Insights

September 21, 2020

As she laid in the tub, the world around her seemed to be more still than she had ever felt. The ripples from her breath felt like ten foot waves crashing into her body. Her heart was beating so loud she could barely hear the football game being watched in the room next to her. Her eyes were heavy. So heavy that, when she closed they it almost seemed like a battle just to open them again. It was a very scary thing to lay down and let death creep into every crevice of your body. She was like a candle, death was slow burn, and the wick was the end of her very short life.

Funny enough, this was the most scared she had ever been in her life. Nothing she had ever experience before made her feel this way. Not when she felt the sting of a knife held to her throat by her mother. Not when her father told her he had never loved her. Never felt any sort of emotional connection to her existence at all. No, she never had this feeling before, but she welcomed it. She was so tired. Too tired to fight all of the painful memories of her past. Too tired to fight all of the painful new experiences she knew waited for her. She felt her heart had been broken so many times, by so many trusted people, that she literally didn’t have anymore heartbreak left in her. She didn’t feel anything. Nothing but emptiness.

She could no longer open her eyes. It took too much energy, and energy wasn’t something she had in abundance at the moment. Her body felt so limber that the tub she was currently sitting in could have been the vast ocean. She could actually feel herself leaving her body. One breath at a time, so she closed her eyes and prayed to a god she had long forgotten. She hoped she was making the right decision.

…

For a second, she thought that everything was a dream. That she hadn’t really killed herself while her best friend sat in the next room over. But, when she opened her eyes, she knew it was true. It was like she was watching a movie and she was the main character. She could see herself lying lifeless in the tub. Half of her face was submerged in the water. Her arm hung over the edge of the tub. Limp. Lifeless. Just like her.

She didn’t understand anything about what she saw. Why was looking at herself? She had never had a concrete idea of where she would go when she died, but she didn’t think she’d have to stick around after her final act. She didn’t think she would have to face the final mess she had made. It seemed like a cruel and unusual punishment.

She didn’t know how long she had been lying there. How much time had passed? She heard knocking at the bathroom door. Followed by the sound of her best friend. This is the part she didn’t think about. The part she avoided thinking about. She didn’t want to have to see the hurt and the pain she had caused. Yet, here she was. It didn’t take long before her best friend decided to forgo waiting for an answer and just opened the door. She never was one for boundaries. It was like watching a car crash. She started shaking immediately. She called my name and when there was no response, she screamed. Screamed louder than anything I had ever heard before. I felt her scream ring throughout my entire body.

She ran to the side of the bathtub. She shook my shoulders. Probably hoping that it would shake me back to life, and when it didn’t she screamed and cried even louder. She kept calling my name. Asking me to wake up. Begging me to wake up. She had to watch as one of the only people she had left clung to her lifeless body. She watched as her best friend’s family met the scene and broke down.

She never meant to have this sort of impact. In her own skewed thinking, she knew those close to her would be hurt, but she never let her thoughts linger on it. She never let herself consider the strain it would put on them, probably out of fear of changing her mind. And at this very moment, she wish she had. The cries of her friend had awakened a desire in her. A desire to comfort them all. A desire to live. But it was too late. Death was permanent. There was no coming back from that. A sob escaped her lips. She thought that she had felt all the pain she could, but this was different. It felt like someone had lit her heart on fire.

“It hurts.” She heard someone say. The voice seemed close by. Not like the faraway cries she was looking at. No, this voice was addressing her. Well, addressing her pain.

Had she not been so focused on the pain in her chest, she might have been afraid, but all she could do was nod.

“There’s more you need to see.” The voice responded.

She immediately shook her head. “ I can’t take anymore.” The pain she was feeling seemed overwhelming already. She was feeling it in her entire body. If she felt anymore, she feared it might kill her. Which was pretty ironic.

“You will.” The voice said definitely.

The scenes that played before her were devastating. It was as if she was watching herself live her life. Uninterrupted. As if nothing ever happened. She saw herself talking with her friends. Discussing all the trauma she had experienced. How she felt about it, and how she was dealing with it. All the things that she felt that she couldn’t do. She witnessed her friends hug her, cry for her, and assure he that everything would be alright. And even though she was already gone, she could feel the emotions run through her. The sadness and relief. It made her cry even harder. It all seemed so much simpler down there. Why hadn’t she just…allowed herself to be open? Bared her all to those she love, and those who loved her.

She saw all of her would be successes and her would be failures. She saw herself taking the necessary steps needed to ensure that her failures wouldn’t be her downfall. She saw herself nourishing her soul, and in return nourishing those around her. The woman she saw being played out seemed nothing like who she was, or ever imagined she could be. She saw it all. The ups and the downs, and she knew that she had made a mistake. The biggest mistake of her life.

“I want to go back. Please! I…I made a mistake!” She exclaimed. She didn’t know who she was begging, but she figured if someone had to be listening.

“There’s no going back child. What’s done is done.”

Hearing those words…they broke her. A lifetime ago she had thought she experience all the pain and heartbreak that she could handle, but here she was. Experiencing something so much worse. She felt the pain in her whole body. It was so much worse than heartbreak. She looked down, hoping to hold on to some semblance of the life she could have lived, yet she saw nothing. She was all alone in a white void.

The sobs that overtook her body were uncontrollable. She convulsed and cried harder than she ever had before. She resembled a wild animal. It wasn’t death that was the scary part she came to realize. It was after. After all the hurt and the pain. When you’re truly alone. She cried so hard and for so long that she was sitting in a puddle of her own tears. They flowed like a water fall. So powerful. So much so that she hadn’t realized until she was drowning in them. This time she fought. Her arms flailed in the salty ocean created by her very own tears, but it was use. Her limps felt heavy, but her she continued to try and help her escape. Her lungs felt like someone poured gasoline down her throat and threw in a match. Try as she might, she just couldn’t make it.

…

She felt the biggest shock to her heart. Like a horse kicking her in the chest. And when she opened her eyes, they instantly welled up with tears. She was looking into a pair of very concerned pair of brown eyes. A paramedic. And around her was all the love she needed. Waiting to see if she would come back to them. And she had.

Eris Foulkes