Is it liberation or sin?

Sitting on the edge of the couch, I look around the room. I see a collection of items that I once thought defined me. Each item my eyes land on has a perfect little memory tied tightly around it. Oh, the memories. Thru the minutes, hours and days they have been my link to this world, this image that I had so carefully constructed, a clever ruse meant to throw anyone from the scent of the real track. The real me that had hidden so fearfully away from anyone’s sight. I get up and walk to each item in turn picking it up and holding it, feeling the weight in my hands. The memories of each bombard me like a thousand stinging wasps. I absorb the memories, savoring each one as a man would who is sitting down for his last meal.



Each memory removed. I look at these trinkets and relics from a world of make believe. No longer do they define anything except for what they are. I turn and hurl each one against the wall where they shatter into a thousand little pieces. Broken dreams and promises, they lie in a pile upon the floor like so many other things in this thing I called a life.



All the memories gone, I walk to the window for one final look outside. Dark and crusted with dust, I have to wipe a small spot clear to view the outside. The bright light blasts in through the small spot I wiped. So bright I have to shield my eyes. Wincing, I step back a few steps. Waiting a minute I let my eyes adjust to it before I try to take another look. The light shining in, I look around at my tiny little apartment, this place I’d felt so comfortable in the last few years. For the first time I see it for what it is. A prison cell, a place that has kept me caged like a wounded animal.



Thinking clearly for what feels like the first time, I know that in the final hours I must tie up the loose ends. I won’t leave a note because I know I won’t be missed. The person I was and the person I became stand before me, like the shadow and the light, each distinctively different but the same. For what I must do now is something I’ve know for years. I knew eventually it would come to this final act, this act of desperation. There is no one to call to for help, no one to rescue me from this world I’ve constructed and put myself in. Only I have the key. The key to my freedom, the key that turns the locks within.



No more thoughts, no more second guessing this is what it has come to. I take one more look around this shabby room and then I make my way into the bedroom for the final act in this play of solitude and selfishness. I walk to the dresser where upon it lays the key to the lock that has kept me bound for so long. It has sat here in plain sight for countless days. Every day it was the first thing I looked at upon waking and the last thing I saw before I drifted into an uncomfortable sleep. It shines in the dim light, gun metal gray as the light from the single light bulb illuminates it.



I stop for a second and allow my gaze to rest upon it, to accept it for what it is, and its purpose in the final act of my current existence. I reach out to pick it up and my fingers brush it for the briefest of moments before pulling away quickly. Can I do this? Can I really go through with this? I hear the voice in my mind say. Of all the times I’ve thought of this last moment I never imagined I would be here standing on the edge my toes hanging out over the precipice of eternity.



# it, what do I have to lose? I ask myself out loud as I turn around and take my surroundings in. I reach out and grab it from its alter, feeling the weight in my hands. I walk over and sit down on the bed. It feels heavy as I raise it. I open my mouth and put it in, my teeth rattle as they come in contact with its edges. An oily smell fills my nostrils while the taste of cold metal greets my tongue. For this is what it has all come down to. This one split second that will undo all that’s been done. Is it liberation or sin that I see looking back at me as I close my eyes for the last time. A deep breath in and one final breath out as the hammer falls. The last thing I see is a bright flash before it all fades to darkness.





Postscript...



As most people can probably guess, this deals with suicide. My suicide to be specific. However it’s not a physical suicide that I wrote about. I’ve no wish or want to die. This was an emotional suicide. The suicide of the emotional cripple I had become over the last couple of years as a result of overwhelming sadness and the feeling of failure. It’s a decision I made to emotionally kill that person I had become. This person who had held me back from everyone and everything. A chance for new begining and a new view of the world.