A Remorseful Song

         They should have known.  They should have figured it out.  I gave them so many clues—so many tortured, tormented clues—that something was wrong.  That something wasn’t quite right in the life of Miss Angel Ferrier.

         But nobody got it.  Nobody understood what I was trying to say.

         I used to be a songwriter.  I was the lead singer in a band called Tortured Meanderings.  We were pretty good…I guess.  But not even my fellow band members guessed what was wrong with me.

         I gave them so many hints.  Even my first song—“Life Sucks Then You Die.”  Did they just think it was poetic rambling?  That it was meaningless babble, coming from my mind?

Life tormented, soon unending.
Can you feel the hell descending?
Truth is a lie pretending.
Dying is a new beginning.

         I tried so hard to tell them.  I couldn’t say it out loud—couldn’t reveal the truth of it.  But then, can anybody?  Can anyone really explain to somebody how they’re so depressed they think of slitting their wrists every day?  Can you really just blurt that out?  I can just imagine—dinner time, everybody sitting around the table.  Then “Please pass the bread.  Oh, by the way, I keep having suicidal thoughts.  And can you pass the butter, too?”

         That would never happen.

         I was only nineteen.  I was in college—a junior already, because of all my college prep classes in high school.  I was a Music major, with a minor in English—Creative Writing.  That seemed the best for my songwriting career.

Life’s a lie, feel me bleeding,
Can you see the darkness feeding?
Life is so quickly receding,
And my soul is dead with meaning.

         I never had a boyfriend.  It sounds so weird, doesn’t it?  Sweet 19 and Never Been Kissed.  But I didn’t really want to.  Guys were too much work.  So immature, and then again, they never really paid much attention to me, anyway.  Nobody paid much attention to a little nothing like me.  Brown hair, brown eyes, only five-foot-five.  Just a little nobody girl.  The only thing the remotest bit interesting about me my name.  “Angel.”  I was named after an angel from heaven, my mother told me before she died.  She had cancer.  She died when I was five.

         My dad was a drunk.  He beat me up every night for two years before I finally told my teacher.  She wanted to know why I was coming to school with bruises on my arms.  I told her “Daddy knocks me against the wall,” and then her face got really white, and her eyes got really big, and then I got placed in foster care.  I got shuttled around for a couple more years until somebody adopted me.  That’s how I got the last name “Ferrier.”  I sure didn’t want my father’s name anymore.

Twist the rope and keep it taut,
Remember how for life you fought,
Remember the death that you sought,
Remember me—this is your lot.

         I don’t know why I finally snapped.  I wasn’t feeling very depressed that day.  It was just another ordinary ho-hum day. 

         But I guess my mind just finally gave up.  It was too hard to live anymore.  It was just too hard to care.

         I can remember every moment of that horrible experience.  I drew a bath—a warm one.  I didn’t want to be sitting in cold water for this experience.  This was too important.  I got in, very calmly, sat down on the bottom, took my razor blade from its blue plastic casing, and cut my wrists.

         The blood looked like scarlet ribbons trailing away through the water.  I stared at them in mortal fascination, my eyes already glazing over.  Pain shot up both arms, but I was past caring.  Besides, pain never really stopped me anyway.

         Weakness flooded my body and I slid lower in the tub.  If I didn’t die from exsanguination, I would probably die from drowning.

         Darkness closed over my mind, and I thought I would finally be free…

         Then my adoptive mother saved me.

         She called 911, then ran into the bathroom and put pressure on my wrists, stopping the bleeding.  She lifted my head out of the water and made sure I didn’t have water in my lungs.  She stayed with me for the weeks I was in the hospital.

         She taught me that there’s something worth living for.

But then the darkness finally lifts away,
And sunshine can finally have its say,
Death no longer holds its sway,
Bright happiness now has its day.

And now the final curtain comes down,
No more must I sputter and drown,
No more must I cry and frown.
Joy had finally been unbound.