Suicide note

There is nothing I can do to make this any easier for you, but I owe you an explanation of why I decided to do this.

I have never felt particularly able to deal with life. If it was childhood, schools, university, friendships or career, I've always struggled to make things work. I found it difficult to do the things that come naturally to most people.

It's not because I broke up with T. That just made me realize what I've always secretly known ' that I just couldn't deal with the complexities of life. I felt hopeless; I didn't want to wait for whatever pains and misfortunes and self-inflicted misery the future might have held. And there is nothing you could have done about it. I know that you loved me, and I know that you would have done anything for me. But I have made this decision, fully aware of all the pain that I will cause.

I know this is a selfish act, but the pain I am feeling is stronger than my desire to protect you. And I want you to know that I loved you all; I know that all you wanted for me was to be happy. But I'm not happy, and I never have been, and it's never been anything to do with you. I'm just not fated to be happy, and I don't want to live for another fifty years with all the pain inside me.

I'm at peace now. And if that peace was won by causing you pain, I'm sorry. But I'm certain. Even having gone to J's funeral, and seeing the grief she had caused, I'm still certain.

xxxxxx

Oh God, this isn't very good, is it? What I really want to say has already been said, famously, by Winston Churchill ' "Oh, I am so bored of it all¦ I bet the bastard had been sitting on that bon mot for the last twenty years of his life.

Reading it back now, it's hard to tell if I was serious. Was I really going to tidy the house, drink a bottle of Sainsbury's budget whisky, wolf down some sleeping pills/antidepressants, light a barbecue in a zinc bucket and settle down on the sofa to sleep, perchance to die? It all seems so¦elaborate. Overly dramatic. Pathetic. I'd even planned to send the latchkey to the local police station (second class) with instructions to deal with the mess, saving parents from one day finding the rotting, stinking corpse of their son, body discoloured with putrefaction and skin mottled by carbon monoxide poisoning. Would the police have taken the note seriously? It's difficult enough getting the cunts to come if someone's in the middle of burgling your house.

Actually, all things considered, I think it's a fairly good piece of work. It wouldn't have ended so abruptly on the bit about J's funeral ' I would have given it a good outro, wrapping everything up nice and neatly. Considering everything that was going on in my head, I think it's a work of fucking genius. My mind was a maelstrom of bad thoughts; at one stage I thought that I had actually fractured my brain, like when you flip out on acid. Bad thoughts cascade through your consciousness, your mind never staying on one subject for longer than a second before plunging on to something even more horrible. Sometimes the thoughts were just emotions ' guilt, anger, grief ' flashing through my mind on repeat; inescapable, uncontrollable, terrifying.

I probably thought about suicide ninety percent of the time, and if that sounds like self-pitying, gloomy gothic, teenage angst, I don't mean it to. In my mind I had taken the perfectly rational decision that I was to die. When you take a decision like that, or if you've convinced yourself that you have, it's difficult to think of much else. Even watching TV, the most effective non-chemical mind-number they've so far come up with, I would be seeing the images, understanding the dialogue, but they were incapable of distracting me from the turmoil in my own mind. Alcohol helped, a little, but only in large quantities ' a litre of Sainsbury's surprisingly good economy whisky, but even that gets expensive if you're drinking it every day. The funny thing is that I would quite often steal the spirits from the supermarket at the foot of my road, yet I'd always steal the cheap stuff. I mean, if you're going to stick a bottle down the front of your trousers and march confidently past the security guards on the way out, you might as well get a nice single malt, or at least Chivas Regal.

But, as I said, alcohol wasn't a great help. Prescription pills (anti-depressants, natch) made me sleep, but I was eating too many of them, getting through them too fast. The last thing I needed was to run out of the things before I had had time to prepare; to have to go back to the doctors and explain why I'd got through two months' supply in ten days. Besides, you can't sleep all day ' you'd miss Neighbours.

I can't really explain what goes through the mind of someone bent on suicide ' I've described the nightmare kaleidoscope of consciousness ' but I can maybe talk a little about the physical manifestation of those feelings. I've been feeling better for around a week now, maybe longer, and the memories are fading, but I'll tell you what I can remember. I used to wake up very early in the morning. Five-ish. Whether that was the alcohol or the bad dreams, I don't know. I've been sleeping on the sofa since T left. I can't go into the bedroom any more, except to dash in to get socks or underwear. They're the only things left in the room. When T was here, the room was bright and gay with her jewelry pinned to cork boards, her clothes on the rack, her beauty products littering the top of the chest of drawers. When she left, I realized that the only thing decorating the room was a pathetic collection of men's stuff on the bedside table ' cufflinks, watch, deodorant, collar stiffeners. Even the duvet was hers. So, since then, I've made my bed on the sofa in the sitting room. That, at least, has a few books and CDs in it: a semblance of normality. My pills make me sleep, and I've had more uncomfortable beds in my time.

I go to sleep with the radio on because I find the whole business of waiting for sleep so tedious. The news reports permeate my conscious while I'm in that vague half-sleeping, half-awake hinterland. So when I finally wake properly and lie there, listening to the Today programme, I know all about the latest murders, coups, surveys and scandals without exactly knowing why. My mouth is dry and foetid with last night's alcohol and I'm desperate for a glass of squash and a cigarette, but I know I won't have the will to get off the sofa. That would mean starting the day; I don't want to start the day. As long as I'm still on the sofa and Today is on, I'm anaesthetized. At nine, Today segues into Libby Purves or Start The Week or You and Yours; not as interesting, but enough for the time being. Sometime, any time, between nine and ten thirty, usually without thinking about it, I'll swing my legs onto the floor and attempt to face the day.

Then the retching would start. At first, I thought it was the booze, my body trying to purge itself of last night's whisky or K cider. But the day before I had to drive T back to Suffolk I'd not drunk a thing and the retching was the same. Stomach gripping, often painful and loud: Huwech! Huwech! I had no control over it; well, very little control. In public, or at my Dad's house, I could keep it in check fairly well. But even so, I got looks in the street: a shabby young man drifting around Wandsworth town centre with a bottle in his pocket, suddenly stopping and making vile noises. Rarely did anything come out ' occasionally some bile ' and rarely did it hurt. But when it did¦.have you ever, perhaps after a heavy bout of drinking, tried to be sick even though there's nothing for your stomach to grip onto? My stomach would spasm, painfully, as I crouched over the toilet or wastepaper basket. It would grip my innards, maliciously tweaking my guts whenever it felt like mischief, and I would be doubled up in pain, waiting for it all to pass. When it was bile it was bitter and green and afterwards my teeth would feel chalky and friable, the acid having taken away the smooth enamel surface. But mostly, the retching was without vomit or bile. A stranger I'd met for sex, and to whom I explained this phenomenon, said that it was my body trying to get rid of the feelings inside. That makes sense. The retching came especially in the morning, when the anaesthetic of sleep and alcohol had worn off, and I realized exactly where, and why, and what I was. Going into the old bedroom brought it on, as did listening to the old records we used to play. My bowels were no better: I was pissing rusty water out my arse with every 'movement'. Slurry.

The two other physical effects that I can remember were the heavy breathing and the twitching. Both I'd had before, especially at university. I didn't have a great time at uni. I'd turn up at the Causes of War lecture on Monday mornings with a can of K in my pocket, with the honest intention of listening, learning and working. Ten minutes in and I'd have lost the thread and, annoyed with myself, I'd start to twitch. It was not something I could control, even if I'd wanted to. The opinion of the twats on my course meant nothing to me ' they thought I was borderline crazy in any case. It would happen like this: I'd get lost in bad thoughts, mostly about how I'd fail the course and flunk out of university and then, without any warning, my fist (usually, but not always, the left) would clench and my arm would jump sharply into my ribs. I got a few stares at first, but I think the twats eventually got used to it. It was worse in the Literature of War seminars. Causes was held in a large-ish room with upwards of eighty students in it; Literature was held in a small room on the first floor of the Pont-Street-Dutch building off the Strand; a dozen chairs clustered squarely around a table. No place to hide. At first, my twitches would awkwardly punctuate the discussion of the relationship between Pierre and Prince Andreii; no-one said anything, but it was clearly noticed by all present. By the end my twitches and my loud, inadvertent sighs went completely ignored, if not unnoticed. As, indeed, did my sharp and clearly audible intakes of breath ' fearful, panicky, as if I'd just been shocked or surprised. These tics were like hiccups, impossible to control. Still, Literature was presided over by Professor Paskins in his Karl Marx beard and sandals; he was my dissertation supervisor a couple of years later, and his sympathy for my obvious distress was clearly manifested in the ridiculously generous mark he gave me for the essay.