A Fall – a story

rough draft of a story i wrote this week before finding out about the loss of a friend who took their own life. this story feels very raw and real to me but i think there’s a sort of truth in that that maybe someone can get somthing from. 

There was no flash.

No revelation.

No playback of life’s good, bad, or ugly.

There was only anger, rage, pain, and the fall.

The fall.

 

I’d like to tell you that there was something that made me do it. Some cataclysmic something that was the final straw, that was the final proof for me.

I’d like to tell you that the reason was enough, was enough to make everyone understand why, why, why.

I’d be lying though.

I can tell you that it was the culmination of years and years of something burning in me, beneath the surface, consuming my memories, my dreams, and my relationships until it finally broke through to the surface.

I can tell you that the occasional thoughts turned to day dreams turned to fantasies turned to reality.

I can tell you that a vague flower of sadness had blossomed into a flowering mushroom cloud that wiped out reason and left only action.

I can tell you it was a mistake I intended to make.

It wasn’t sadness or pain that guided me though but rage, pure, black, self-directed rage. It was the need to punish myself for another mistake, another fuck-up, real or imagined. I needed to hurt myself in order to hurt the world. There was no darkness that took me over though, there was just me and that fire in me that had finally gotten out of control.

When I think about it, when I force myself back to those moment, because that’s what they were really, moments, it seems like a dream.

A nightmare.

My body a sparking wire, movements spastic, mind a shark searching out prey. I stormed into my apartment and searched everywhere for something, something, something…THERE!

I grabbed a detached electrical cord and quickly rushed to my closet and pulled open the door that was already ajar. I pulled coats and shirts out with my free hand and threw them onto the carpet until there was a small open space before me. I took the thin black cord in both hands and wrapped it around the closet rod and looped the two ends and created a knot. I started to make a loop but was struck by a thought and dropped the cord and turned to scan the one room apartment again. There, on the floor I saw it and rushed over and grabbed a dirty sock and then returned to the closet. I stepped within the darkness, crowded by clothes I never wore, and turned to face out once more.

There it all was, my life in clutters and piles.

Clothes.

Books.

Movies.

Music.

A discarded guitar.

An abandoned basketball.

A forgotten suit, piled in a corner.

An unmade bed.

Unwashed dishes.

Dirty clothes mixed with clean.

I looked at it and all there was was hate and rage and it was with pure clarity that I wrapped that cord around my neck with the sock against my throat, and tied it off.

Just in case, a part of my thought, just in case it didn’t work I didn’t want to crush my windpipe or voicebox.

Just.

In.

Case.

I tied the last knot and let myself drop, pulling my legs up as I did and I fell.

I fell.
The cord pulled taut and there was a moment where I hung before my weight snapped proved too much and my noose snapped. My knees connected with the floor and pain ran down my shins and up my thighs. I fell forward into an abandoned pizza box and let out a rage filled sob.

I pushed myself up onto my knees, broken cord around my neck, and struggled to my feet, legs aching. I stumbled forward, intent on finding another way, some other way to do it. Tears ran down my eyes as I searched everywhere for something, something, ANYthing that could just end me.

That could make the pain that seemed so bottomless go away.

I fell onto my knees and let my shoulders slump.

I couldn’t even do this right.

All that came then were tears.

I closed my eyes and saw the face of my mother, ten years dead but smiling at me from a long-gone birthday.

Back when I was still a kid with the sky in my eyes and the sea in my heart.

Christ.

 

I opened my eyes and my eyes caught a picture of my brothers and me at a baseball game, laughing, beers raised.

I clenched my fist and punched at the floor and stood on wobbly legs and put my hand down on my dresser and looked down and saw my hand on a letter from an ex that had tracked me down, wanting to know how I was. A letter that even now, after everything, after two weeks, still had me laughing.

I wiped a hand across my eyes and looked outside and caught sight of the setting sun and that was all I needed because it meant the day was ending. And if this day was ending then that meant there was a tomorrow.

It meant I’d have a tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

I made my way to my bed and sat heavily onto it and closed my eyes and started untying the noose from my neck and in the darkness of my mind I saw dad, napping on a lazy Sunday like a cat in the sun. I opened my eyes and looked around my apartment and put my focus on that and nothing else.

One moment.

One thing.

One day.

One at a time.

Like an addict drawn to death.

One day at a time.

I took a deep breath, wiped my face again, and then stood and started cleaning my place up.

…c…