The Crisis as It Were

To you, dear reader,

Chances are you won’t know me and I won’t know you. The chances are impossibly high. It doesn’t matter much who you are though because this letter was never really intended for you. No offence, friend. I’m hoping that the wisdom I am soon to impart onto you doesn’t spoil your day, which I trust has been just excellent.

I should start by saying that I’m exhausted at the situation as it is. These last five or so months have taken an enormous toll on me, and now, more than ever, I feel entirely defeated. For years I’ve been weighing up my options and their consequences, only now however, in my complete isolation, do I feel ready to take the plunge into the ice-cold body of water that will be my death. Initially I wasn’t going to leave a note, I imagined I'd have no one to write to who would actually care. I’ve since thought better of those previously held notions, and here I now write. I maintain the sentiment that no one really gives two shits about me – maybe harsh, but it’s true really. Don’t you find it funny that our government offers us these suicide kits instead of offering us a treatment to deal with this mental health crisis? I write for my own satisfaction. Satisfaction - a poorly chosen word for what I’m really feeling. I haven’t had anyone to talk to in what seems like an age, so all of my discontent and rage has built up to this. Now as my final release, you, reader, are its recipient.

I don’t think suicide is what it used to be, really. There was always a sort of stigma that surrounded it but also an unknown mystique that held it to have some kind of revered or romanticised light. To think that it used to be discouraged, even illegal, seems a world away given the current state of things. Even when it was decriminalised I maintained a level of prejudice to those who had taken what I deemed to be the coward’s way out. The truth is that it’s not an act of cowardice. It’s just easier to end things, and now, I’m starting to think, better even?

My story is hardly worth the paper that I write on, but nonetheless I’ll tell it. Like any tragic love story there was a breakdown in a relationship. I met her when I was sixteen. A friend of a friend who showed up at one of our parties and immediately caught my attention. She and I had an instant connection - the real cliché type in film and literature that consumers go crazy for. Yep, that was us. We didn’t really see each other at all for the few years though, before things got serious. When they did get serious though, things were good. Happiness, as I’ve discovered, is only temporary. If something, and I mean anything, went wrong, the fighting would ensue. And the fighting was bad. The cliché wasn’t enough to sustain a long-term relationship. When the bad outweighs the good and keeping the company of a woman begins to feel forced - that’s when you should leave. Foolishly enough, leave I did not - I’m sort of weak when it comes to anything regarding change. Ironic - here I am on the cusp of the greatest change yet with absolutely no reservations. I had no greater an intent for change then, than the will I have to see the light of tomorrow. She always wanted a family, being a midwife she was around newborns and young families all day. She was in love with the image of what we could’ve been I suppose. I was just the vehicle that could bring her vision into reality. In the third month of our first pregnancy she miscarried. She knew the probability of things like these, nonetheless the doctors reassured us anyway that it was “actually quite common, especially in recent times”. Naturally I tried to be there for her but she shut me out to the point where I know she had blamed me for it. It was another three months before she fell pregnant for the second time. To my disappointment and her resentment, it was the same hopeless outcome that’d sent us into silence and a shared-solitude once more. This time however, ignoring patient confidentiality, the doctor made us aware of several other would-be mothers who had suffered the same fate.

As months passed, every channel ran stories of rising infertility on our pitiful little television at home. Of course, I was the only one home watching. She took off with some other man from work shortly after the second pregnancy. I’d say it broke my heart, but to be completely honest, by then I couldn’t care less. The deeper I think about things the action that I am about to take makes total sense. It’s kind of like thinking about an inanimate object for an extended period of time, visualising it and repeating its name in your head. In no time at all everything loses meaning. For myself, and so many others, it’s life that has lost meaning. Anyone who is futilely pursuing dreams is in denial. Everyone knows. At the end of all of this it was a relationship, sure - but built on what? Human beings were never supposed to monogamous. Relationships are utilitarian devices at best. She made me look good and maybe I made her look good for a period of time too. I suppose that’s the critical truth of it all. Once it’s down to pure science, the ‘love’ I felt, was nothing but a chemical reaction in my brain, a release of endorphins that made me comfortable in my own miserable reality.

It matters little now; I have nothing to keep my feet grounded to this Earth. With this realisation I leave for something better. I go because I choose to and because I can’t regret my taking of this action but can, and will, regret spending more time in this hopeless place.

Goodbye, my good and righteous friend