In A Week I Will Be Dead

Chapter Twenty-Four: Atonement

!!!TW!!!

Suicide, SH

IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING, CALL THE SAMARITANS ON 116 123 <3 <3 <3

Noah

Click.

Miracles do happen. I rush in, and pull him out of the water as the sound of a siren fills my eardrums. I'd been screaming so loud that I couldn't even hear the ambulance arriving.

I take off my shirt, rip it in half and wrap it around his arms. Then men in white arrive and put his body onto a stretcher as they pull me away. It hurts. They're strong. I don't resist, because I know that he is in safe hands now.

No green bottles, sitting on the wall.

I follow the stretcher down to the ambulance, as they haul him into a myriad of people. Various masks and leads are being attached to him at record speed as I try to get in the back with them all.

'Are you family?'

A woman in white catches me and looks me sternly in the eye. I look at her back, my mind already made up on my response.

'I'm his brother.'

Without question, I am hauled into the life truck, topless, sweating, and covered in blood that for once is not my own.

Myself

Our own Matrix's:

I want you to close your eyes, and walk in a straight line. Now open your eyes. I now want you to walk in a line imagining that your eyes are closed. Now imagine that the floor which you are standing on is a conveyor belt, and the world is an illusion. Everything you touch has been morphed in front of you, but your brain is wired to give is shape and meaning. This is what dissociation feels like. I feel as though I am in a bubble, and there are people watching and studying me in the real world. I feel as if I'm not really here, as though I am part of the scenery for others to watch.

In a sense, it's just like The Matrix. But it's personalised for everyone, and we all see different types of beauty. My red may be others' green, and vice versa. We are therefore all individuals, and no amount of science can be put in place to prove this. It's a feeling; some may even call it a soul.

When I dissociate I feel like I am a ghost. Not a 'ghost' in a sense of haunted houses and graveyards, but a ghost that watches my life. I see myself in my own skin, walking as I walk and breathing as I breathe. Moments like these give me relief from all the pressure of simply being alive, and I feel a brief release in tension. I float in time and space.

Daydreaming is also powerful in my opinion. As I previously have expressed, it relieves us from tension. Illness comes from having brains being out of sync with the universe; when we switch off, our prehistoric brains reboot.

In that sense we are all characters in a computer game, a virtual reality. The Makers of the game haven't given us – the players – any hint as to what the aim is. Some heavy gamers called philosophers think many different things: to procreate, to live, to love. Others are there for the experience, enjoying each pixel like a good cup of tea. But some people, myself included, are determined to change the game's format, to make it easier. I want other characters to remove stigma, to level up when they deserve it. And finally, for those who have a virus in their coding to be given boosters, rather than deletion.

Noah

I am the man in the trench coat. I am the man on the chair. I am the man who is playing the guardian angel. I am the man who is no longer myself.