It’s a Turn Down Day
It’s a Turn Down Day
May 13, 2024
If you have the chance
If you dare to dare
Take it and run as far as you can
For any direction you go
Beats not going at all
I stood on the bridge overlooking the ice floe. Seventy feet down, freezing cold water, and a pitch black night have all of the makings of a successful suicide. I contemplated my action as I weighed my options.
I am 14 years old with a bleak future. If past performance is indicative of future returns, I will be sadly disappointed. Such is my life.
The slow moving ice reminds me of the clouds in movies where the protagonist and antagonist both see different visions within. You would think the same clouds would only have one POV, but that would make for poor cinema.
Once again, I am disappointed with my lot in life.
What do I have to look forward to? Ending another sentence with a preposition?
It is not as if everyone hates me, or doesn’t understand what I understand. I didn’t ask to be born, but who gets this prenatal choice in the first place? I am told, by people whose life doesn’t seem so envious, that I have much to look forward to. These wizards of wit cite my first kiss, prom, graduation, college, marriage, having kids and seeing them grow, and retirement as examples. However, where I live, nobody has mastered these skills. Nobody fondly reminisces about each of these watershed moments. Shouldn’t someone, somewhere, set the gold standard for others to follow? Why hasn’t my school hired one of these people? That would be a class I might not ditch.
And yet, as I look down, the ice beckons me to follow its ordained path. Its siren song resonates in my mind, almost alluring, almost bewitching me to action.
All I need to accomplish is to not accomplish anything. Just let go. Just take that leap. Just trust that when I chose not to decide, I still will have made a choice. A final choice.
I find myself on the perimeter of my Venn diagram in the land of null set alternatives.
The floe looks comfortable, looks viable. It covers bank to bank, from upstream to downstream, as far as the eye can see. The cold air offers me nothing I don’t already have, which is not much. The combination of the two is almost overwhelming.
Then, I no longer think in terms of “almost”.
If anyone cares, let my tombstone read, “It's a Turn Down Day.”
And I dig it.