The Other Side(67)
Rising to my feet requires a feat of strength and I have none left. I’m completely and utterly drained. The required graduation attire of black dress pants and white button-down shirt are no longer pristine. The hole in the knee of my pants feels symbolic. I’ve never been a clean slate, why should I go out looking like one? It’s fitting. I lift the sunglasses and wipe my eyes and nose with the back of my shirtsleeve, because fuck it, it doesn’t matter anymore if this shirt gets filthy.
The sun seems brighter and my eyeballs burn as I squint down the sidewalk and try to decide which way I need to go to finish this.
“Excuse me?”
I hear the voice, but I don’t think for one second that the question is directed at me.
“Excuse me, young man? Are you okay?” The voice is closer and louder this time.
No, I’m not okay, a part of me wants to answer, but I keep my mouth shut and my head down, lowering the sunglasses back into place.
A quick side-glance tells me there’s an elderly woman standing on the porch of the sunshine yellow house and somehow it looks cheery again through blurred eyes. She’s waving at me like she’s trying to get my attention, gentle and friendly like Mrs. Bennett. “Do you need help?” she calls out.
“There’s no helping me,” I mutter too quietly for her to hear and shake my head in answer before I walk away.
“Young man, you forgot your bag,” she calls after me.
I return for the bag with my irrelevant cap and gown and pick it up off the ground. Two blocks down the street, I take a right because I know it’s a major thoroughfare on the bus route. When I hear the first bus approaching from behind, my heart rate increases to what feels like unsustainable levels before it will burst. The fact that my body and mind are beyond exhaustion only amplifies the sensation of life beating through my body at breakneck speed. Stepping down into the gutter ratchets everything up: the need to end this, the fear because I’ve never been brave, the hopelessness that never relents. The bus is so close now, I can hear it roaring as I glance back over my shoulder and take two shaky steps toward the lane of traffic. Closing my eyes tight, my stomach wrings itself in two and the sensation forces fear to leak from my pinched lids.
I pull in a quick intake of breath.
Hold it.
And take the final step preparing for impact.
This isn’t the plan! I shout at myself.
Instead of moving forward, I move back toward the curb and a powerful gust of air connects abrasively with my flesh like a rasp.
You could’ve ruined that bus driver’s life! I shout.
Shaken, I walk to the curb and sit.
I promised myself from the beginning that my end wouldn’t be a mess for someone else to witness and/or clean up. I want to disappear from existence and never be found because no one deserves the visual memory of suicide and death haunting their future. I don’t want to hurt anyone, even if I don’t know them, because you can never unsee death. I know.
I almost brought that bus driver, who probably has a wife and kids at home, into my shitshow. I almost forced him to make my problems his trauma.
Before long, I’m looking at the bag in my hand and bargaining with myself. You’ve made it over two years; you can do a few more hours. This isn’t the time to go off script. Go to graduation. Give the middle finger to Mom if she shows. And then stick to the plan. No bringing others in, this is yours to finish.
An hour later, I’m lying on the wide concrete rim circling a big fountain in City Park. The park is deserted except for the random dog walker or jogger. My body wants terribly to sleep, but I won’t allow it, because lately when I sleep, I wake up screaming and thrashing in the grip of night terrors. I’m not putting on that display outdoors in the middle of a park.
My mind is preoccupied with Nina. What she would be doing now if she was still alive. I picture her married to a nice guy with a decent job. A little baby with dark hair and hazel eyes like hers in her arms and a smile free of worry, doubt, or sadness touching her lips. I don’t know if she ever wanted kids, but I like to think she did, which is torture because it’s yet another possibility I took from her when I handed her that gun.
Brevity is always the companion of good thoughts. They’re cut short and I’m reminded that I’m not worthy of them. While my thoughts turn dark and the internal monologue begins to play, I roll over on my stomach and take the hat and marker out of my bag and try to lose myself in something for my final hours. On the top of my hat I draw Batman in profile. I prefer drawing with pencils, but I can make do. The voices are still berating me, but when I’m drawing, I don’t have to give them my full attention. It’s an escape. Escape that I don’t deserve, but I take it anyway.
When I’m done, the surface of the mortarboard is covered in art except for a strip along the top edge that I intentionally left blank so I could fill it in with a message for my mom. I was going to write, Fuck you, Marilyn, but now that the time has come, I can’t.
I write I’m sorry, instead.
And then I put it on along with the white gown. The red sash with Honors embroidered on it in white letters that came with my gown remains in the bag; I drop it in a trash can. I exit the park and walk two blocks west toward the school and the stadium behind it, where the ceremony will take place. I tell myself that I’m walking intentionally slow, but I don’t think I could move any faster if I tried.