Moment.
As it seems 'of the moment' I might write about committing su1cide. I tried to commit su1cide twice when I was younger but long before I had any children. Since then it has obviously stopped being an option although I did feel a couple of years ago that no one would really mind if I just slipped away .. and the thought of going on drearily into the future seemed so unbearably .. dreary. I decided that I had been born just as a bridge between two generations and that my work was now done. When I mentioned this, lightly, to my (now pretty grown-up) children their faces actually blanked with shock and one of my daughters burst spontaneously into tears. Riiiight. Complete and total miscalculation there then.

That was just a passing thought - but the other, earlier, attempts were real. They were not a 'cry for help'. As far as I knew, what I had done would result in death for sure. They were both triggered off by love ... love gone wrong. I wrote before about how much of my life has been wasted being in love, as if it was some kind of career. Each time it would take me over completely and become the sole focus of everything, so when it stopped being a wild, dramatic exclusive melding of two beings I would be devastated. (Of course, I had SOME affairs that just petered out boringly).

The first time was when I had been suffering through the aftermath of the loss of the great love of my life. And looking back so many years later he WAS the love of my life and no one else has come anywhere near, so I wasn't THAT stupid. It had been the classic moment of 'either we get married or break up' and he felt too young to get married (and was) but I didn't (though was). I went away to do a course at the S0rbonne in Par1s and thought that I would come back cured and ready to go. And then it wasn't like that at all. He was still at the centre of all social life and tremendously popular, charismatic and pursued by every other girl (and often caught). The student board1ng house we had set up together was still full of all my friends but I now had to rent a room in the un-cool part of town. There was literally nowhere fun or interesting that I could go where he wouldn't be .. invariably with another girl and crowds of hangers-on. The idea of ever fancying another man was ludicrous.

In true hippy style he asked me round one evening .. to our old flat, still looking as if I had walked out yesterday ... to have dinner in a 'civilised' way with him and his new girlfriend. Who turned out to be living there. I got through it politely and then they BOTH came to the door to say goodbye ... and she was holding MY (once our) cat in her arms. I walked home 'blinded by tears' and knew that I was too drained to go on. And go on to what? A year before I had had a pr3gnancy scare and this was in pre-ab0rti0n on demand times, in fact it was totally illegal. However, there was an underground trade in very expensive 'ab0rt10n pills' from abroad. No one had any idea what was in them but they had worked for several of my lover's friend's girlfriends ..and he managed to procure some. And then I wasn't pregnant after all.

I dug out the dusty old packet. On the front was a large skull and cr0ssb0nes and the word 'DANGER'. 'Take no more than two pills .. if this dose is accidentally exceeded go straight to a hospital with a sample of this 'medicine'', it said in illiterate foreign printing. There seemed to be about twenty pills inside ... so I took them all ... and lay down to wait for death.

I must have fallen asleep for a bit as I was woken by someone pounding on the downstairs door. When I opened it, there, to my amazed delight, was one of my oldest girlfriends who had emigrated to Australia a few years before. We rushed up to my room, hugging, and sprang into endless chatting and gossip about her new life. An hour must have passed before she said, 'Sorry, now let's talk about YOU. What are you doing now?' 'OMG! .... I'm DYING!' I told her all and for some reason it started to seem more and more idiotic until we were rolling around laughing. 'But seriously, come ON, shouldn't we get to a doctor?' 'Oh god, but it's so late now I don't know where to go. What if we wait until I have some kind of symptom .. and then go?' We waited ... and then fell asleep on the floor .. and then woke up in the morning .. and I had had NO symptoms ... and never did.

The next time was years later and I was having a secret affa1r while in a serious relationship with someone else. I was madly in l0ve, as usual, made worse by the difficulty of seeing him and that he was 'free' and not utterly reliably faithful. I was leaning towards leaving the serious one and becoming serious with him instead but he was not quite as keen as I would have hoped. One night we were all together after some pr1vate view. A vast group of us had gone on to dinner and were seated at a huge table with me opposite him. My 'serious' partner suddenly said that he was feeling ill and was leaving and would I be all right on my own. 'Well, YES!', as that meant I could zoom back with my lover and spend the early part of the night with him. A rare opportunity.

The table was incredibly wide but I caught his eye and signalled discreetly. He looked puzzled and turned back to the attractive girl next to him ... a little later they both GOT UP. WTF? All caution tossed away, I shot round the table and pulled him to one side, 'What are you DOING? Didn't you see that thingy has left? We can go home together'. 'Oh, sorry, I didn't notice, I've just arranged to give B1mbo a lift'. 'Well, UN-ARRANGE it!' 'No, I'm afraid I really can't do that now. Look you are making a bit of an obvious scene, it's embarrassing me'. 'So you don't care that this is a once in a lifetime chance for us to be together?' 'Don't be so dramatic, ha,ha.', eyes drifting away. 'I'll give you a ring tomorrow' .. and he was gone.

I dragged home to the flat I was sharing with 'serious' and found an irritating note saying that he felt so ill that he had decided to drive out to his parents' house and see his old doctor in the morning. Anal creep.
My great love didn't care if he saw me or not. I was worthless. No one wanted me ..what was the point of it all. And I was very, very, very drunk.

A comforting and brilliant thought struck me. 'If I was dead none of this would matter. Da DAH!'. At the time I regularly took 'd1et pills' which were actually a very strong version of speed. As in the previous scenario the packet had serious warnings of the dangers of even the smallest overdose .. and I had several packets. I didn't want 'serious' or my parents thinking that they were in any way to blame for my actions so I wrote a long and detailed explanatory letter and placed it at my side. Then I washed down a massive number of 'speed' p1lls with more neat whiskey. And passed out instantly. What seemed like a moment later - but was actually several hours - I woke up. It was a nice sunny day and I felt fine .. never better ... fresh and without even a trace of a hangover. 'F.cking weird!' I thought. I picked up the letter wondering what on earth I had written. I will never know. The whole thing was page after page of wild scribble, completely undecipherable.

All I could ever work out was that by total fluke the amount of alcohol in my system had been exactly balanced by the overd0se of speed and they had cancelled themselves out.

So . .. it shows that supposedly rational and not depressed person can be driven to suicide by 'Life'. But then again it was under the circumstances of Love which affects your brain with a form of madness ... so ... who knows.
- posted by Iris @ 10/21/2005 09:32:00 AM comment