Suicide Lane Cafe

107 degrees

When I was a kid, I used to be terrified of the night. 

My parents used to leave the door open just a crack, enough for a thin ray of light to stream into my room like the bony finger of an athritic old man. Through this crack I would hear the television droning, frequently with the background noise of my parents fighting. Glass breaking, hushed arguments, sometimes even furniture being toppled over. Such was the soundtrack of my childhood. 

When I was six, the nightly arguments now took place in my bedroom as they argued over me. I could never remember why they were fighting about me. For all I knew, it could've been because I threw up at lunch, but for years I kept it to myself. Neither of them ever knew I could remember the fighting, or the police coming to our door with charges of assault when I was five. My mother does not know that I still blame myself for their messy divorce and subsequently her taking my sister away and not talking to me for eight years, or that she was the cause of the eating disorder that landed me in the hospital at 15. Nor does my father know I still blame myself for the fact that he has to sleep alone every night, or that everytime I see the three scars that cross across his back I still cringe.

At the age of seven, I was almost catatonic with the fear that I, the one falling asleep, would be the one who never woke up. It made sense that this soundtrack followed me in my dreams. I dreamt of death a lot then. Sometimes it would be in a car accident, much like how my elder brother had died. I'd be in the backseat of my car, with my parents arguing in front - which never made sense, since neither of my parents drove and we were too poor to even own a car - and my little siblings cowering beside me. There would be a loud horn, and a drunk driver would swerve into the wrong side of the road and hit our car. In the dream, I'd wake up with the blood of my family smearing my face and sirens and screams in the background. 

Another one took place in the hospital. I was in a child's ward, so giraffes and zebras and lions frolicked in brightly coloured murals. Nothing was wrong with me in the dream as far as I could tell, but whenever I tried to move or speak I'd realise I couldn't. A doctor would come in with a clipboard - why is it figures of authority always have clipboards? - and take notes while mumbling ominously to himself. 

A gaggle (murder?) of nurses would come in, clacking and tsking. One would shove a catheter up my urinary tract. Another strapped my limbs down to the bed. An inexperienced intern attempted to push an IV drip up my nose, but she missed and I choked. I gasped for breath, struggling against the straps. Brown goop would slide up my throat and out my nose, pouring out in streams and streams until it came out of my mouth and ears. All the while, the medical personnel talked about me as though I was already dead. 

The last one was the most frequent. The first time I had this dream, I must've been about ten. My parents' seperation was still four years away; anorexia nervosa five. 

In the dream, I wasn't ten, or five, or fifteen. I was twenty-one. I don't know why twenty-one, specifically. Maybe to a younger, prepubescent me, that was the age I could finally be free. I was skinny, maybe about 70 pounds (30 kg). I could see the bones of my ribs, even through the shirt I wore. It was a hot, muggy day, and I sat with my legs dangling over a high-rise apartment building overlooking what I now know to be New York City. 

My dreams always started and ended with that image - me, looking at people below. And yet for some reason, I know, I just know, that I jumped. I didn't step over, I didn't slide down from my perch. I ran to the edge and leapt into nowhere. 

Then puberty came and went, and I didn't give a second thought to the terrors of my childhood. At fifteen, I weighed 65 pounds and was diagnosed with anorexia. Therapy helped some, and I made up for the lost nights I spent cowering from my nightmares by spending the pre-dawn hours at the park, drinking 40% proof vodka and passing joints. That was also the year of my last contact with my mother, where she got drunk on beer and whiskey and told me I was a useless pig who'd been an accident.

In hindsight, perhaps that was where my distaste of beer and Jack started. My mother never drank vodka, so I turned to it for comfort. 

Anyway, I never thought of that dream again. Not until a day ago, where for the first time in years I dreamt I was sitting at the edge of a high-rise, listening to the sounds of the city. Again, I was twenty-one. Again, I instinctively knew that I died in that dream. 

It's hard to explain dying in dreams to someone who's never felt it. Even after you're awake, there's that few seconds of utter disorientation as you wonder if you're alive or dead. Because of my dreams, I imagine death feels a lot like a dreamless sleep. Maybe that isn't too bad. After all, ever since I was a kid I'd known I was going to die young. It was - and is - much better to be remembered as an independent young adult than as an elderly woman with dementia and arthritis, relying on the kindness of family and friends.

I'm turning twenty-one next year. I have a flight booked to New York two weeks after my birthday. Maybe this time next year, I'll be sitting on the edge of a high-rise building, listening to the sounds of the city before I jump.