What weighs more heavily than the gun in my hand is the guilt on my mind.
I slide it up and down the side of my face, resting the muzzle on my cheek, on my temple. My grip is loose. I’m standing an inch away from the edge while a thousand feet below, life continues on as if I never mattered. Never existed. The cold wind and freezing rain fail to penetrate my nerves that have forgotten how to feel.
On the bright side, this is something I always wanted to do but never got around to. I wonder what the hapless drone in his cubicle will think as I paint his windows with my brain-meat while free-falling from the roof of his office building. Maybe someone will take notice, finally, when I slam into the top of their car at the speed of terminal velocity.
But I don’t want to do this for the attention.
I don’t want to do this for the pity.
I want to do this to escape the pity. Or, more precisely, I want to do this to escape.
Used to be, I thought of suicide as quitting. Used to be, I thought of quitting as undesirable. But then I realized, my logic was founded on shaky premises – like the fact that quitting is universally bad. Why stay in the fight when you’re bound to lose?
I remember, now – my life’s been a downward spiral ever since I met you. I’m just getting ready to hit the bottom. Give me a few more minutes – I have to decide if I want to jump off, or fall off, or walk off. Should I go head first? Feet first? Parallel to the ground? Maybe I’ll slip – it’d be ironic if indecision was what killed me, in the end.
Might as well make sure that I do something right for once. But I hesitate.
Is this how I really feel? Is this what I really want? I never can be sure. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that I should act on my instincts more.
I brush the side of the barrel against my lips. It tastes bitter sweet. Does it taste that way because I want it to, or simply because that’s the most fitting?
I remember something I read in a book once – you always hurt the ones you love.
Ah, apathy, you are my truest enemy – and this the hour of your greatest victory.
With my left hand, I examine the only remaining relic. The ink is running and the paper deteriorating in the violent rainstorm, but I have long since memorized the contents of the note. I’ve kept it on me as a reminder of better times. Times when I was worth something – worth more than money, when I defined myself in terms of what I’d done rather than what I had.
I stare at it for a long time. My fractured memory revels in its evocations. I close my eyes and smile – not exactly what you’d expect from a disheveled man with a gun thrust up into his own throat.
Her voice, ethereal and disembodied, haunts me one final time before fading forever.
And I let go.
In Search of Truth 