A Note from Beyond
Have you ever spoken with a dead man? Have you ever dreamed of it? I expect it's much more common for someone to dream of speaking with a dead man than to actually do it. You should remember this day. This day you are reading the notes of a dead man and that's almost as rare as speaking with one.
However, I must step back for a second. You might assume that the author was alive when this was written, but has now died. You might assume that what you are reading are scribbles from a fading intellect, blurred shadows thrown by the light of someone's life. And you would be wrong. I am right now writing these notes with my dead heart, my dead mind, and my dead hand.
Though I was alive, once. At least, I think I was.
I remember laughing. I remember smiling, and sharing, and loving, and belonging. But these memories are now gray, crumbling, and ashen. They're remains of what I've torn and burned.
I'm sorry, please excuse the melodrama.
Let me delineate how I came to be where I am, locked up in this room, locked up in this mind of mine, and dead...
Every child experiences his fair share of temper tantrums. And what comprises a temper tantrum? It's a lashing out. It's an explosion of anger. And as far as I've observed, it is self-destructive. A child may express his rage to the extent of hitting his head against a wall in order to get what he wants or even to simply express this darkness upon the only thing within reach--himself. I've found myself in a tantrum for the full 32 years of my conscious life.
When I was a child, I suspect my tantrums appeared normal. They may have been more frequent than those of my peers, but I believe that an external observer would see no cause for alarm. Unfortunately, there was no one to see what was happing inside; I was the only internal observer.
Looking back, I now recognize a black rage that would manifest itself in those times. The root of this rage, I've never been able to ascertain, but as the root flowered into a poisonous vine, it was clear that the rage was focused towards me. I was angry at myself for being imperfect, I know. But it went much deeper and much darker than that. I was angry at myself and God for allowing me to exist as one of His mistakes. Somewhere in my heart I saw myself as a blunder of God's creation, an unintended splotch that spilled from His paintbrush while he was masterpiecing the universe.
As I grew to become a man, the tantrums subsided, of course, but this disappointment with existence came out in other ways. I was constantly sad, and I would sabotage my own opportunities for happiness. Whenever I would sense a connection with someone, be it friend or family, I would attempt to dump my hopelessness on their shoulders and bring them down to my dungeon. As you might expect, this didn't attract many close relationships. Instead, it only highlighted the depth of my depravity, and spurned me on to greater self-punitive actions.
Oh the pain I once felt! How fortunate to now rest in oblivion. The harshest memory of all is of a young woman who loved me and was so good to me. She believed in me, she cared about me, and I loved her too. Though we had a few years where it seemed fragile hope might open up before us, I dashed this to pieces by pushing her away simply because I was unable to believe I'd ever have a good thing. What a wretched soul I have, to crush her hopes as well as my own! I have received in life only that which I have deserved. As the proverb says, we reap what we sow.
She tried to help me. She encouraged me to seek a professional therapist. Many people have gotten help from counselors, but I was not so lucky. At the first session, he painted an image of a future where I might be healthy, an image where I might be able to contribute to society and think of myself as a good person. As our sessions progressed and I began to pull him into my existence, he became increasingly weary and gloomy. Eventually, he told me that he couldn't see me anymore, and that I was beyond any help he could give.
So it went with the next two therapists. The professionals that are trained to help the depressed could neither mold this clay into a useful shape nor infuse it with color.
There is a particular feeling that one can experience when one wants to cry but cannot. An example: you are in a classroom full of peers and have just received terrible news, perhaps about the death of a loved one. This feeling is unique in its intertwining of physical and emotional experiences. The tight throat, the lump in the stomach, the pain in each smile and casual conversation... This was my existence every second of every day. An existence where each breath is a chore, an existence I couldn't end due to a fear of God's retribution towards a creature He never meant to create.
Was I alone in all of this? Not quite yet. I had friends who stuck with me... for a while. I suppose it was only a matter of time before my neuroses weighed too heavily upon them, yet I never saw it coming. I assumed that they'd have an unlimited reserve of internal joy to buoy them through my logorrhea of misery. I assumed that I could make my life more tolerable by diluting my destructive behavior with lives other than my own. Like I said, it was only a matter of time.
One by one, my relationships fizzled to the point where even my closest comrades became shallow acquaintances. The occasional crossing of paths in a public place was the entirety of my social life. Free evenings were spent trying to will myself into numbness and wonder why God would leave someone to whither in such utter loneliness. The muted television would glare at me while I glared in turn at the ceiling, equally mute as it observed my downward spiral of contemplation.
I continued breathing in your world, the world of the unforgotten, for three more years; though at each breath I carried the small hope that it would be my last. During this period my existence was a debatable point. At work I became an unreachable automaton and eventually stopped producing. They let me go. I had no job or friends to fall back on and I didn't care. I went through what money I had in six months. After I was evicted I wallowed along the streets, bitter at any and every sign of vivacity. Why could life not penetrate this walking husk that I had become? Why was it keeping all of its charms to itself? Of course I knew the answer: I was a flaw. Life could flow around me unceasingly, but I could not absorb it. I didn't fit the universe and didn't deserve whatever sense of a soul I had.
My parents tried to contact me. They never seemed to lose hope, no matter how diligently I attempted to break their hearts. My mother died in an accident caused by a drunk driver. My father passed away from complications of chemotherapy and surgery. I didn't attend either funeral.
Within the homeless shelter the workers quickly recognized me as a significant psychological anomaly. This sounded like what I could relate to: the term was cold and hard--lifeless. I was an "anomaly." And so I was eventually shunted into the institution where I'm writing this letter.
Even here, despite limitless counseling sessions, powerful drugs, and electro-convulsion therapy, I cannot relinquish my hold on the fact that my existence demands punishment, and I am the executor.
The institution has long given up on me. It has been years since I last spoke a word with a fellow human being here. I've heard many, but have had no reason to rouse any sense of hope or communion with humanity. I have my room, or as I like to call it, my "padded tomb." I have the food they bring. And today I have this pencil and this paper.
I have no visions of change. I have no expectation of love. I have no threads of potential. I simply have this time, and this driftwood body that looks alive as it is tossed by the drowning waves. This is the closest I've ever gotten to oblivion, and it's the best it's ever been.
to the fork in the road