The journey back in time began with one remark made by my older brother, “Life is still worth living”, and all of a sudden my whole freshman year flashed before my eyes. It is still the worst year of my life and my agony started with my mother’s bedroom….
There is no easy way to put this; I experienced a terrible sense of despair when I pushed open the door to my mother’s room and found her cold, lifeless corpse hanging from the ceiling fan. At my mother’s funeral, I found myself dying inside, and my dad and brother were no different. Death doesn’t happen to you, it happens to everyone around you. And it kills them inside out, making them not too different from the living dead.
The pain was unbearable. When girls walked past me moaning and complaining about their mothers and how overprotective and restricting they were, I would clench my fists and bite my lip hard enough to draw blood.
One day, I cut the tip of my finger while slicing and apple. For some reason, the pain didn’t bother me, even when I dabbed some antiseptic, and the crimson fluid oozing out looked beautiful, like liquid rubies. The next thing I knew, I had snatched a couple of blades from my dad’s cabinet and was cutting my self- starting from the areas least visible. I was not one in a group of sick teens that cut for petty issues or felt they deserved the pain. I did it for relief. The physical pain seemed to swirl in harmony with the emotional toil inside and it seemed to nullify it. I felt at peace as I watched the glimmering fluid flow down my ankle. I made another, and another. While people took sedatives for pain, I took pain as a sedative. At the end of the night, I’d have a minimum of 5 cuts and would have pressed them with swabs of antiseptic. It didn’t burn; on the contrary it seemed to warm up the bones of a girl cold with sorrow.
My mother had been my best friend and confidant. Now, my secrets were written and washed off my leg in red blood.
And they spread like wildfire, up my knee and down my arms. But the nightmares wouldn’t stop. The picture of my pale, cold mother hanging was just unforgettably haunting and I could never stop reliving that moment.
I wore hoodies, jeans and sneakers to school even during the hottest of days, covering my whole body. One day, Jeanette, the school snob bumped into me in the restroom, crinkled her nose at me with disgust. “Eww…What are you?”, she leered. Obviously, I was not her. I didn’t even wear makeup and she had enough on her face for a circus troupe. I just walked past her, rolling my eyes. “Oh! Honey,” she enunciated ‘honey’ like how a person would say ‘sewage’ “Is this hereditary? I definitely don’t want to see your mother.” I snapped that moment and the basic karate my brother had taught me last year came surfacing. I pushed her against the door of a stall; her right elbow bent behind her and mine at her throat. "Leave my mother out of this.” I spoke through gritted teeth. Then just for the record, I pushed her face under the tap and washed of all the hideous makeup. I left her complaining about reapplying her makeup. Later at lunch, she tripped me and my lunch ended up on my face. I just ran to the restroom and washed my face pushing back tears. That day I decided, it was going to be fatal.
If I cut vertically down my wrist, I could peacefully bleed to death. And I wanted to do it in her bed. Nobody had gone into her room since that day, the memories hurt too much. I lied gingerly on her bed as if it was going to explode. That’s when I heard the crinkle of paper underneath the sheet. I picked it up and opened it carefully- my mother’s last words.
Dear Family,
I am sorry. What I’m about to do may as well kill you as much as it’ll kill me, but I have to do this. I have lost my goal in life. You are all able to take care of yourselves, but what of me? I find no reason to live, and there is nothing worse than a person living without knowing why. Just existing. But you are talented and will make your father proud. For you, Life is still worth living, never forget it.
I LOVE YOU.
Juliet
And the dam broke loose. The family became one. We lived, we survived through the pain and the scars I bear remind me of my victory. Life is still worth living. I just wish retrograde schizophrenia hadn’t clouded your vision, mother. We survived, maybe because we wanted to prove to the world that suicide is not the answer, or maybe because we wouldn’t be able to stand if another loved one did the same. We survived, we have and we will for the generations to come.