WHAT IF I DID IT AGAIN?

A HANGING NOOSE-LIGATURE

"When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. Goodbye, my friend, goodbye, my love, you are in my heart. It was preordained we should part, and be reunited by and by. Goodbye: no handshake to endure. Let's have no sadness -- furrowed brow. There's nothing new in dying now though living is no newer. I must end it. There's no hope left. I'll be at peace. No one had anything to do with this. My decision totally.’’ You draft a note with your own blood and stuff it into your pants visibly pooping out. It is the last time you are putting your poetic prowess and deep view of life in use before your asphyxiation. 

You in your dreams imagined entering into a forest (for whatever reasons you may be there for-apart from defecation), and found a rotting piece of human arm dragged by a hyena from the carcass of a suicide victim. But it hadn’t (even in your nightmares) appeared to you that you would commit suicide. You have even at times argued that if you were ever the first in a suicide scene, you would seriously whip the victim for being irrational. It never convinced you a thing that a person would lack enough motivation to push through life but manage to commit suicide. Oddly enough, it takes a lot effort to kill yourself by hanging. You can't just take a hand full of pills, or throw yourself into/off something, or run a blade down you’re your pulmonary artery. Suicide by hanging really takes energy. You have to get the rope, you have to tie the noose. You have to get a chair to stand on, and you have to tie the rope to a post. After putting it on, you have to kick the chair. You know what you're about to do and you go through the steps anyway, so sure. It's not like other suicide methods. 

But she has squeezed the urge to live out of your young skeleton. You have been bored with life and marriage too. The marriage that was initially all sparks with no tolerance of any thoughts of “what if”, is now a square peg in a round hole. She is this drug you can’t stop using, but she is a fraud. You have kept this secret for months now. 

Yesterday, you came home early, she was taking a nap on the sofa. You saw her phone on the table. It has always been off or on flight mode any time you are around. You have always found this strange but you never wanted to be accused of insecurities. So you were unable to hold your nose from poking into her phone. To your surprise, when you click on, it takes you to her inbox .You don’t know what made you do it, but you started going through the different folders and in her sent box. Your faithful wife of 5 years has been seeing your best friend. 

You know your friend too well. In fact you have covered for him in the many instances his wife has caught him cheating. You were with him during that motorcycle accident. He wanted to save you out with a few points of the rare group O (–ve) blood, but he tested positive. He has now invaded your bedroom. Reading some of your wife’s erotic words to this man makes you want to jump off a cliff. You feel so weak as a man and don’t know what to do especially knowing the disease in already in your system. You decide to end everything. 

But you don’t want to sneak and hang yourself into a forest. You don’t want your cohorts looking for you in hardcore criminal cells (despite having a clean record and harmless nature) while you will be hanging on a thorny tree. . You don’t imagine a contingent of family members looking for you in morgues as if they had wished you dead all along. You settle on your bedroom roof as the appropriate venue.

 

So today, you wait until she leaves for work and start tying your knots. Once everything is ready, you stand on the chair and wear the necklace of rope. You think about this. You think about the suicide note in your pocket. You think about how the lives of the people you know will (not) change. You think about who will (not) miss you, and who you'll miss. You think "Huh, maybe I should have talked to [girl I like] today...No...It would have only made me want to do this more."

You take your last breath and think of a nice scene. You kick the chair, and the necklace of rope tightens. You fall. A few seconds, and it would have been over. But no. The universe wants you to stay longer. The same that messed your life to the point where you want to kill yourself, now. You only stop momentarily. As you dangle there, the knots fail, and you fall again. 

"You have survived suicide"

No one can know about this. You untangle the rope, and make sure there is no damage to where you hung it. You put the chair neatly away, and head to the kitchen. You take the suicide note and burn it. You turn the TV on and act like a regular person. When your wife gets home, there is no evidence of what just happened. She will never know. When you get back to work on Monday, you will be a regular person. No one will ever know.

Now, every night before you go to sleep, you look at your wife, figure out your best friend sweating as he rips off her undergarment, grapple for a packet of your ARV’s, and  as you look up to the roof to swallow the pain of life you think "What if I tried it again?"