P) "Stumped"

STUMPED

I thought I had received enough setbacks in my time, but it was only
when I lost a leg in a failed suicide attempt that I learnt what a slap
in the face really was.

If I had known what was going to happen I wouldn't have done anything,
I would have borne my lot just like most other people do. Unfortunately
I had been confident that my attempt would be successful, and so
bearing my lot was not something I spared much thought for, thinking
that either way soon enough I would be rid of the damn thing, which I
had never asked to carry but which had been thrust on me as soon as my
consciousness of what life was all about really wakened.

I had studied the movement of trams long before I acted. I used to sit
in the tram shelters, it didn't really matter what the weather was
because the glass back and sides and roof covered me and let me sit in
peace and watch the trams approach from a distance travelling at a good
spead, then slow up and stop as they reached the point where I sat.
There, as the people climbed on and off, and none ever looked at me, or
if they did they looked straight through me, I would examine with my
eyes the underside of the trams, beyond the steel wheels to the steel
contraptions further in, sharp and rusting, strong enough easily to
break a man in two, so it seemed to me from my limited knowledge of
such things, and anyway I always went on hunches, and my hunch about
this was good.

I really felt that throwing myself under a tram was the best way to go
out. I did not have access to a gun so could not shoot myself (this
would have been my preferred method). I did not want to slit my wrists
because I didn't like the sight of my own blood (that I would bleed
plenty if I threw myself under the tram was no concern, for I would be
dead and it wouldn't make any difference to me). I didn't want to hang
myself because I thought it was undignified. I didn't want to overdose
because I heard it was unreliable and might leave me paralysed if it
failed. I didn't want to throw myself into a river or the sea because I
was convinced I wouldn't be able to drown, I had images of myself
desperately trying to remain submerged but constantly floating up to
the surface until picked up by some bemused fisherman; I didn't want to
let myself in for that fate. Throwing myself under a tram had none of
these problems. It was quick, and even if it left a bit of a mess
behind that wasn't my concern. People were paid to clean these things
up, it was part of someone's job.

So everything seemed dead certain. I wrote my farewell notes to people,
something I am now very embarrassed about, because as a result the
friends and relatives I wrote them to have formed a very different
opinion of me. Yes, if I had died they could have read a simple line
like, 'It's better this way, and we both know it,' as imbued with the
sad twilight of loss, but instead, because I am alive, I must look
rather silly for having written such things, and I wonder if one or two
of them don't secretly have a measure of contempt for me. I don't think
any of them thought I was just trying to get attention - people do not
usually throw themselves under trams to get attention - but this only
makes it worse, for it makes it clear that I was really trying to
accomplish something but as with so much else that went before I
failed. When they say to me that 'God intervened' what else could they
mean but that I failed? I find it so hard to look them in the eye,
sometimes I can't even bring myself to speak to them for days, and I
close my door and tell them to go away and just leave me alone. They
won't let me have a key because they are afraid I will try some new
drastic measure to do away with myself, so I am ultimately at their
mercy; but I am so cantankerous when I am in this mood that more often
than not they obey my wishes and just go away, leaving me to sit and
ponder over my present situation, and the ineluctable knowledge that I
have only myself to blame for it.

I think long and hard about the future. I am only thirty-three years
old, and even though my health has never been the same since I lost my
leg, there is a real possibility that I have many, many years ahead of
me. These were years I had never counted on having, not when I was
younger, and certainly not when I finally picked out a day to kill
myself. So for the first time in my life I have to contemplate a time
which up till now had quite literally never existed, not even as a
possibility. I sit and stare at the walls, because that is about as
productive as my activity gets, and say to myself, occasionally out
loud if I am sure there is no one around to listen: 'What's going to
happen then? What are you going to do tomorrow and all the rest of the
days? Try to learn to walk again? And what is the use in that? So you
can go and walk under another tram and lose your other leg and be left
with nothing but stumps so you can waddle under a third one, and then
what, lose an arm? How long can you put up with this?' Obviously, my
confidence had taken a real blow after what had happened. I felt that
anything I tried to do I would only end up by further humiliating
myself, until I probably ended up auditioning for perverse pornographic
movies, because there's always a market for freaks, by which stage I
would no doubt discover myself impotent. Was that to be the progression
of my life, from a failure to a freak? I could almost see it written
across my tombstone already. That was the worst part of all: the
knowledge that I was still going to die. If, by failing, I had somehow
condemned myself to eternal life, how much easier that would have been
to bear: instead I was faced with the absurd paradox that would haunt
me all my life, which was that I had failed at life's only certainty. I
have wracked my brain in vain, endured unimaginable pain, in trying to
come up with an analogy that could compare to this absurdity, but I
have yet to find one, which just goes to show how unlucky I am. Hah!
don't talk to me about luck. Perhaps if I could annihilate every single
living being and be the only one left alive that would be some sort of
consolation too: after all, the vast majority of people don't achieve
their goal in life and make do with second, or third, or even fourth
best. Maybe then what I lack is simply other people's capacity for
self-deception. But to believe that would be a poor consolation,
self-deception of the basest kind. My thought always annihilates itself
in this way. Think about that for a fate: what I sought was the
annihilation of my body, and what I get is the annihilation of my
brain.

I hear chuckles coming from your side of the page. Laugh if you want.
Do you think I'm a comical figure? Do you think I'm pathetic? Go ahead.
Do you think I haven't thought this a thousand times before? Do you
think I didn't think it the very first moment I felt myself severed at
the thigh but strewn across the track, fully alive and my arms flailing
in despair, realising with unfathomable grief and horror that I was
still alive? Do you think, as I was hauled into the ambulance, and
called by one of the doctors 'an idiot', that I wouldn't have exchanged
my position for anybody else's, while fully aware that not the greatest
loser in the world would want to be me?

And so I suppose I must continue to live, for a little while longer at
least. I look down where my legs should be and see only one. I look
where my arms should be and see two. I wheel myself through a
graveyard, and see only undug earth where I ought to lie buried. At
times like that I want to weep, and I throw my head back and with a
vile glare pointed at the sun I howl to the empty air: 'Why? oh, why?
Why, why, why? Why, oh why?' The birds chirp back, the dogs bark
merrily, the grass hoppers dance on the grass as if my despair is just
a calling card for them to throw their merry little party, and mock me
with the delightful simplicity of their unsuicidal lives. It sometimes
seems as if this is my only hope: reincarnation. Maybe I will have the
good fortune to be reborn a cricket, or a ladybird, or some other
animal that doesn't have to think about death, and if it does need only
place itself under the sole of a human shoe to ensure annihilation.
These animals don't think about me and that I threw myself under a
tram, no, they don't care about such things, and my woes pile up with
the realisation that I mean less to ladybirds than they do to me, in
spite of the crevice between our respective potentials. This is also
true of all human beings. But who am I to talk of potential.

There are no windows in my room. They are afraid I will try and pull
myself onto the ledge and throw myself out. Obviously they have
completely misunderstood me. I don't them blame for this. Even if they
do not have contempt for me, they could not help but be estranged from
me. People get raped and assaulted, survive the most traumatic
experiences, but still others can feel some kind of empathy with them,
or imagine that they can. In the Twenty First Century - this is a fact,
I have seen it with my own eyes - people still empathise with Jesus
Christ, such is the scope of their conceit. But nobody can empathise
with a man who tried to kill himself and lost only a leg in his failed
attempt. No. This is beyond the boundaries of empathy.

Every day, therefore, is the same. I wake up and dress and wash, and
then I am visited by people when I permit it until the night falls. I
have one main meal a day, at about two or three o'clock, which helps to
keep me alive, after which I force myself to go to the toilet if I have
not gone. On the toilet, or pretty much anywhere, I think how, if I
could have it all back, I would throw myself not feet-first as if in
some half-baked martial arts kick, but head-first under the tram to
guarantee my death, I might even by-pass the tram and go straight to a
high-speed train. Only I know that I cannot have it all back, and so to
stop myself from going completely mad I moan into the darkness of the
room, which swallows me up every night when the sun goes down.