Suicide in Self-Defense
The first thing you have to understand is, I don’t have a lot of time. This recorder, it still has one of those little cassettes and it’s winding smaller and smaller even right now. If you find this, listen.
What no one tells you is how to properly fashion a noose so the slipknot doesn’t come undone with your weight. The little piece of information people neglect to tell you about shooting yourself is that you should never pinch your eyes closed. For the longest time the way I lived wasn’t what you would call perfect. I was the bottom condo in a brick filing cabinet for young pseudo-artists and college dropouts. The night the news story about reincarnation came on I was boiling water to make mac and cheese. The bubbling sound of water muting out every other word until all I can do is watch the pictures of people smiling and jumping off of buildings. I watch the TV and see people chugging drain cleaner or wrapping their faces in grocery bags and wonder how much milk I mix in with the powdered cheese. The reality is I don’t care if those people died.
When the story goes back to a reporter with his tie looped around his neck I snap off the stove and start digging for my strainer. The TV is talking behind me, saying that reincarnation is true. There is physical proof of a second life. The TV is saying that all of my hopes and dreams are just a gunshot or razor-slash away. I pick out a piece of macaroni and blow on it until the tendrils of steam are gone. I pop it in my mouth and turn back towards the TV. My apartment is nothing but the burp smell of what everyone else is cooking above me and the hollow clicking noises of someone’s leaky bathtub dripping water onto my ceiling. Mixing the cheese product in with my noodles and some butter I turn the other burner up to high and let a little gas leak out until I get that septic smell of propane in my nose. Spooning and rolling the ingredients together I do the same to the back two burners and I can hear hissing.
With a house full of propane gas, everything seems significant. Each blink is as hard and heavy as any garage door. What you don’t realize when you’re trying to commit suicide to make yourself a better life is that a lot more people attempt suicide than commit it. Dizzy and reeling I am digging through my closet for something to wear and an extra sheet to tie to the light fixture in the room where my TV is. Somewhere above me I hear a gunshot and glass breaking and I wish I had a gun.
I grab out an afghan and toss it around on the arms on the fixture. On top of my recliner, in my wedding dress, I tie a knot around it, tangle the other end around my neck and jump.
The threads unravel from around my neck and I drop to the floor. The hot bulbs of the fixture burning my neck and arms. I can’t feel my legs and my upper body feels as heavy as a wrecking ball. What no one tells you is that if you attempt suicide and you don’t have friends that check on you, you’ll just have to wait and die slow.
I smell something burning and it might be me or I don’t know what. I hear sirens. I hear cracking and voices screaming, asking if I’m all right.
That brings me to now. The recorder in my hands, I am hearing the door broken down. I am hearing footsteps. If they save me, the hospital will keep me alive forever. This is what no one ever says to you when you are trying to reincarnate.
“Ma’am. You’re going to be just fi…”
