A Recollection

Annie Martin

Content warning: themes of suicide

Yousat outside that night, nursing a lemonade in a glass so dense with condensation that it left your hands cold and clammy. You sat out there long past the sunset, after the hazy clouds of sedate insects had dispersed, the sky an inky shade of darkness that used to make you uncomfortable. You stayed out later than you should have, all things considered, and you knew that, but you didn’t care. It was easier at night, mostly. Except for when it was harder. At any rate, it was slower.

Once the rest of the world went to sleep, you strained your ears so that maybe, maybe, maybe, you could hear the silence over all the noise. You couldn’t, after all. So it goes. You went back inside and went to bed.

When morning came, you remembered that you left the dog outside. He was lying on the porch just outside the door, and it flooded back to you that he’d been sniffing around the yard last night, and you left him there. I don’t blame you for forgetting. You did, but I don’t. He was quiet, and you were distracted. But you’re angry. You’re hot with shame and guilt, and all those thoughts you manage to keep at bay most of the time come bobbing up to the surface, buoyed by your mistake, because you’re stupid and selfish and irredeemable and how could anyone ever love somebody like you? How could you be worthy of love when you know yourself, so deeply and grotesquely, so you hear those thoughts and you think they’re true, they’re true, you are stupid and you are selfish and the bottom line is your heart is shrunken and shriveled and bruised and bitter and maybe it’s not even there at all, maybe you’re wrong in every way a person can be wrong. You’re not, by the way. But you never believed me when I told you.

You thought about the dog all day. The guilt followed you around, warping and shaping into that hideous, snarling hate with which you’d become so familiar. It burrowed into your skin, crawled through your hair, clung to your bones. It was within and without you; you were steeped in it, drowning in it, imbibing it with each shallow, stunted breath. You avoided mirrors and skipped lunch. You couldn’t shake the image of that poor, stupid dog, waiting patiently, faithfully, at the door for you, knowing you would come, because you always did—you hear me? You always, always did. You held him during thunderstorms, and you kept his fur brushed. And so you messed up once, because you’re human, but you didn’t see it that way. You never did. You had to be infallible, always. That was the deal. You got to walk and talk and pretend to be like everybody else so long as you never misstepped. It wasn’t something you recognized, but simply something you understood, lodged in your subconscious like a stone. You knew it the way you knew anything. The way a child is born knowing he wants milk. The sky is blue and the grass is green and you have to be perfect, because perfection is goodness, isn’t it? Aren’t they synonyms? They are, in the sense that rectangle and square are synonyms. But you had a bad habit of conflating the two.

You wanted to tell the dog you weren’t worth it, and you did, but he didn’t understand. He just sat there, lolling his pink tongue, and he continued to love you. You couldn’t figure out why. I know why.

That night was one of the hard ones. You sat perched on the edge of your bed, knees pulled up to your chest, chin resting on your knees, the fan circling lazily above you. That familiar emptiness had crept into your stomach without you noticing, and now it was expanding, hollowing out your insides until you were sure there must be nothing left beneath your skin but bones and dust; and the quiet was deafening, a swirling cesspool of your own thoughts, I can’t and I won’t and maybe I’m just a dream I’m having I can’t was the loudest, because it was true. You can’t, but you do, because what else is there? You wondered if today was the day. It wasn’t. The day was precisely two weeks into the future. But you didn’t know that, so you wondered if today was the day.

Those two weeks passed with the monotony you’d come to expect from day-to-day life, the days blurring together in a way they weren’t supposed to, the hours melting away into nothingness, pouring into that great gaping void, untouched by wonder. And then, suddenly, without warning, without fanfare, the day arrived—and left, just as quickly, with a similar indifference. Somehow, the world continued to spin.

I don’t care to dwell on the day itself; there’s no point. And I won’t say anything as trite as I just want to know why, because I do know why. I understand, and your friends understood, to the extent that anyone who’s not you can ever understand, which I know might not be much.

I guess this is all for me, anyways, since you’ll never see it, and even if you did, you wouldn’t believe it. How little must you think of me? To think that I would lie about all of this? It hurts, you know. But I don’t want you to feel bad. That’s not the point of this. You’ve had enough of that already. I just want to get this all out, because there’s so much of it, and it’s so heavy, and it can’t keep taking up space.

Do you remember a few months ago? You were talking to your mother. She understood probably less than most everyone else, though not for lack of trying, on either her part or yours. You told her, and she listened, she really did, but it was as if there was cotton in her ears. It never quite made it to the place it was trying to go. But you tried, because it meant a lot to her that you would try, and it meant a lot to you that she would let you.

That day, you were trying. You said, It might be easier. If I didn’t have to be around myself all the time.

She didn’t understand, but was afraid you’d clam up, frustrated, if she admitted this, so she stayed silent. Her brows knit together in telltale confusion, though, which you caught, so you tried to clarify.

You said, There is something wrong with me.

She said, There’s nothing wrong with you. (She was relieved to be able to give an easy answer for once, though of course it wasn’t that simple.)

You said, There is. A missing cell. A backwards organ. There is something wrong with me because there has to be. Because if there is something wrong, then there is something that could conceivably be fixed.

You paused for a moment to gather your thoughts.

There has to be, you said. It can’t just be me.

I guess part of the reason for all this was to somehow assuage your fears on that point, but now that I’m here I’m not sure what to say. And since you’re not here, and you’ll never see this, I suppose I’ll just try to tell you the truth in the only way that makes sense to me, which is this: just because there is something wrong, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. I hope if you could hear that, it’d make sense to you, too.

It’s late and I’m tired. You’d be tired too. You would yawn and crack your knuckles and say something old-timey like I think it’s about time I turn in. It’s a funny word, would. No, funny’s not right. (I’m sorry. I’m being stupid on purpose. I’m no good at talking about these things.) I mean terrible. It’s a terrible word. You look at it, and at first glance, it seems okay, but there’s that silent if there, looming just out of sight. You would do such-and-such, if… But I like to pretend that as long as I don’t say the if part out loud, it can’t hurt me.

Let me ask you this: do you think it would have been okay—not okay; tolerable—if you had just known that the emptiness would (there it is again!) be gone someday? Not even soon, necessarily. Just the firm fact, solid enough to plant your feet on, that there was some fixed point in your life when you’d be all right. Because I have this theory that it might have been. Tolerable, I mean. It’s the not knowing, isn’t it? That’s the worst of it. The voice in your head saying, This is your life. This is your whole entire life. So get used to it.

What if it got better tomorrow? What if everything that had been piling on top of you, suffocating you, suddenly evaporated, the way a dream slips from your memory like water through your fingers the moment you wake up? What if the world gave you one big apology and told you not to worry, those last ten years didn’t count, we’ll do it right from now on, except you weren’t there to see it? And what if God just looked at you sadly and said, Well, tough luck, kid, but them’s the breaks; you should’ve stuck it out another day, and who are you to say when it’s supposed to get good, anyway?

Sorry. I don’t mean to make you keep thinking about it. I’m sure you don’t want to. That’s why you did it, right? So you could stop thinking about it, all of it, everything. Privately, in my bitterest moments, I think it was a selfish thing to do. But really, I know that’s not right. It was just self-preservation, in a strange, paradoxical way, and that’s not selfish. I just get angry a lot more than I used to—I don’t want to be angry, but I am, because how could you think that nothing would change? Didn’t you know I can’t do this? I can’t survive this. I hate you. I hate you. sea and solitude

I don’t. I’m sorry. I hope you know that.

There’s nothing else for me to say here, nothing meaningful at least, if any of this was meaningful. (Can it be, if you’re not here to hear it?) I’m scared to finish because I know I won’t talk to you after this. But I have to stop some time. I know I do. Anyways, I hope it’s nice there, where you are. I hope it’s quiet. I hope you’re still dreaming. Give me a call when you get a chance, would you? I’ve got this great joke to tell you. You’ll love it. I swear you will.

Rebirth

Eden Liu

Pencil, colored pencil