Glad You're Here

1. Thea

one

To Anyone Who Gives a Fuck,

A knife would be too messy. I don’t own a gun. Thanks to my fibromyalgia pain, I’ve never been any good at tying knots, and there aren’t any decent lakes within 50 miles. Pills don’t always work, and totaling a good car would be such a waste. Besides that, I’d have to ensure that I traveled fast enough for the impact to kill me. I hate driving fast.

No. Throwing myself from some rocky precipice is the way to go. There’s one within walking distance from my house. I look at it every night before I fall asleep.

Free-falling from a cliff would be an invigorating experience. One more moment to feel alive right before I died. Maybe the wind would whistle in my ears and tug at my clothing. My heart might thump, and a scream might tear from my throat.

Then it would all be over.

This isn’t some selfish attention-grab, by the way. I don’t want to hurt anyone or leave anyone sobbing, “I should have saved her!”

No one can save me. The world could fall in adoration at my feet, and I would feel nothing. And this is the conundrum. I. Feel. Nothing. I haven’t for a long while and am simply tired of existing.

It’s exhausting to survive as a shell of a person — to smile and pretend and perform useless tasks day in and day out. I shouldn’t have to keep enduring in this pathetic way if I don’t want to. In a world so flawed and ugly, I don’t owe anyone a thing.

And before you try to bring god into this, I don’t believe in him. Note my intentional use of lowercase letters. Don’t tell me that my individuality and unique perspective are needed in this world as if I’m allowed to truly be myself. Society isn’t built that way.

The rich and important stay rich and important, and the rest of us act as pawns in their sick games. We’re convinced that with enough blood, sweat, tears, and ass-kissing, we can climb the societal ladder and join the ones pulling our strings, but we can’t.

The only moves allowed are lateral.

I apologize. I misspoke. One vertical move is permissible — down.

You are welcome to fall from grace, to plummet to a level of perfect numbness and misery. I’m guessing it’s similar to falling from a cliff. I’ll find out soon enough.

It’s Nothing Personal,

Thea

Tuesday was a good day for falling from cliffs. Maybe I’d do it on Tuesday.

Or maybe not.

I closed my laptop, yawned, and stretched. I should stop writing suicide notes. Half of the details were fictional, like the part about the lake and the cliff. I did live within seven miles of Lake Nighthorse, and there wasn’t a rocky precipice to be viewed from my bedroom window every night. The part about feeling nothing, though, was the most honest thing I’d ever written.

The notes were weird. Why did I write them? Maybe because her note contained only three words. Maybe I wanted so much more than she gave me. I’m sorry, Thea. What kind of goodbye was that?

My aunt Lenny gave me the note a few days after my twelfth birthday and told me the truth about my mom. I burned the note with a lighter an hour later. It set off the smoke alarms and scared the shit out of poor Lenny. In fairness, rage-filled tweens don’t always make the most rational decisions.

After that, I became fascinated with not only my mother’s death but also my own.

I guess it’s only natural for a kid to wonder what would drive someone to take their own life. Lenny said she had postpartum depression, that my mother was a victim of a flawed society, that she loved me very much, and that it wasn’t my fault.

When I asked about my dad, where was he? What did he think about what my mom did? Why didn’t he want me? Lenny released her famous heavy sigh and said, “I have no idea who your father is, and we have no one to ask.”

At the formative age of fourteen, I took to the internet, certain that they’d find my dad for me. When nothing came of that but a few creeps that offered to “be my daddy,” I believed that I came into this world unwanted and that I would leave it the same way.

I, of course, immediately assumed all blame for my mother’s death and my father not wanting me. I plunged into my emo-goth phase at fifteen, complete with black clothing, black hair dye, thick eyeliner, and spiked choker necklaces. Aunt Lenny beat herself up for telling me too much. “Well, I sure fucked that up, didn’t I, sweetie?” She said that more times than I could count while she scrambled through raising me.

Did she mess up? Sure, but no mistake of my aunt’s was unforgivable, especially considering she’d raised someone else’s kid all alone. Lenny never got married, and when I asked about my grandparents, she’d get this dark look and say, “They are not good people, Thea. I’m doing you a favor, keeping them away.” My grandpa passed shortly after I turned sixteen, and my grandma followed a year later.

More death — death of strangers— but still death.

We didn’t go to the funerals. I demanded that Lenny explain her reasons, but she stubbornly stood her ground. “That is not your burden to carry, and it never will be, child.”

At the time, my wrath towards her burned with the hormonal fury of a thousand suns, but I also secretly admired her steely strength. I got over never meeting my grandparents or my father, but I never stopped thinking about death. I quietly shouldered the weight of my mother’s and spent too much time wondering about my own.

Why did death hold so much fascination anyway? Why did some of us crave it and some of us fear it? Why were some deaths acceptable and others unthinkable? And was it the only true equalizer in life?

Turning into a macabre little weirdo was unintentional, but here I sat, twenty-nine years old with deep purple hair, black painted fingernails, and a Google Drive account filled with fake suicide letters.

I pushed back from my desk and wandered into my kitchen to make some chamomile tea. I was a macabre little weirdo who liked chamomile tea. I even drank it out of a bright yellow mug. It helped me sleep. Cute, huh?

I flew too close to the sun and sipped my tea before it had cooled, instantly burning my tongue. “Ow!” I yelled to no one. I needed to get a black cat or something, someone to share these stupid little moments with.

The Pablo Picasso Blue Period calendar on my fridge confirmed that today was Friday. I easily forgot what day it was when I existed in a haze of pain. The fibromyalgia part of my suicide letter was true, too. That son of a bitch showed up in my late teens, sending unexplained and incurable pain coursing through my body at random. Some days were manageable. On those days, I painted and spoke to other humans. On the bad days, though, days like today, I took some edibles and curled up in the fetal position until the pain subsided.

Then, when the pain passed, I wrote suicide letters to appease my inner demons.

I wouldn’t actually do it.

Maybe.

I glanced at the calendar again. Tuesday was four days away. Four days could be enough time to do everything I wanted to do in life. The list wasn’t long. Honestly, I didn’t have a list at all. I didn’t want to do anything cheesy like skydiving or seeing the Grand Canyon. I didn’t want to do anything ridiculous like fall “in love.” In my humble opinion, the only thing left to do was paint my final masterpiece.

It would be some epic painting that completely embodied my warped perspective on life. It would be raw, and I wouldn’t hold anything back as I do in my commissioned pieces.

After that, I could leave this life— unless I found another reason to keep grinding.