Wednesday, August 27, 2008

i am pro-choice


When you are a failed suicide everyone wants to ask you why but they don’t because asking why is socially a rude thing to do. Even the hungriest gossipmongers pocket their curiosities and pussyfoot, pussyfoot like toothless cougars. But when you are a failed suicide before you can leave the hospital you must tell why. It’s like a rule or something…

All the doctors in their well rehearsed concern ask you why and then take your why, your point, with all your poetic digressions, and enter the whole of it into the alliterative parade of helplessness and hopelessness.

“You were feeling helpless, right? And hopeless?”

And because the objective was not to land in a hospital you agree and admit,

“Yes, I felt helpless…and hopeless.”

This seems like a betrayal and it hurts. It hurts because it is false. It hurts because you allowed all the nuanced reasons surrounding your point to be shot, blown into a dusty summation made by a porcine doctor named Chloe. It hurts but you need to get out. First and foremost you need to get out. So, you recite the words Chloe, the good little mama bird, fed you. Again and again you hear your baby bird voice on repeat – helpless, hopeless, helpless, hopeless, helpless, hopeless.

There are many doctors.

The second doctor asks, “Why?” Sweat beads on her brow when she asks so exasperated, out of breath, bored by the question or the thought of listening to yet again another long tale of why woe is me when she in her infinite wisdom and sweat knew the answer before asking. She doesn’t even look at you. She keeps her head down at the papers on her desk. Her hand hovers over a box to check. Remember you want to get out. When you told Chloe why, all Chloe did was nod out the words helpless and hopeless, as if in confirmation, yes I agree she said, helpless, hopeless, even though you hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. You swallowed those words helpless and hopeless because they were your ticket out and you knew this and you were proud to be so quick. You do not bore her, you tell the doctor with the sweaty brow, “I felt helpless and hopeless.” You say it without a stutter and feel like an actress, a great performer, look at me now! You think of that foolish girl from college who called her play absurdist, how you hated her for saying so because nonsensical does not mean absurdist. But what was happening now, this, this was absurdist. “I felt helpless and hopeless.” Such repetition. The sweaty doctor is appeased. She checks her box.

Then there is the third doctor, then the fourth, and the fifth and you see seven doctors of varied degrees, haircuts and ages and they all ask the same question and you tell all of them the same story of helplessness and hopelessness and you are believed. You are free. Freed! But really you’re only free because your insurance ran out.

You go home and when you get there your boyfriend is sleeping with an old girlfriend, so you envision her face on a platter without parsley and with great malice stab at her eyes with your fork. Her eyes pop like grapes spliced at the pupil but you end it here because you’ve dismissed her as pathetic, as a whore, as one to forget because she is not the point. And you fuck him a few more times because he is good and when he repents you dismiss him too, because he is not the point either.

One morning you wake up remembering the point and shiver in tears beneath your sheets. The point is frightening and has nothing to do with neither help nor hope. You shiver for an hour and your pillow is damp so you leave it for the shower and sit there in the porcelain scoop of the tub with the shower raining on you and you hold your knees and do not cry. You drink coffee and take speed because it is good and keeps you going.

You tell the point to the friend you never trusted and she looks at you cross-eyed. You tell your mother and she cries. You go to meetings and tell the point to strangers and they suggest you get a hobby, fill your time, maybe even volunteer, but these have to do with help, with hope, and help and hope are not the point. So, you go home to more shivers and lie in bed and feel like a two year old’s antipode tugging why not on a string.

1 comment:

SleepWhenDead said...

This makes me think of a cartoon where a man pulls out his handkerchief and sneezes, and then looks into the fabric and stammers "Oh. My. God."

Then, as he frantically moves throughout the city (or wherever the strip took place), he meets many different people, each one asking to see the handkerchief, and each one collapsing in fear / tears / revulsion, until he finally gets to a church, and the priest says "You know what you must do" and the man climbs to the roof of the church and jumps.

That may not actually have anything to do with you, but that wouldn't be the point, would it?