Thoughts of a Train

A BIT ABOUT THIS COLLECTION OF RAMBLES: These are not happy stories, my dears. I find that sadness, anger, and desperation are my favorite emotions to write, because there's just so much that can be expressed. I'm not going to lie, some of this was taken from personal experience, but a lot of it is just artistic fabrication, so don't be too alarmed about my mental state :)
WARNING: THESE PIECES DEAL HEAVILY WITH THE TOPICS OF DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE. Please, if you are sensitive to this sort of theme, pass these by.   

A Train
    When my life was cut to a shambles, my mother, two sisters, and I moved in with my grandparents. It was a small, two bedroom house with an ugly, carpeted porch and a gnarled, half-dead tree spreading its roots through the entire front yard. I won't go into any details, but suffice it to say that it was not entirely a happy time.
    I used to walk to my bus stop at the edge of the development every morning at 6:45. And almost every morning, like clockwork, I would hear a train roaring down the tracks not far from the stop. I would stand and wait for the bus, and I would listen to the train pass by so close.
    My mind was in a very bad place then. It got worse as time passed, as days went by without even a glimpse of hope toward a better life. I felt like I had no chance at a home, at a family, at a life with any sort of semblance of the normalcy I had thought present for the previous fourteen years (a normalcy that was, apparently, entirely fabricated). My thoughts were spiraling with every moment I spent in that cramped, putrid house. I had nothing to reflect on but unhappiness- my father was a psychopath, my mother had abandoned me, my sister had given up her entire future to try and salvage what astringent remains were left of my childhood… and I was completely and utterly alone. I was alone with my sadness and my anger and my bitterness and my desolation.
    As I stood at the bus stop each morning, and heard the whistle of that train, high and piercing, I began to wonder. I began to wonder what it would be like to walk to the tracks, to lie down as the train sped toward me. I fantasized about it; I would hear the distant keening of the train siren and lay my head down on the cool metal, and I would close my eyes. I would hear the train growing louder and louder until the sounds of screeching wheels and sighing pistons and that sharp, ardent whistle were all that my senses could take in. I would lie still and silent as my hair began to whip around my face, gusted by the force of an oncoming object. It would come closer and closer every second, and just as I felt the face of the train kiss the track beside me I would laugh, because I was finally free.
    And then my bus would arrive, and I would stifle the sobs I felt forcing their way up my throat.
    I was always the first person to be picked up, and I sat in seat twelve, the very middle left seat, without fail. I would stare out of the dirty half-window and watch as we passed over the train tracks that I so longed to lie on and be finished. The train- my train- was always long since gone by then, not the faintest hint of it every having been there in the first place. I wondered if, after a little bit of time, anyone would even remember the girl who went to lie on the tracks. Would anyone think it was tragic, maybe shed a tear or two; send a flower to her family? Would anyone care, at all?
    Would it really be so bad, to leave all of this behind? To leave the feeling of hopelessness that accompanied every waking thought and action and go to a place where I felt nothing? …To feel nothing. What a wonderful experience that would be. I would take feeling nothing over feeling such horrible things without a second glance.
    Every morning I thought of the train. Every morning I thought of the tracks. Every morning they called to me, inviting me with that enticing prospect of freedom.
    One day I walked to the tracks after school. I sat for hours there, in the middle of the metal rods and wooden planks, staring down at the path that seemed to wind on forever. I waited for a train to come and take me away.
    But no train ever came. And life went on.
***
A Car
    The walk to my apartment has no sidewalk, just a white line painted to separate the road from the shoulder. I walk on that line, throwing my arms out and pretending to wobble and balance on a tightrope far above a crowd hushed with anticipation. The imaginary ring leader, clad in rich crimson coat with shining brass buttons and clasps, screeches into a large megaphone that echoes his booming voice throughout the large striped tent this charade is performed in. “Can she do it, folks?” he goads. “Will she survive the walk? Will she travel to the other side of this rope safely? Or will she fall? Will she plummet fifty- no, sixty! Seventy!- feet straight down to the concrete flooring below?”
    The crowd, as is to be expected, is awed by my spectacle, and their cheers are quiet and encouraging. They wish I would make it to the platform, that I would descend the ladder to safety with a triumphant grin. I take a second to stare down at the ring leader, who watches me knowingly. He, of course, is fully aware of what I want- to misstep. To take that plunge, to twist my body gracefully away from the thin wire that separates me from my freedom. To fall.
    The wind gushes in from the striped tent opening in spurts, and the sound of engines roaring reaches my ears, so high above everyone else’s. With each passing car, a gust of wind blows me ever so slightly off-balance, and I stumble off of that white line away from the traffic. In my mind the audience gasps and cries out, noticing each slip with ever-increasing dread. I can hear the cars approaching, and as I look down at my feet I contemplate every time just stepping to my left before that rush of wind can sweep me to the right. Traffic moves quickly on this road; a little over the speed limit will do it. I can be in front of them before they even realize that something is wrong. If I wait for a large SUV and tilt my head downward they will make contact instantly.
Another car; another second of hesitation; another chance gone by. I should just do it. I should just get it done with. It will only take one step to the left, and it will be over. My foot edges off of the tightrope, toward the black asphalt, toward the crowd whose rapt attention has now begun to turn to shouts of alarm and terror… and the car passes by, its driver without even the slightest inkling as to what he has just so narrowly avoided.
    I would do it. I would take that step, if it wasn’t for the sticker on the passenger’s side backseat window. The sticker that says “Baby on Board.” How can I endanger a life on which another’s is dependent? How can I even have thought so selfishly? It is my life, and no one else’s, that I intend to take.
    So this plan is definitely out.
***
A Vision
    The journey down the hallway to my dorm room is a long one. My sandals flap against the linoleum, patterned in pretentious and arrogant faux marble, the fluorescent ceiling lights above mirroring down white reflections that float past me as I walk. The doors I pass are identical, despite the attempts by their owners to individualize and distinguish: dark, unimpressive blue, a faded and dull silver doorknob to the right side, a faded and dull silver number engraved near the top. The sundry photographs and scrawled messages of welcome seem reproduced from one door to another, until they blur together into the same decoration, time after time. Even the room numbers, which I assume have to change, increase or decrease because they all couldn’t be the same number, seem indistinguishable.

As I enter my room through one in a million of paint-chipped blue doors with worn, uninteresting silver doorknobs and numbers, I slip my lanyard from my neck and hang it on the hook on the back of the door, immediately crossing the space toward my bed. The jarring clink of metal makes me stop, and turn. My keys have connected against the door, the lanyard swinging them back and forth in a monotonous clang. For a moment instead of the gold set of keys, dulled and faded just like the doorknobs and numbers and everything around me that must have once been lustrous and brilliant, I envision my body swinging against the rope, its knot wound tight against my neck and my limbs swinging like the arms of the keys.

With a blink of my eye the vision recedes, and life carries on.
***
A Thought
Is this really what my life has come to? I thought miserably. It was Saturday night, and here I was. Sitting in my bed, with the covers pulled up over my legs, laptop resting on my knees. Playing solitaire. Over, and over, and over again. Every time the “No Available Moves” sign popped up onto the screen, I would start over. The computer made a little click noise each time I moved a card to its proper space.

Click. Click. Click. “No Available Moves.”

Click. Click. Click. Click. “No Available Moves.”

Over and over and over again. I would play in intervals of about eight or so games before taking a brief second or two to stare blearily on the clock resting on the opposite wall; time, it seemed, had stopped, or was at least moving at a ridiculously slow pace. It was the weekend, I had no class tomorrow, the campus was bustling with activity.

And here I sat.

Click. Click. Click. “No Available Moves.”
***

---Well, lovelies, that's that. I realize it's not the most cheery thing you've ever heard, but hey, I love me some realism. Hit me up with some reviews and comments, if you would! I'm seriously considering turning each of these rambles into a longer story, and if I do I'll post it up here (: Have a lovely day!