By Brenda Viola
Yesterday I was very close to suicide. Imagine walking down a familiar street, the shops you’d see, the people you’d meet and other activities steaming the place. After a final turn, you see your destination at the distant, an eatery. Only God knows for how long you’ve been feeling famished. You’d be smiling mainly because you’re just a few steps away from having a hearty meal, or not.
At the very least, the hunger that had been your shadow hitherto, would depart from you. To me the eatery was the suicide. I smiled after gazing upon it, as though seeing an old friend. I stood by the street, contemplating it from a distance. It was a few hours past lunch time and so it was less crowded than previous times. The usual visitors of guilt, pain, shame and fear matched up and down the street, each packed in the shell of a human being as they walked into the eatery. I wondered what food they would order, most importantly, what would be my order.
Perhaps something simple, palatable and effective. Some ancient philosopher argued that simpler tools allows for more creativity. They allow for the expansion of thought into the world of possibilities. In this instance, what would that look like for me? A rope? I have never understood why those who eat at this eatery decided the food of choice was a rope. Haven’t they suffered enough? Imagining the strain, it would put on my neck and the time it would take before the hunger was sated was enough to turn my mind from it.
Conceivably, a pill would suffice. Maybe then I would fall asleep and depart from this world less dramatically. As tempting as this was, it had been unsatisfactory in the past. Each time left me wondering why even death rejected so passionately. Somehow I took that as a challenge, an opportunity of seducing her with my charms. The second time I added some water in my offering. Only to wake up in the tub outrageously coughing as water spurt out of my mouth. This time, it had to be different. Something even she couldn’t deny. But what does death desire?
I watched the others passing by me on the street, each with a clear resolute on their minds and a sort of excitement in their eyes. Have you been down this street? Surely you’d have noticed too, the heavy hearts of the ones who trek it, burdened by who knows what. I wondered what paths had led them to this street. Was it the families, the self, the gods or lack thereof, the guilt, fear, shame, all the above and more? Life in itself is absurd, anything could’ve led them this way.
I smiled at the chatter I could hear from the eatery. Those in it making merry and enjoying their orders. Death seemed to take delight in them as she welcomed them into her abode, offering them the escape that they sought. Perhaps I ought to bring a token of sorts, maybe then she would take me in too, offering solace from the world of the living. I had become a shell of a human being, with yearnings of worlds different from mine. A yearning of no worlds.
The Egyptians and Greeks and Romans talked of giving a coin to the gods of the underworld. Surely that was metaphorical! Or maybe as clear as it sounds. I never heard of coins in my culture. As far as I was concerned, the offerings were made in form of libations and animal sacrifices to our ancestors and gods accompanied by chants and sometimes music. I wondered if the ritualistic set up was necessary for my quest, but then again, a seducer goes to extra miles to delight her victim.
I can make the local brew; my father had taught me during one of his drinking days. At the time he had drank all the money away and resorted to his craftsmanship skills to quench his thirst. In hindsight, I wondered what he was running from. The world gets us all doesn’t it? Everyone escaping from something, even my old man. What are you escaping from?
And so the plan came to be. I would make the local brew, pour it as libation, an offering to her, and sacrifice myself to her. Although the means of sacrificing were uncertain, I was more than confident in my capabilities, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If my father could do it, I too would succeed!
I always wondered for people who would warn us from escaping, using family, guilt, shame and love among other tools as bait. “Imagine how your family would feel like?” They would ask. I speculated they thought us daft. Surely if I had anticipated ending my life I had already considered aspects in my current life and deemed them less alluring to live for, including the persons they devotedly used as bait. A better advice would be suggesting ways of communicating with her, the one who stood between the world of the living and the world of the dead. I blame colonization for erosion of culture. Maybe my father would’ve taught me about the ways of death alongside other skills I picked from him.
I wiped the tears from my face, that betrayed me despite my clear resolute. My breath became constricted and every passing second became harder to breath. I clutched the chair beside me as I lowered myself to the ground. Deep breaths, or whatever a therapist had told me before. My voice broke through as I cried out for the pain in my heart. The burden of fatigue that had stitched my being with its presence. I yearned for an escape, an end to this weight of suffering that I now bore. Why was my life like this?
