A Purge of Emotion

This story is dark because I am having thoughts of ending my own life. I am hoping that by doing so symbolically here, I might avoid doing so in actuality, in the nearest garage. Please bear with me, and if you feel so inclined… please pray for me. At this point, I really don’t want to live anymore. Normally I welcome all comments, but in this case… whatever you do, please, if you feel inclined to comment, please leave only kind words. I assure you that I am painfully aware of my shortcomings because I have been cut too many times by people rudely pointing them out to possibly be unaware of them. If you feel the urge to reprimand perhaps parts of my attitude or my beliefs, then please know that your words will most certainly cause a great deal of harm — of a magnitude that neither you nor I can predict right now - and will be of absolutely no help whatsoever. Thank you for your consideration.

Purge of Emotion

I am sitting in my arm chair, motionless, staring into nothing, when it becomes clear that it is time. I have no more tears to cry for the emotional pain I’ve endured, and that is how I know. I recall a quote from the movie G. I. Jane, with Demi Moore, stating that pain is your friend because if you feel pain you know you’re still alive. But this night, I no longer feel the pain. I haven’t the energy left within me to hurt.

My tear ducts are dry as an ancient lake bed that has seen no flow for millenia, now clogged and overgrown with weeds and thistles. My heart is empty, containing no more than blood and tissue. Gone are the sister reservoirs of tears and emotion that once flowed in tandem.

I look around the room, at the keyboards, once an emotional retreat, a place to write music and play it and sing it with passion. My eyes briefly light upon the computer, the repository of my fiction. I skim the labels of the movies beneath the wood-and-glass coffee table and the books upon it, formerly a source of inspiration or solace which, alas, has failed to save me from falling over the edge into the abyss. Neither the poster from the symphony given as a gift, nor the dollar bill folded into a butterfly by a kind stranger rescue me from darkness.

As I stare at the darkened screen of the turned-off television, what’s left of my mind runs through the possible ways I might save myself from my own hand. I think of the backup plan kept filed away in some fold of gray cells beneath my skull but I discard it out of hand. I no longer wish to be saved. I can only imagine the psychiatrists at the hospital wishing only to rid themselves of their newest problem with as little financial expenditure to the hospital as possible, perhaps caring about their newest patient, but dismissive of her travails as a tragic but unavoidable part of their jobs, telling themselves that they are only avoiding unemployment, consoling themselves with the rhetoric that no doctor can save all of her patients, willing to release me without real help seventy-two hours later just so long as the roof is not removed from over their children’s heads. Knowing from past experience that the pharmaceuticals I expect them to prescribe utterly fail to solve problems, instead deadening their consumer to them, I reject that avenue at once.

The only thing that might take away my pain being the one thing I am ostensibly not allowed in this life, I arrive at the same, lone, inexorable option. I can spend the next few decades living with inescapable pain or I can do what the God I still manage to believe in will not. I can end my misery.

They say suicide is the only unforgivable sin, but I disagree. God, after all, is the one who allowed me to taste such vile, bitter despair in the first place. Surely He would not allow humans to know this torment without realizing that some of them would be simply unable to cope and would therefore end their own miserable existences. Surely, if begrudgingly, He must accept such acts, though devastating to those left behind, as an unfortunate consequence of ordering the poor souls’ own guardian angels to stand down and allow the tragedy to unfold, as expressed in another author’s dream, just as the psychiatrists in the hospital ward must release their patients in seventy-two hours despite giving no real help, no real relief, no real solutions. Surely such unfortunates are not to be deprived of forgiveness, for to allow this torture and punish those who cannot endure would make God a cruel, loveless hypocrite of the worst kind and magnitude.

There is no purpose that I can serve in this world if I cannot be freed from my emotional pain. I can not be of help to anyone as long I am wracked with agony, for I have nothing to give. I can not be a rock for another while buried alive beneath a rockslide. I am useless and hopeless and I have seen my last day on this miserable earth.

I rise from my chair and sit before my computer one last time. I call up the suicide note I have already written and print it out, the hum and bustle of my printer the only sound, the glowing computer screen the only light. With a sigh as heavy as an ocean, I stand and walk downstairs to my garage. I sit in my car, place the note on the front passenger seat and roll down my windows. I start the engine, wedge a plunger against the gas pedal, recline the seat all the way, and stare at the roof of my car.

Why God? Why is there no other way? Why do You allow such pain in your daughter, who has only darkness and solitude when she most needs a hug and a shoulder to cry on… and with no discernible end but this? Why didn’t You make me stronger? Why didn’t you give me the social skills I need to find a partner? Why did you allow my genital surgery to be botched? I did my homework, damn it, and it wasn’t enough! The asshole screwed it up! Sure, it’s a hell of a lot better than a penis, but what good is it if any partner would take one look at my new equipment and say, “I’m sorry, but I can’t make love to that. It kind of kills the mood, you know?” Why did You allow me to go through this life without sufficient self-confidence to survive this heartless world. I mean, damn it, I would think the least You could have done is provide me with someone to talk to when I needed it, but no, I went through it all without anybody who could understand — or even fucking believe me half the time. Not only did You allow me to be inundated with unbearable pain, You allowed me to be engulfed in it utterly alone. I am genuinely sorry that I cannot go on any longer, but after all, it was You who made me human; it was You who chose not to provide me with the strength to survive.

My nostrils fill with the odor of exhaust fumes, or perhaps it’s the smell of unburned fuel making its way into the exhaust. I cough, as my lungs beg for oxygen, but I do not care.

As I wait in my thirteen year old Subaru, I am reminded that some say a car, when seen in a dream, represents one’s life, the general condition of the car acting as an indication of the health of one's life, the road beneath it — or lack thereof - signifying the ease or difficulty of one’s journey through life. A car in a garage represents no progress at all, as in being sidetracked in life.

My fairly beat up car, ready to give out after thirteen years of faithful service, is now in such dire need of work that it can no longer be repaired, for the cost is greater than the worth of the vehicle.

Sounds like my soul, beat up, weary, ready to give out, and beyond repair.

This is my last thought as I slip from consciousness, and soon, into the next world… still… utterly… alone. Nobody comes to save me. Nobody is there to turn off the car or open the garage door. Nobody is there. Just like always.

The End

To those of you who made it to the end of this ridiculously sad tale, thank you for reading. I hope that writing this out succeeds in releasing enough tension that the remainder is bearable.