Thursday, January 04, 2007

A fragment from my life

It's a Saturday morning. My mother tells me that our family is going out to eat and asks if I want to go. I love Pancho's, the all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet, but I tell her 'no' because an empty house save me gives me a grand opportunity.

I have decided that that night I will kill myself.

I scrounge through the medicine cabinet for unused pills. There is enough for an overdose, I hope, or at least a fatal combination that will give me the peace I long for.

Throughout the day, I go through my books, collectibles, and for the last time, remember what they mean to me. I listen to every record I own. I play my favorite, "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" again and again. One song, of course, pierces my plan.

"Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my life tonight. . ."

I escape to the backyard, hide out to cry my silent tears. I don't want to die, but I can't live like this.

A voice inside me says, "If you kill yourself, Gwen, you will never get excited hearing a new Elton John song on the radio for the first time, you will never eat another strawberry, you will never hear the rain on the roof again."

Just three things. Small things, but big enough to keep me alive.

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