1 0.0: My Death (1/2)
15th of May, 2019
My first experience with death was when I was ten.
I was pretending to be asleep under my bed's fluffy blanket, after a long school day, with my mom's phone clutched in my small, clammy hands. The screen was bright against the darkness of the room as I gleefully played Snake.
And then a message popped up with my mother's friend name. My indispensable curiosity made me open it and read about her friend's husband's death. An accident, she had described.
I remember slowly removing the blankets from over me and tiptoeing all the way to the kitchen in my white, nightdress where Mom stood, drinking milk or water (I don't really remember). Surprised at my sleeplessness, she turns to me and questions me if something's wrong (if I have a tummy ache?).
In response, I hand out her phone and simply whisper the news to her, because shush, perhaps no one should listen to this huge secret? Mom's reaction was to cry over her friend's loss and talk to her to 'comfort' her. I didn't understand shit back then, but I did cry too because I thought that that was what everyone did. Because death is, apparently, supposedly, a sad, bad, far away thing.
Then I grew up and learned that death is a part of life, a scenario we can never escape. I saw a scenario to fear not to accept. I feared anything that can cause it. I feared crossing streets, standing close to the ledge in my high balcony, fights and cancer.
Well, that was until I turned sixteen and life got way too heavy to handle. Way too miserable and meaningless. I started carelessly crossing streets and driving fast, recklessly watching people pass by, with half of my body leaning outside the balcony, eating unhealthy, and holding sharp knives and swinging them around. I toyed with the thought of death like play-dough. Like how if I'd leaned any further in that balcony I would've stumbled down to my certain death or how if I didn't eat for long enough, I might starve myself to death.
It seemed like I had seen the inevitability of it. The fact that it's gonna happen one way or another and that it isn't something I can control.
Well, until this year, when I realized that I really can control it. That I can very, very simply end my life whenever I want when things got way too flawed and painful. And it doesn't involve the fate of another person who would really do the deed, whether a driver who hits me with his car or the cashier who sells me that chips bag that gives me cancer.
Today is my birthday, and I'm spending it sitting in my water-filled bathtub in the beautiful scarlet, full-sleeved, knee-length, flowy dress I specifically bought for today with a blade, I stole, in my left hand.
My chin-length golden hair is wet and cascading all over my face. My lips quiver as I shift in the water, because it's really cold, but I'm sure that in a few moments I shall feel nothing anyway, right? I will drift away into pleasant nothingness. I will morph into a memory of a seventeen-year-old who -oh, what a pity- killed herself in a tub.
Look, I don't really have thirteen reasons as to why I want to kill myself, but I have seven horrible ones.
Starting from the least severe to the most:
1- Not feeling Joshua's scorching betrayal when he ditched me and used all my insecurities against me, making what is bad much worse. I won't be forced to relive the memories about how easy it was for him to call me 'boring' and 'plain' after I've entrusted him with the fact that I hated how I looked. All really seem to be very alluring reasons to just skip my life. And, no, don't worry, I will not just kill myself because of a boy. I am at least smarter than that.
2- And most importantly really, I wouldn't need to eat at all! I'd be dead. So there'll be nothing such as 'getting chubby', 'letting it go' or some stupid, appetite-oppressing shit as Joshua would remark. There won't be chips which can't be spelt without hips and there won't be Oreos. There won't be imbeciles who call themselves seniors who'd body shame me and would make me wish for the ground to split open and swallow me whole when I leak on my, good Lord, heavy periods.
3- The definite absence of a grade-oriented society. Basically, I'll be going to a place where I won't be marked as stupid because of some marks scribbled on some paper. Another seductive reason is the absence of a mysterious, scary future. There'll be no worries of a good or a bad tomorrow. This constant need to stay prepared for whatever the hell might happen will be gone! I needn't worry about a pathetic future. I needn't worry about whether I'll become a drug addict, and I certainly needn't worry about how I die.