Death Becomes Me
I was thirteen the first time I wanted to die. Maybe I thought about it, imagined what it might feel like to shut down my mind and close my eyes for all time, but I never wanted death. Not really.
Not until that day.
I knew the gun was loaded. Always. Ready to fire. It lived on the top shelf of a closet, buried behind a dusty tackle box and a science kit for exploring the wonders of nature. I used the latter when I was a boy. Outgrew it when my school mates made fun of me for collecting leaves and smothering small animals just to study them. Age eight or nine, I’d look into their lifeless eyes and wonder: what does death feel like?
To me, it was the picture of nothing. The personification of peace.
I wanted to gaze into its eyes. That’s why I put the barrel of the gun where I did. To the bridge of my beaked nose. Curious. That’s what I was, pondering whether I would see my killer between the time I pulled the trigger and the moment my head came unglued like a ripe melon.
I sat on the edge of my bed. Stripped it, even, because I didn’t want to make a mess. I sat there and stared Death in the eye. Lots of folks try to make Death out to be a goon that lurches around in a hooded black dress, but I know better.
Death is a cyclops.
It has one eye that sizzles through its surroundings. Makes everything ash. Powder. Dust. Nagging remnants of a life lived that cast a shadow over living.
And that’s why I wanted to die. To float in the sunlight. To rest next to a stream. To flit from surface to air.
To embrace my need to be free. Pull the trigger. Finish me.
Death Becomes Me is a work of fiction. A back story, if you will. Perhaps you will read the front story.
Someday.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Falling Down « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- Shooting Blanks « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- I Died Inside Her « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- Every Tear Is a Waterfall « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- Pierced in the Side « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- I Won’t Back Down « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- Corpse Reviver No. 2 « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- Not a Project for Me « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
- The Shots Heard Round the World « The Accidental Cootchie Mama
For all the shit that has fallen on my life from time to time, I have never once thought of chasing after death. Does that make me lucky or scared?
I can relate to your experience, Roger, because I have never considered ending things, either. I need to understand why a person would consider it, which is the point of this piece. Dark, I know.
Agonizing, heart wrenching pain, hopelessness and despair. Let’s just say that I am a firm believer in angels.
I hope this guy finds one. Or something.
Me too. I am glad that I did.
This fellow needs more than an angel, I think. “. . . smothering small animals just to study them” would seem to me to indicate a sorrier state than merely curiosity. Dark and very, very sad.
He’s just curious about how they work. But, I see your point.
The world would be a much better place without you in it (that’s how I feel about myself when I’m thinking my darkest thoughts). I cannot speak for others that have craved death but for me that is what I feel. Worthless. I realize that suicide is a selfish act, but at the time you are going through it you think you’re doing everyone a favor. Everyone will be so much better off if you weren’t in their lives. Depression is something that I personally fight every single day. One of the ways that I fight it is to workout because it naturally boosts the seratonin level in the brain (I refuse medication – yeah, I know, I’m probably an idiot). Please know that I’m not condoning taking your own life (I’ve seen the waste of it on the face of the survivors), it’s just something that I live with every single day. The pain that you feel is real and intense and you look around you and you see what others do to each other and it hurts your heart so badly that you do not want to be a part of it, you cannot understand the cruelty, the horror, the waste. I’m not condoning it. I’m just trying to explain the darkness that some people live with. I can relate somewhat to this character, but not completely.
Also, when I get migraine’s I’ve thought that a bullet through the head would feel good and clear out the pain. I know it wouldn’t but it is where my mind has gone sometimes.
Gosh, this feels too real and I’m not really wanting to hit “post” but I will because Andra is so honest with her words that I feel compelled to be. Please don’t flame me, I hate myself more than you all could know for feeling this way and my struggle is daily. When you allow people to know how you feel then they seem to think you want platitudes, or pats on the back or to be told that you’re a great person…but to a depressed person (at least this one), you do not embrace the positive, just the negative, so anything positive falls upon deaf ears. I think it’s difficult for people to understand how someone can throw their life away and someday I hope I get to that point where I no longer understand it.
Hey! What can I say? I’m a work in progress and every day that I look to the positive is a miracle in my life – I have a lot of miracles….
Lori, I appreciate your open, raw remarks more than you can possibly know. It is never easy to get inside the head of a character like this one, and what is real and what isn’t helps me nail the voice. I am glad you fight through every day. Mike, your kids and your other friends are, too.
It’s always a balance isn’t it? To end the pain at the cost of (unknown).
To find relief at the cost of – usually?, probably? – causing others so much pain even though we will not see it or know it.
Hamlet is an idiot but this problem he understands…
“Aye, there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause…”
“Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,”
13 is such a volatile, impulsive, and dangerous age. He is talking about death yet on a deep level truly thinks he is immortal.
The small animal killing is a lovely touch as it gives a whole different twist to his issues, problems and character.
Robert, your comments are always so deep and help me see things I didn’t see in my own writing. Especially with this character, who ends up encompassing all of these things of which you speak. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the afterlife, for the person who tries to die, is that they cannot? What brand of hell would that be?
Incidentally, someone has been searching for you on my blog. I hope they found you.
I read a book on that once – and it said that the person who takes their own life are doomed to forever walk beside those they hurt when they took their own life and see the havoc that they caused and the pain and hurt on their loved ones…now that is hell if you ask me.
Sounds like you have the makings of a serial killer here. I loved the idea that death was a cyclops. Very Odysseus like.
I hope that’s not the way he goes, but we’ll see.
Wow. Very powerful stuff. Hopelessness often characterizes the desire to end one’s life. The thought that you’ve done all you can. That you can’t go home again. That things will never truly get better for the long term. That you can no longer bear the pain of sadness. That you’ve erred so badly there’s no fix. That it’s all too hard. And that you’re just exhausted from every slice and sliver you digest. But then, something flickers. Maybe it’s the notion that people love and need you. Maybe it’s the idea that you simply cannot bear to inflict the lifelong pain on others you know would accompany your self destruction. Or maybe someone shared a kind word or an unexpected good turn of events materialized. Perhaps all of these things, over and over again in this cycle we call life. And you realize you can go on, you will go on, because you always have.
In my lowest moments, I’ve never contemplated ending my life, so it is hard for me to understand. Hence, this series. I hope the character will let me explore some other aspects of him besides his suicidal tendencies, but we will see.
When I was thirteen, I thought about death. I was terrified by it, and terrified to speak of it. One day, on the bus, I did, and I was told ‘why are you so scared of death, it is only a part of life.’ That took away my fear of dying, but since, I’ve been scared of everyone else around me dying… that’s a long time to carry an irrational fear.
Andra, your post and some of the comments are making me think differently again now. In a good way I have to add.
Great writing!
Change is a part of life, and death changes the lives it touches. I’m scared of that part of death, too, more than dying myself.
Interesting. While there are situations in which I would think suicide a proper solution, simple curiosity is definitely not one of them. Simply waiting will inevitably answer that question. I would never consider shooting myself. It’s too easy to mess it up and then be forced to live with the consequences, a true horror story in my mind.
I can’t imagine how someone shoots himself, not once, but twice. And, you’re right. Having to live after a suicide attempt could be quite a horror story…….
I had a hard time reading this, even knowing it’s fiction. One of the dearest people I knew took his own life more than six years ago, and while not by gunshot, the fallout was just as violent, just as destructive, as a more violent means of death.
That I read every word, enthralled, a little nauseated? A testament to your voice.
Thanks. I needed that right now.
And, I’m sorry.
I didn’t think that this character is suicidal, which is what I think some people were sensing. It definitely sounds like someone who has the ability to become a killer though. The detachment from life I can understand fairly well, so I see where he is coming from with that. But it sounds like it comes from a curious place, not a place of violence.
He is suicidal. That much I know.
does he want to die because of depression though, or out of a sense of curiosity?
Depression.
A little too real in many ways. Dark tinged with hope around the edges. Like the negative of a burned photo.
Not much I can say to this one. And no, no humor.
I love the burned negative analogy. That’s exactly how this character feels to me.
It is sad when someone reaches the point that death seems preferable to life . . . to escape pain, to escape themselves, to escape a pointless existence.
Despair is hidden arrogance . . . “I have seen the future and it doesn’t work.”
That said, curiosity about what the future holds can be an antidote to despair.
He doesn’t have the nerve to do it at thirteen. I hope he never will. But. The characters decide.
I have always viewed suicide as a terribly selfish act, though I know it does not seem that way to the person at the time. And, I don’t really have the right to judge. I’ve known a couple of people who have succeeded and several who have tried.
I feel honored to have an advance read of what I know you will one day publish in full. You have a gift in creating such complex characters that grab attention. This character, too, is very compelling, Andra. You are always a surprise! D
Debra, you are a reader of sophistication, and I appreciate this comment more than you know. I wish readers were the gatekeepers of publication.
To feel afraid of nothingness is the product of having a life full of reward. I think that’s why our mediaeval forebears embraced Death; because it was an escape from the relentless grind. I can understand this character’s point exactly, though when I faced nothing I found it cavernous and horrifying because I had so much to lose.
This character has much to lose. I wonder why sometimes people don’t see what they have to lose, why the call of death is so much stronger. I’m just trying to understand these very real feelings.
It’s a complex business, a situation where death is preferable to life.
A lot of great language and neat images here; “the moment my head came unglued” really caught at me. I like the idea of death as a cyclops, too — that’s a new way of looking at things.
This voice is a work-in-progress, but I’m enjoying the exploration. Thanks for the feedback, Annabelle.
Andra
I haven’t visited in awhile. for instance, the last time I visited you called the blog something else.
BTW, I also like the new look on the D7770 website. Are you using wordpress there also.
Yes. WordPress.org, the self-hosted platform of WordPress. Works the same way as .com, but with more flexibility.
This is pretty interesting, Andra. Some nice pictures.
This one has more significance than you know, Ted.
I think somehow, I was commenting on a different post. There is only one photo here…