A Suicide Note

First, you should know that it was not your fault. If you are reading this, then you cared enough to look. I could wait and explain everything in person, but I would not convince you. So, I will settle for this. It was not your fault.

Second, well, everything else, I guess. Everything dies eventually. Yes, I know; that is a terrible reason to choose now instead of eventually. But listen – no one ever did when I was alive, but maybe you will now. It’s been fun. But I’m done pretending now. All we can do – all we can ever do – is prolong the inevitable. We can choose to have fun along the way, or, like most of the world seems to have chosen, we can choose to suffer the whole time. And maybe make others suffer while we’re at it. Yes, there were fun times, but what was the point? Are the fun times worth the pain and suffering when it all disintegrates into nothing in the end, no matter what we do? What’s the point of struggling through this world when we all know that nothing we do will ultimately make any difference?

Before you ask, no, this has nothing to do with my father. I know you saw the bruises. I know you ignored them like everyone else. Or rather, you ignored them in a different way than everyone else. But you definitely ignored them. Where the rest of the world looked at anything else so they didn’t have to see, you let yourself notice and pursed your lips in that way that said you care, but not enough to do anything. I know you cared. I know you just didn’t know how to really care in this society that stilts all emotion, that has condemned emotion to the realm of weakness that must never be shown in public. If you care, you are weak. If you don’t care, you are callous. The weak are preyed upon. I know you preferred the world to think you callous. Don’t worry – I never thought that.

You might be asking yourself why now? You want to ask only why, not why now, but it is easier if you can blame something. So instead you ask why now so you can find the one trigger that caused everything, so that you can hate it and crusade against it for the rest of time. Not that it really matters. I’m sorry I don’t have something for you to blame. I’m sorry I don’t have a good answer to your question. My answers were never good enough, anyway.

I didn’t do it earlier because I ran out of time, or I forgot, or I didn’t feel like it, or some other lame excuse. Why didn’t you do your history homework, yet? My answer is the same as yours. I read a lot because I knew I would have to plan carefully. If I was reading, I wasn’t planning. I was lost in someone else’s story, someone whose life was much harder than mine, but somehow made it out the other side whole and optimistic. I admire those characters, I really do. But that’s not me. I played videogames because I had to concentrate on the controls, and if I was concentrating on the game, then I wasn’t thinking about other things. What other things? You know exactly what other things. I was always lost in another story. Sometimes you asked where I was when I was standing next to you. I would just shrug. I spent as much time in someone else’s story as possible. 

Because I knew exactly how mine ended. And being lost was way more fun.

Do you remember the time we went to the beach for my birthday? The party was your idea. When you asked what I thought, I shrugged and said “Sure.” When I asked why the beach, you talked about how I was always staring at the water, so you thought I would enjoy a beach party. I wasn’t staring at the water, though. I was staring at the horizon. I don’t know if that makes any difference. I wanted to know what lay beyond it. I wanted to know what it was like to get lost on the other side. I knew what teachers had told us, of course, but what did they know? What did anyone know about anything in a world where people suffer every day, but showing compassion makes us weak? In a world where suffering and dying were facts of life, and everyone just accepted that? Sometimes you complained that I was too impatient. I just don’t see the point of waiting.

Sometimes you asked if I was okay. I would always shrug and say “Sure.” Then you would shrug, and we would continue walking, pretending that everything really was okay, but knowing that nothing was and never would be. People ask if you’re okay your entire life. Or they ask how you are. Or they forsake the asking altogether and simply command you to have a good day. They don’t care about you or your day – as long as nothing happens to make an impact on their own personal little world. But that will end eventually, too.

Maybe you can barely even read this because of the tears in your eyes. Maybe the words are too blurry to make out, but you know what it says anyway because you knew me – well, you thought you knew me, anyway. Maybe no one else will be able to read this after you. Maybe it’s because you’ll burn this note in a fit of grief and anger. Or maybe it’ll just be because the fallen tears will have blurred the words beyond comprehension – to you or to anyone else. All that will be left of me will be puddles of black ink on soggy paper. The black will separate into all the colors that make it up, the way we are never allowed to. Rainbow coronas will form around the letters. The rainbows will be mostly dark, blues and purples.

We live in a society where black has to be black. And that black has to be whatever society has decided for it for that decade. We can be every color hiding in that black ink, but we’re not allowed to show it. That would make us different. It would make us weak. And when society decides that black isn’t black enough anymore, then we just have to adjust and pretend that this is always who we were and we are nothing but black and we are none of the colors that make black what it is. All of this just to fit in with a world where nothing matters, anyway. All I ever wanted was something real. I couldn’t find it in a world with all the color hidden. If you were here with me in person you might tell me that sounds angsty and dramatic. I would probably shrug and say “Sure.”

I suppose this makes me weak. Fine. At the end of this note, it won’t matter anyway. And eventually, nothing will matter, anyway. Maybe if someone had pried beyond “Sure” when they asked about me, none of this would have happened. Or maybe it would have. And in the end, we all would have died, anyway. So this was not your fault.