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After I read that response to Meg’s email, I ran out of the library like the chicken shit that I am, vowing never to go back on those boards. It takes two days to break that vow. And I don’t do it out of any kind of bravery. I do it for the same reason I gave in and slept on her sheets back in Tacoma. To be closer to her. Every time I read one of her posts, even though she’s writing about death, she feels alive.
Firefly1021
Out of the Frying Pan
Here’s the thing that screws with my head. Afterlife. What if there is actually an afterlife, and it’s just as bad as the current life? What if I escape the pain of this life only to land somewhere worse? When I imagine death, it’s liberation, a release from pain. But my family is Catholic, big believers in hell, and while I don’t believe in that version of it, with devils and damnation and all that, what if there’s just more of this? What if that is what hell is?
Flg_3: Hell is a bullshit Christian construct to keep you in line. Don’t buy it. If your in pain, you do what you do to end the pain. Animals bite of there own claws. Humans are more enlitened and have different tools.
Sassafrants: Hell is other people.
Trashtalker: If the afterlife sux, kill yourself again.
All_BS: Do you remember pain from before you were born? Do you remember the torment from before you came into this world? Sometimes a pain is tolerable until it is touched, a tender bruise jostled. So it is with the pain of this life; it is brought about by this mortal coil. “It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death,” wrote Epictetus. Stop fearing. Stop dreading. The pain will go away and you will be freed.
All_BS. The one who called her fearless before. The one who writes in complete sentences and quotes dead philosophers. The one who, in a twisted sort of way, makes sense.
I read this latest message again, and a voice inside my head yells: Stop talking to her. Leave her alone.
As if this is still happening. As if it’s not already too late.
Firefly1021
To Medicate or Not to Medicate?
A friend told me to go to the campus health center to get some meds, so I talked to a nurse there. I didn’t tell her everything that was going on, not about what we’ve been talking about here. But the nurse started going on about the first years away at school and the Northwest Effect and it sounded like standard boilerplate. She gave me some pamphlets and samples and made me an appointment to come back in two weeks, but I think I’ll blow it off. I’ve always said it’s better to be hated than it is to be ignored. Maybe on the same lines, it’s better to feel this than to feel nothing.
It’s one thing to type messages into the ether, but it sounds like she was talking to someone in the real world, too. Someone else other than me. The hot boil of jealousy shames me. It’s so pathetic. I’m waging a tug of war, but no one else is holding the other end of the rope.
I skim the responses. Some people warn Meg about SSRIs being a mind-control plot devised by the pharmaceutical industry. Others say that taking them will numb her soul. Others claim that humans have always used mind-altering substances, and antidepressants are merely the latest incarnation.
And then there’s this response:
All_BS: There is a difference between using a natural substance like peyote to engage in a consciousness-expanding experience versus allowing a bunch of drones in lab coats to manipulate brain chemistry to such a precise degree that thoughts and feelings are controlled. Have you read Brave New World? These new miracle medications are nothing but Soma, a government-produced narcotic to blot out individuality and dissent. Firefly, it is an act of bravery to feel your feelings.
Oh, Meg would’ve loved that. It’s an act of bravery to feel your feelings, even if your feelings are telling you to die.
And again, I wonder: Why didn’t she come to me? Why wasn’t I the one she asked for help?
Did I miss something in her emails? I open my webmail, checking to see what messages she might have sent me in January, which is when she posted this one to the boards. But there are no emails between us from January.
It wasn’t a fight, exactly. It was too quiet to be a fight. Meg was staying in Tacoma for part of the winter break because of her work-study job, so she was only coming home for the ten days around Christmas and New Year’s. I was so excited to see her, but then at the last minute she said she had to go to southern Oregon to visit Joe’s family, so she wouldn’t even be coming home. Normally, I would’ve been invited to join them in Oregon. But I wasn’t. Well, not until the day before New Year’s Eve, when Meg called and begged me to come down. “Rescue me from the holidays,” she said, sounding frazzled. “My parents are driving me crazy.”
“Really?” I replied. “Because I spent Christmas Day eating an eight-dollar turkey plate at the diner with Tricia, and that was magical.” Before, we might have laughed about this—as if the patheticness of my life with Tricia belonged to someone else—but it didn’t and so it wasn’t funny.
“Oh,” Meg said. “I’m sorry.”
I’d been angling for pity, but now that I had it, it only made me angrier. I told her I had to work, and we hung up. And when New Year’s came, we didn’t even call each other. We didn’t communicate for a while after that. I wasn’t sure how to break the ice because we hadn’t fought, exactly. When Mr. Purdue grabbed my ass—a piece of news, at last—it gave me the opening, and I emailed her as if nothing had happened.
I scroll back to September, when she left for school. I read Meg’s initial emails, the Meg-like rambling descriptions of her housemates, complete with scanned drawings. I remember how I read those messages over and over, even though it physically hurt to do so. I missed her so much, and wished I could’ve been there, could’ve gone through with our plans. But I never told her that.
There’s a lot that I didn’t tell her. And even more that she didn’t tell me.
Firefly1021
Guilt
I keep thinking about my family, not so much my parents as my little brother. What would this do to him?
All_BS: James Baldwin wrote that “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.” You have to decide if you’re willing to grab your freedom, and if in doing so, you might inadvertently set others free. Who knows what path your decision will lead your brother down? Perhaps freed of your shadow, perhaps freed to be his own person, he will be able to fulfill a potential he might not otherwise reach.
Firefly1021: All_BS, You’re bizarrely insightful. I always feel like my brother is limited, by me, by my mother. He’d be a different person if we weren’t around. But you can’t say such things.
All_BS: Except here we are saying them.
Firefly1021: Here we are. It’s why I love this forum. Anything goes. Everything is said. Even the things that are unspeakable.
All_BS: Yes. So many taboos in our culture, starting with death. It’s not so in other cultures that see it as part of a seamless cycle: birth, life, death. Similarly, other cultures view suicide as a brave and honorable path to life. The samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo wrote: “The way of the warrior is death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. It means nothing more than this. It means to see things through, being resolved.” I think you have the warrior in you, Firefly.
Firefly1021: Warrior? Not so sure I can handle a sword.
All_BS: It’s not about the sword. It’s about the spirit. You have to tap in to your strength.
Firefly1021: How? How do I tap into it? How do you do something that brave?
All_BS: You screw your courage to the sticking place.
Firefly1021: Screw your courage to the sticking place. I like that! You always say the most inspiring things. I could talk to you all day.
All_BS: I can’t take credit for that. It’s Shakespeare. But there is a way for us to communicate more immediately, and privately. Set up a new email account and post the address. I’ll email you instructions and we can take it from there.
I taste the sour tang of envy again. I’m not sure if it’s because I can sense the closeness between Meg and All_BS. Or if it’s because in her litany of people she worried about leaving behind, she mentioned her parents, her brother, but she didn’t mention me.