Mad Shadows

But if your patience is exhausted and you still cannot decide

You’re sitting in the garage contemplating suicide

And you have no motivation you can’t even catch your breath
All of this acceleration is driving you to death.

Elvis Costello & The Attractions : Five Gears In Reverse.

I know you’ll think this sounds crazy and yeah, up until a couple of months ago I would have totally agreed with you, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. If I’m honest, years actually, although I don’t suppose to look at me you’d had ever have guessed it. Now I’m no gambler, but I know a good deck of cards when I see one, and it’s fair to say I’ve been dealt a pretty decent hand in life, so I shouldn’t really have anything to complain about. So why do I constantly have the wish to simply close my eyes and end it all? I’m so tired with everything. I feel so utterly alone to the point where I have a constant sense of incredible detachment from reality and the people around me.

Indeed, I’ve become so isolated that it’s got to the point where, on those long lonely nights where sleep is a stranger and darkness my only friend, I’ve contemplated ending it all and just leaving everything and everyone. But I’m not sure if I can do it. I mean, I’ve thought about it often enough and even gone as far as trawling the internet for sites that actively promote the great escape, and while some approach death in a sensitive and sensible manner, it’s fair to say that the vast majority are populated by ghouls and crazies intent on wallowing in the pain of others. I’d considered posting a message myself but had shied away at the last moment for, it’s fair to say, I’ve never had the strength to end my life. I know some people can, and although I’ve wanted to and tried many times, I just can’t seem to do it, to step off the ledge, lock the garage door and turn on the ignition, or put that cold steel barrel in my mouth and squeeze the trigger. But don’t get me wrong here. It’s not that I value life, which for too many years has seemed so utterly worthless, devoid of any true hope or purpose. It’s just that I think I can start over, which is just as good. I don’t mean faking death, for I’m no Lord Lucan, but just disappearing, slipping into the mad shadows never be found again. It’s not really that I want to flee from anyone or anything in particular, although there are certain individuals who, given the choice, I would never want to see again. And, save for the odd unkind thought, I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just that I have an overwhelming urge to throw it all in and simply start over; new identity, new places, new life, like a character from a Fredrick Forsythe novel. Just vanish overnight and no one will know where I went. I know in this world of almost constant surveillance it won’t be easy and I accept there is going to be a lot of preparation and planning involved, but like I say, I’ve been thinking about this for years to the point where I think this could be the best means of successfully restarting life. But then that little voice in the back of my head says what if your new life turns out like the old one and you’re back to square one. Ever thought that one through, sucker?

So there lies the rub and, if I’m as honest with myself as I’m being with you, I so desperately want to talk to someone close to me, someone who I care for and hopefully cares for me, but I simply don’t want to bother them while they float on bubbles of light and happiness while I’m down here chained and bound to the ground by the shackles of bad fortune, another sad pathetic loser in life’s great lottery. After all, who needs a crazy reminding them of their own fragile grasp on reality? I’m frightened by my thoughts, haunted by my dreams and immobilized by the words on this page, so very, very scared of what I’m capable of doing. Like a sailor shipwrecked on a sea of despair, I find myself constantly drifting in and out of these solemn moods. I can be in a room full of friends and yet feel so incredibly alone, my cries for help lying dead on my lips as I struggle to somehow articulate my thoughts and feelings, surrounded by material possessions that seem so totally and utterly worthless, relics of an empty existence. I don’t want to die, but sometimes it just sounds so right, and after all, we’ve all got to go sometime, so it may just as well be sooner rather than later. I’m not frightened by what awaits me on the other side, only by what’s left for me here. My life has no real meaning and I simply spend my time going through the motions, living only to please others as opposed to myself. I know I can’t go on much longer as the pain is simply too much to bear. So it’s come down to this. Suicide or pseudoside. I’m counting on your help here. After all, you’ve heard the evidence, so now make the call.

Go on. I dare you.