Short Story Club
In My View
- Living A Value Based Life
- Self-Care In A Crisis
- Baby Girl Expectations
- My Feminist Journey
- The Experiential Diary
Ready To Die
Trigger Warning: Suicide Ideation
If there was one thing Priscilla believed, it was that luck was never on her side. She’d reached twenty-five on a high, but the come down was mightier. Slapped back into reality, she realised that she had never been more alone and everything she had been striving for since she was five didn’t exist. Two decades, she’d spend being the ‘good girl’, doing things right, working hard, and reinventing herself when things seemed as if they weren’t going work out. She was adaptable, versatile, friendly, and resilient, yet she felt as if she amounted to nothing.
Jobless, almost penniless and living at home. Going through yet another heartbreak to close off the year. Her peers were house hunting, getting married, starting families, celebrating promotions, travelling, and celebrating milestones she’d wished for long ago. They say happiness is destroyed through comparison, and although she understood this, she couldn’t help it. She yearned for those things in her own life, and without them she felt empty. Too empty to feel like living was for her.
So it was on that night, when the pictures fell from her wall and bruised her head, she decided she was ready to die.
*
If you saw Priscilla on a regular day, you would think she was the happiest girl in the world. She smiled at strangers, even when they returned her gesture with dirty looks. She was a friendly face often approached for directions and would divert her schedule in order to help whoever was in need out. If something was required from a high shelf she’d use her tall stature and lanky arms to the best of her ability. On the occasions when she’d have spare change she’d toss it in a cup to the person asking and wish them a good day in return to the thanks she’d receive.
She was generous, even with the little she had, patient when required and thoughtful as a given. Her friends would describe her as kind and spirited for the most part. She had a lot of energy, could get a bit loud, but most people found her endearing. If she could be summed up in one phrase, most would opt for “life of the party”, but not many knew life was her least favourite part.
Her losses were always silent, covered in shame, and masked with lies easy enough to believe and wouldn’t look bad on her. She had an image to protect, she was the girl that was going places, with dreams and ambitions, but in her mind she hadn’t gotten anywhere. She masqueraded as a well-adjusted person, when in fact she’d hit her limit.
Usually when things got this bad she’d resort to some mindfulness, her self-care kit or therapy resources. But this time, her body wouldn’t allow her to reach for the medicine she could always rely on. Instead of her typical solutions, she grabbed a pen and some paper and began to write. She wasn’t journaling her thoughts away; she was penning her suicide letter. After what she planned on going through with, she thought it was best to write something, after all, the lyric “but your death, it won’t happen to you, it happens to your family and your friends.” kept on reverberating in her head. Goddammit The 1975, she was just trying to unalive herself in peace.
Although they wouldn’t understand and they probably would still think they could have stopped it, she thought she could at least try and alleviate them of guilt and blame. It wouldn’t be possible because that’s just how life works, but she wanted to at least go having provided some answers instead of mystery. So, she let herself unravel. She detailed her pain and where things had gone wrong, making sure to reiterate that no one was to blame. She just didn’t have the fighting spirit anymore and she was okay with that, she was ready to die.
After revising the letter several times, she glanced at the clock and realised that it has passed midnight. She’d spent all her energy trying to craft the perfect letter, and now she was ready to sleep. She hastily thought about making the sleep permanent and rummaged her side table for painkillers, but she’d used the last of them during her last period and had not stocked up yet. Then she revised the idea and decided that it wasn’t the way she wanted to go out. It was best to sleep on it and decide in the morning once she was fresher faced.
When she woke up, everything was the same. The heavy feeling she’d grown so accustomed to just led her to getting ready for the day in a habitual way. It was only as she sat down with her morning coffee and opened up her laptop did she remember that today was her proposed last day. With that reminder, she logged out of everything that made her easy to reach and put her phone in ‘Do Not Disturb’.
No one else was home, so it was safe to say that she was alone and unreachable.
With her laptop already opened, she decided to enlist Google’s help for her one task of the day. She knew she wanted to go with little to no pain, but also she considered going out with a bang. She was conflicted as the searched the many ways one could end their life. Her search felt endless and eventually her stomach began to growl, so she made herself a sandwich, then sat back in front of the laptop. She ate with her left hand and scribbled her top five methods on a piece of paper. She decided, she’d make the final decision whilst taking one last drive to clear her mind.
She polished off the last of the crumbs on her plate with her thumb and index finger, shut her laptop, grabbed the piece of paper along with her keys and hurried herself out of the door.
Once in the car she proceeded to play her depresso playlist, it was key the music matched her mood, especially since the weather didn’t want to. The winter sun was low, there was virtually no breeze. She usually would have the heating on but instead opted for the air conditioning on low as she had began to sweat in her jumper.
The roads were relatively clear, all of the lunch rush traffic had dissipated, so it was a nice leisurely drive. She had time and freedom. It was easy to scan through all the possible ways to cease to exist. The rationales were there for some of her options, but only two had made it to the final stage. It was as she turned into a quiet country road did everything change.
Country roads always annoyed her slightly as a city girl. The speed limits didn’t make sense to her, with this many bends and narrow lanes, 40mph felt like the sensible option. She’d make it to the speed limit but always find it unsettling and reduce it to something that felt more comfortable if there were no other cars around, she just wanted to enjoy the ride. As she approached a bend, another vehicle ferociously sped around the bend taking up both lanes as if it was auditioning for Fast & Furious. There was little time to react and in order to avoid the rapidly approaching car, Priscilla swerved into the grass verge to avoid total carnage and put the car to an emergency stop.
By the time she looked up and around and felt her body for signs of life, the other car was long gone. A few deep breaths passed through her lungs and tears began to stream down her face. In her panic there was an awakening, a deep sense and need to be grateful she was still alive.
The list was no longer relevant, and neither was the note from the night before. She turned off the music, retrieved her phone from the holder and began to dial.
“Hey girl, what’s up?”, the voice on the other end asked.
“Hey Nia, I’m not well and I really need you right now…“