The Girl Who Wanted To Disappear

Someday she would like to confide in a lover thus - “once, when I was fourteen, I desperately wanted to kill myself” - and not feel like a stranger.

It would be nice for a change, she thinks, to confide in someone who would know exactly how it feels like to want to disappear.

Someone who understands that she did not exactly want to die - no, that was probably not the intention. Not the whole of it, at least. What she wanted was to simply cease to exist,  to erase all evidence of having lived on this earth, of being born - so ashamed was she of herself, so miserable was she to be born the way she was. But the only way to disappear was to die. And dying was naturally painful and frightening.

But even more terrifying was the fact that dying, at least in her religion, was not the end of it all. Killing herself would mean going straight to hell - even for someone who was not particularly religious, she did at least believe that there was an after world, where retribution looms for eternity and where disbelievers and wrong-doers fall into the lowest depths of hell fire, to burn forever without any hopes of salvation or mercy.

So she never did attempt anything after all. For some reason, she couldn’t do it, no matter how many times she tried. Perhaps the fact that her religion forbade suicide was only an excuse -  deep down, she was hopelessly drawn to death and yet was secretly and immensely terrified of it. No matter that every morning she woke up wishing a car would run her over. No matter that in the lowest depths of her own private hell, she felt as if she was in an endless, pitch-black tunnel, all alone, grasping for air in the dark.

Yet still, one day, she would like to confide in a lover thus - “once, when I was fourteen, I desperately wanted to die. I prepared myself by my bedroom window, looked down, and wondered how long it would take for me to die if I jumped. Or would I just end up with broken bones?  And then I  wondered how long it would take for me to die if I swallowed all the  pills my mother kept in the fridge. Or would I just end up having my stomach pumped? Would death be swifter if I slit my wrists? Would my mother cry? Would any of my friends feel sad? Did I have any friends at all who cared?

“But - I just wanted to disappear. I hated living everyday with the thought of wanting to die. I thought, I just wanted to get it over and done with.  I didn’t care if anyone felt sad, or cried, or felt happy to unburden themselves of me. I just wanted to rid myself, of my self. There was nothing else to live for. There was nothing else to lose either- my existence was too insignificant to matter to the world. The world, my parents, what few friends I had - they would live on without me. That’s what I thought, back then.

“But I couldn’t do anything like that in the end.

“Stupid, isn’t it?”

And as she prepares herself for the familiar, physically wrenching pain that would come with yet another wave of rejection, he would look straight at her, gently, with those kind, sad eyes that she had taken comfort in many, many times before, and in which she would take refuge in many, many times in the future.

In his soft, slightly broken voice, he would then confide in return - “once, when I was young, I tried to kill myself too, but I couldn’t in the end,” and smile in his usual resigned way of doing everything, his hands shivering with the weight of the words that he had never divulged to anyone in his life.

And with that, both the girl and the boy who wanted to disappear would somehow feel comforted in the miserable, lonely fact that a long time ago, for some inexplicable reason that was too painful for each to divulge, they both wanted to die but couldn’t, and ended up living on.

And maybe, just maybe, that girl and that boy would end up living on  more happily together than they ever thought was possible - strange and sad creatures as they are.

Yes, she thinks to herself sometimes. Someday, she would like to meet a boy who wanted to die as much as she did. Someone she could save from the lowest depths of hell, and be saved in return. A strange one that was even lonelier than she was, and yet would never make her feel like a stranger.