Short Stories & Unfinished Stories

Repentance

The cold hits my skin like a kiss I’ve never felt before etched onto my body as I lower myself to the grassy ground. I probably should have grabbed a sweater, I probably should have grabbed my toque too. I probably should have done a lot of things. But now, here I am. Out here, in the cold, with a tie dyed crop top, freshly cut short hair and a multi tool blade in my left hand.

I flick the lid off and on as I stare out at the vast emptiness before me, seeing only the occasional blinking of lights from wandering cars, not knowing where they’ve ended up in my neighborhood, and slowly fading once again as they realize they’ve hit a dead end. I’ve lived here long enough to know exactly where I am, and how to get back home. It’s just an open field that faces a highway several hundred yards away. I come here for peace of mind when it’s late and night and I can’t sleep, when I sneak out of my house and just take my time getting here. The sounds of the cars far away and close, and the sound of the night’s wind comfort me whenever I feel unrest in my mind. It’s like I can just forget all my problems, just…fade away.

I look down at my hands now and close the lid on the multi tool blade for the last time. I’ve never actually cut, never. More or less because I was afraid of hitting an artery wrong and ending up dying. Which is ironic in its own way, considering I’ve been wanting to die with all this pain inside me.

One time I looked up how many grams of my migraine medication I’d have to take before I’d overdose and die. But you see, the trouble with overdosing is that it’s painful and takes a long time, and you can feel the effect of too much meds in your system. And besides, I read that if the paramedics got to me fast enough I’d have a chance of ending up in a coma, permanently, or not so permanently. If I was going to go out, I wanted to go out without pain, without a chance of coming back.

I take trains every day, to and from school. Sometimes I’d like to think about how fast the pain, and just everything would be over if I just jumped, right before the train came to a stop. It’d be a few seconds of crushing pain, and then just…nothing. But then I get scared, and I just stand and watch and wonder about what if I really did it.

Other times I find myself tempted with the idea of jumping out of a moving car. But again, chances of survival are a bit higher. My body’s instincts would tell me to get up before my brain would say no, it’s time to go. There’s also the fact people would swerve to miss me, or that I could end up rolling to the side instead of into traffic. And I would hear those I was traveling with scream right before I jumped out. Those situations, those ideas. They’re just not ideal.

It’s funny, I want to go, but I don’t like any of my options on how I can get out.

But when you’re in the moment, and you swear you’re going to do it, you swear you’re going to jump this time, to cut this time, to take all those pills filling up that blue bottle… you don’t remember why you were scared to do these things. You just want the pain to stop, you just want the fuck out.

And the person you told you were going to do it, they say they called 9-1-1, they say helps on the way. You hear this from a voicemail though, because you didn’t want to pick up the phone. No you didn’t want to give them control over your life, not this time.

And so, part of you waits. And you think about how when they get there, you’re just going to run into their arms and break down crying and talk about everything that’s ever hurt you, why it’s hurt you, what’s still hurting you, what you need, what has to happen. How they’re still the only one for you, how they’re the only fucking one you’ll ever want and will ever need. You know you can’t be with them right now, rationally you know it, you acknowledge it, but you can’t help but to hope that you guys can be together one day in the future, when things are better for both of you. Because that’s all you ever fucking wanted. You just wanted to be happy with them, you wanted them happy, but you wanted that happiness to be shared with you because you always strived to give it to them.

But then they don’t come. And time is up, you either go home with your dad who can drive you, or you jump.

And by this time, when you were planning what you’d say to them while you were in their arms, you suddenly can’t take that jump anymore. So you turn and you walk back to your dad’s office.

And then they don’t contact you again. So you contact them. And they say they came for you, but they weren’t to the place you didn’t say you were. You’d said you were downtown, but they went to a train station you used to go to together.

And you just fucking break, realizing what you did to them. You hear how they raced to get there, even though it was the wrong place, how they searched for you and broke down when they couldn’t find you, assuming the worst. How they considered how to kill themselves too when they got home.

And you feel like shit, you feel like the worst person and you apologize over and over again and they just say; I can’t deal with you anymore. You’re not helping me.

So they hang up, and you talk to someone else who is close to them and spill out your heart about how much you love them. And you vow to never, ever to do that to them again.

But then a few days later, a week later. The thought of suicide is back on your mind. This time you don’t tell them, this time you just sit outside and stare at the nothingness that is the night.