ForEverAfter
Ex-Bluelighter
I wake up, half-dead. My mother is crying. Tears for the victims. She asks me – desperate and hysterical, like a widow confronting her husband’s murderer – “Why?”
She says, “Why did you try and kill my son?”
The phrasing is accidental. She’s not designed for this situation. Nobody is.
“Did I do something wrong?” she says.
“Yes,” I think. “You should have had an abortion.” But, everything is obvious in retrospect.
I say nothing.
She continues.
I get to experience – in detail – the aftermath of my suicide. Courtesy of my mother’s dramatic reconstructions. The indescribable pain that I’ve caused. How I've tortured her soul. How she will never be the same again. She makes it very clear. If I kill myself, I’m taking what's left of her with me.
She tells me, in more ways that one: tells me, I’m selfish.
I tell her: I’m sorry. I say, I didn’t know what I was thinking.
…
I wake up, half-dead. My mother is there. Her tears are dry. She looks at me, with quiet resentment in her eyes. She says nothing, and everything, without a single expression. The question this time, although unspoken, is not, “Why did you try and kill my son?” but, “Why did you fail?”
Attempting, and committing, suicide are essentially the same. I might as well be dead.
I am, already, her aborted son. I am the reject. And she is the reject mother.
I am life that rejects life. And she produces life that rejects life.
You can’t undo an attempt to end your life.
Whether or not you succeed doesn't matter.
What's done is done.
…
I don’t wake up.
Beside me, a note.
It reads: “See you in hell, Bitch."
She says, “Why did you try and kill my son?”
The phrasing is accidental. She’s not designed for this situation. Nobody is.
“Did I do something wrong?” she says.
“Yes,” I think. “You should have had an abortion.” But, everything is obvious in retrospect.
I say nothing.
She continues.
I get to experience – in detail – the aftermath of my suicide. Courtesy of my mother’s dramatic reconstructions. The indescribable pain that I’ve caused. How I've tortured her soul. How she will never be the same again. She makes it very clear. If I kill myself, I’m taking what's left of her with me.
She tells me, in more ways that one: tells me, I’m selfish.
I tell her: I’m sorry. I say, I didn’t know what I was thinking.
…
I wake up, half-dead. My mother is there. Her tears are dry. She looks at me, with quiet resentment in her eyes. She says nothing, and everything, without a single expression. The question this time, although unspoken, is not, “Why did you try and kill my son?” but, “Why did you fail?”
Attempting, and committing, suicide are essentially the same. I might as well be dead.
I am, already, her aborted son. I am the reject. And she is the reject mother.
I am life that rejects life. And she produces life that rejects life.
You can’t undo an attempt to end your life.
Whether or not you succeed doesn't matter.
What's done is done.
…
I don’t wake up.
Beside me, a note.
It reads: “See you in hell, Bitch."
