I am lying on my bed and I have just finished counting 131 different ways in which I could kill myself right now.
Now, all that remains is to muster the courage to put just one of them into practice.
I wonder if I can. I wonder if I should. I wonder what would happen if I did. But, more than anything else, I wonder why I am counting the different ways in which I could.
It’s not for the first time that I am wondering this, either.
The thought, these thoughts, have crossed my mind more than once. In fact, I don’t have to think back too far to recall the last time I started counting. It was yesterday. The only difference was that I compiled a list of just 130 ways yesterday. It was only lying on my bed today that I realized I could take the compass from my drawer, straighten them sufficiently so that the sharp end protrudes enough and, well, I won’t insult your intelligence by giving you more than a few words by way of a ‘what happens next’.
Slash, stab, impale, gouge. That should suffice.
So, as I was saying, that was number 131, and it came to me just today in between my pondering's on why it is I count the ways in which I could end my own life.
Truth be told, the only reason I haven’t acted upon any one of these 131 ways – it could be more – is because I haven’t yet been able to answer this question. Not properly, anyway.
I mean, seriously: how do you answer a question like, ‘Why do I want to kill myself?’ It can’t be a straightforward answer.
A straightforward answer is ‘four’ when the question is ‘what is two plus two?’; ‘New delhi’ when the question is ‘what is the capital of India?’; ‘Over-rated’ when the question is ‘what do you think of Christiano Ronaldo?’
But ‘why do I want to kill myself?’ – boy, that’s a tough one. Obviously. I guess part of the answer comes from my time at school. Not primary school, I hasten to add. Not at all.
Those years were peppered with finger-paintings and ice-cream lips that illuminated happy faces and gap-toothed smiles.
Nothing needed to make sense and nothing did. As such, nothing was complicated. No complications, no unhappiness in short happy life.
I was scandalously content and even more scandalously naive to believe that I could live my entire life so… blissfully.
My naivety was stripped bare from my first year in secondary school. The familiarity of primary school was recent in my mind but, nonetheless, a distant memory. Its poster filled walls,and rhyming tunes were gone, replaced by fresh air, the real world and all the smells that go with it, like fresh coffee-grounded though not roasted.
Explosions of hormones and pubescence made debris of studiousness and enthusiasm, replacing them with sullen demeanors, self- awareness and all of the insecurities that brings. Man is a complex being,I turned into a being of complexes
Of course, this happened to some sooner than others. I was among the last of the latter and this, combined with my perceived babyish enthusiasm for learning made me a target for the most insecure of the former.
The consequence of this is now displayed permanent as scars on my heart, face, back and of course my life ,which for the old men biting onto this ,my academic pursuits.
It started in a classroom with blackboard duster, hurled through the air by a stubborn looking short haired, pock-cheeked status-seeker.
His face contorted with a vicious sneer as he launched the duster towards where I cowered, near to a bin in the corner of the class, its smooth varnished edge slamming into the top of my head.
The dull throb from the impact filled my eardrums instantly, harmonizing with a piercing whistle which seemed to play down and out through my fingernails and the skin between my toes.
Invisible blood gargled from my wound and trickled down the side of my face-those of humiliation, the first of many times that happened.
Making a missile of a chalk duster, however, was about as imaginative as ‘they’ got. Sometimes they rained down on me with punches. Other times they aimed steel-toed kicks into my shins and ribs. On their more generous days, they simply shoved me into the sharp metal-edged corners of filing cabinets and desks with the assignments on and on.
Each time, they laughed in what-seemed like well-rehearsed unison, as I fought back the urge to cry. I reasoned that I was pathetic enough as it was without compounding my wretchedness.
I was a puppet to this wreckers,they showered me with abuses the memories of primary school wanted to peek but was filtered by heavy books and previous death sentences.
And, in case I was in any doubt as to my pitiable existence, they cut no corners in ensuring I was well informed.
It seemed that their mental arsenal was backed-up by an equally vicious vocabulary and an extensive range of put-downs.
Forget what you’ve ever heard about ‘sticks and stones’ and broken bones. Names will hurt you. Names do hurt you. Names haunt you. They continue to haunt me. They make me feel uncomfortable and squirm as I lie here right now.
The physical scars remain, ugly but they have healed. The mental wounds remain, but they are raw, unstitched, untreated, bare, exposed and dangerous.
Day upon day since, they have grown dirtier, muckier and more infected as my ability to cleanse them with any semblance of self-worth has lessened.
I can almost feel myself yielding to the isolation that has become a more prevalent feature of my life.
The seclusion, reclusion, loneliness and complete and utter lack of hope for any kind of reattachment to the positivity I once exuded. The character and life that prompted comparisons to a ‘bundle of joy’ in my childhood years.
I can remember all of this but none of it is part of me anymore. Only because I once had it – albeit cluttered by naivety and childhood innocence – do I now know I am divorced from a happy life with no hope of remarrying.
… and there it is. There’s my answer. That’s why an 18-year-old boy wants to die by his own hand.
Now, all that remains is the compass in my drawer or even the divider would do so- that makes it 132.
