do but smile? I can't very well tell her that more often than not I pretend to be asleep so that these scavenging strangers with my face will leave me in peace for a while. I can't tell her that their presence does me more harm than good. No, that's not what they want to hear right now, but...

It's all meaningless, none of it. None of it makes any sense without her, without my Marianne.

She's the only thing I remember clearly in the haze of fog that has become my daily routine, and in my less lucid moments I find myself wondering why she hasn't come to visit. Then I remember, and the tears start to flow. Of course they think I'm crying because I've finally remembered the grandson in front of me, or that I'm upset at having thought I forgot to feed the cat before I came. They don't think I remember her, either. How could old grandpa remember a woman who hasn't been around for years?

Oh well, the joke's on them, the whole sorry lot of them.

"Oh, would you look at the time?" says the shrieking harpy in front of me. I don't know who she is, but I wish she'd shut up. "We really must be going, dad. I'll see you tomorrow!"

Dad? I don't have a daughter. Why would I have a daughter? I'm a man in my prime! Sure I took a tumble, but once I'm back up on my feet I'll be straight back to Marianne and we can finally take that cruise she wanted to go on.

Cruise...something tugs at my memory. A woman falling, my hand outstretched, a lifetime of emptiness, a hospital bed, a clandestine meeting with an orderly, a small wad of notes changing hands, a whispered promise--

and I'm back in my bed. Oh, I remember now, yes. The harpy won't be seeing me tomorrow, none of them will.

Don't worry Marianne, I'll be with you soon.

------

"I don't--I just don't understand. He was so healthy-looking yesterday!"

"These things can sometimes be sudden, Mrs Porter. Rest assured that we did everything we--"

"Please spare me the platitudes, doctor. I'm a big girl, I know how life works. Just tell me how."

"The autopsy report states that he had a heart attack."

"That's the hospital talking, can I have an answer from the doctor?"

"...the autopsy report states that he had a heart attack."

"Ugh, fine. I hope they pay you well for your lack of backbone. Can we at least take mum home?"

"Of course! It was touch and go with Marianne for a bit, but she's fit as a fiddle and ready to go! I'll take you to her room now."

I'm so gonna skip introductions. They're not my forte lol. So let's begin, shall we? :) Anyway, I have a few of game references if you play them. Life Is Strange and Beyond : Two Souls. I'm not promoting them but I somehow get ideas on how to write it up. I hope that's allowed.

I have been standing on the edge of my balcony. For countless of times, it never succeed. Feeling hopeless that even the betrayal of people around me can never throw me off the edge. Maybe it is impossible.. Just impossible.. Now, i'm feeling anxious on how I would face my life ahead suffering like the fires are cast upon me to leave this world. A world which rejects my existence.. Sometimes, I wish I could have the unforeseen things happening to me and getting attention all over me. It might please me and make me feel like I'm needed in this forsaken world.....

If only... I have the power to reverse time. If I had a power like that, I would go all the way back and change everything! Every single thing in my life which I messed up, even the tiny bits of it. It's still life changing. I will do anything just to have a life I wanted. Anything! WARNING!!! If you still can't understand, you would hear the haunted creaking of a rope deep within your imagination. A place where you can never EVER stop hearing it.. So, I've stopped here right now. To spread to the people who are reading this to know about me. I will continue my journey... Journey to where, you ask? Journey to reject the life this world has been giving me.

Farewell,
James