My suicide note…

I’m sorry.

I initially wanted to send this little prose out as a text message to a bunch of people, but I though that would be vindictive and petty, and I don’t want people to feel blamed. These are just my reactions to the world, not the reality. Anyway:

I was a person once
The other people told me I was different, and so I tried to be like them
They didn’t know I was scared and I thought I was worthless

Just a hollow ghost that nobody can love, I am no longer a person
Poison raised to my lips, I toast this wretched earth
A toast to the ones who saw this coming…

To all those who saw the signs and drove past

For all my life, I have been an outsider. As a very young child, being part of a religion that many consider a cult excluded me from many things. I was taught that having birthday celebrations – a time when family and friends gather to celebrate a life and have a good time with each other – was pagan and basically evil. At Christmas I could not engage in activities which helped kids to bond at school since I was programmed to see myself as being above such small, pagan things. Also I had to shut out any close friendships I had with “worldly” people since the religion taught that those who weren’t believers were going to die, and if you read between the lines, the religion strongly advised against pursuing relationships with those outside of the confines of the church community. This was especially taxing on me as early as 6 years old. For some reason I attracted alot of attention from a handful of the girls in my class – I think because I was in trouble alot and had a rebellious streak already. Maybe they liked that I was cheeky. We always were very playful with each other and it got to them kissing me lots. They would kiss me day after day, and I think had I been raised any other way I would have handled it like any other kid growing up and responded in kind and realised that I was worthy of being loved. But on top of the rules which were drilled into my brain about not getting too close to people on the outside, one of the biggest tenets of the faith I had been dragged into was on abstinence of sex before marriage. But it went a bit further than that. There was to be no fooling around with the opposite sex no matter how innocent, as any small act would eventually lead to fornication, broken relationships and unwanted babies. So around this time was my first real crisis of who I was and who I was being molded to be.

Now, before I go on, I should say something about my home life. It was abysmal. I was constantly hit violently with belts and open hands, my dad using terms like “darn hidings” and “wallopings” to describe what he was about to do to me. It was reinforced by bible scripture, and afterwards being told it was because I was loved. Usually it was because of a mistake I made or some small thing which I forgot to do a few times over, much to the annoyance of my dad who I will refer to as the dictator. Then there was the constant harrassment about my weight. I was always skinny, and my weight was kept tabs of and charted. I would often hear threats that if I didn’t eat more and gain weight, I would be a sickly, skinny man, like being underweight was one of the biggest sins one could commit. He would yell at my mum, blaming her for me turning out to be a disappointment, on an almost nightly basis for much of the time. One time after getting particularly aggressive and abusive, I sat on the toilet to urinate and he thumped the toilet door open violently and went on to continue to verbally abuse me for what I angered him for originally, as well as taunting me that I was a sissy kid for sitting down to pee. There were times when he would hit me with such hate in his eyes I thought he was going to kill me. So I feared the iron fist of the dictator of the household, and doing things which would eventually filter back to him was to be avoided for fear of violent repercussions.
So I had to repel the girls, and eventually I lost even their friendship. I had to constantly deny what made me happy and follow rules which to me made little sense. And to add to the headfuck, my dad would always say, even when I was really young, that I looked so handsome and that all the girls will be chasing me, which was completely contradictory to what the religion taught was good. So my tendencies to not get close to people were seeded very early on, and I can remember experiencing cognitive dissonance as to who I was supposed to be and who I was as early as grade one.

Grade two was a good year. I still got into trouble alot, but my teacher specialised in the sciences, something I enjoyed, and while he often had to punish me for things I did, I think he understood that while I was a troublemaker I was smart and had potential. I can remember him talking to my parents on many ocassions, and I think maybe in his own way he was trying to tell them that I was actually worth more than they knew and that I needed to be nurtured to reach that potential. I really latched onto the academic side of my brain that year I believe.

Grade three was the first time I remember having thoughts of killing myself. The dictator was having trouble finding work in Adelaide, and he had to go interstate for months on end for work, which was like a holiday for me and mum. I could basically do what I wanted and grow in whichever direction I wished, as my mum was quite lenient and her achilles heel was being too passive. But while I was growing in some areas, I was atrophying in others. I longed to be able to hang around with a girl I liked who also liked me, but could sense I was holding back. At around the same time, the dictator had found enough work interstate that it seemed that we were going to move. So I would lose any friends I had, I would never see the girl again, and at this stage I was already not good at making friends anymore so the emotional stress was too much. In the end, after alot of drama about moving, the decision was never finalised (as the dictator was a terrible decision maker). I think that after that year I was changed as a person.

As time went on I believed less of what I was taught by the church and wanted to be a person who just fit in so much that I had two distinct masks I would switch from. One would be the mask of a normal “worldly” person, and the other mask was that of a believer. I could appear on the outside to be as genuine about being one as the other, and there was a whole side of me that I would have to hide when I was in the company of each group. My brain was in a state of constant high alert as to what I should be saying and what I should be hiding, and combined with the lack of any real meaningful emotional interaction with anyone, I became a lying machine, bent on avoidance of punishment and simply surviving in the minefield of life. Almost everything I did which I found fulfilling or enjoyable was out of sight of my carers and alot of what I enjoyed was destructive.

There were only two friends (both of whom were in the church) I had who knew almost completely both sides of me. Through the years those two relationships kept me somewhat sane, and I was able to talk about alot of the pent up things inside. I’m sure that you know who you are if you get to read this, and if you do I want you to know that the times spent with you causing mayhem in the night and ripping up drains and sidewalks were the best times of my life.

Around year seven was the first time I started to feel the push from the outside world to open up and be a part of the circle of life. I still had some kind of belief in my abilities and worth at the time and people still liked me, and I was approached by a couple of girls to be partners for dancing classes which was a part of year seven classes. But by this time, my kneejerk “repel” reaction was so bad that my behaviour was working directly against what I deep down wanted. Although I was screaming yes inside, I said no to having the pick of a couple of the most attractive girls and set myself up for social exile at the beginning of high school. People started asking me if I was gay, and I think that over time it made a dent in my masculinity and impacted my perception about my worth as a person.

First year of high school I managed to make one very good friend who shared similar interests and once again, I had at least one girl chasing me. After maybe a couple of months of being at high school, I was approached by her and a few of her friends and she asked me out. Kneejerk reaction again. All I could do was walk away too shy to even say no because in truth I really liked her, and it was an awkward low-point in my life. People called me frigid, and once again my thoughts turned to suicide. I retreated from pursuing social goals, and became one of the nerds. Every recess and lunchtime I would retreat to the computer rooms where I could download music, games, porn and any other distraction I could find. Shortly after I took an interest in hacking, and by sheer fluke chanced across an administrators password and myself and a few other people took to destroying the school computer network. I deleted many student files, including files of friends, and the library system and network was deleted by others. I got suspended for a week, and I guess we must have got some kind of props, because while we got a bit of hate for a short time, afterwards people kinda looked at us a little differently, like we were fellow rebels (on a different platform) or something.

After that, things improved for a while, I gradually got better grades and I had friends in almost every clique. But as always, things could never stay good for long. At home, it was a wasteland. During bouts of alcoholism (the dictator going to his office to drink and do work), the house was full of tension, and I would withdraw to my bedroom every day without wanting to interact with my parents. The dictator had a meltdown on a family holiday where I had to run away for a short time, after which he accused my best friend (who was 16) of having sex with my mum. That day still scars my mind, the whole situation was so ludicrous. The religious side of my life was now completely incongruous with what I believed life was about, but I couldn’t do anything about it or I would have been as good as cut off from family and the few friends I had in the religion. So after a few more years of supression and repression I was a lost kid looking for something. I really didn’t know who I was anymore as I was so conficted about everything and I just wanted to fit into a safe group of people I could have as a family. Year eleven I started drinking, and shortly after I started smoking pot. These were ways of connecting with people, and it worked well. I was able to make new friends which lead to many enjoyable summer nights spent just enjoying each others company. I still had the same troubles with girls where I would get to know them a bit and them put up walls and burn bridges, but it wasn’t so painful as I had a regular group of friends who I could just chill with who didn’t expect anything and I could just be myself around. But like everything, the two sides of my life conflicted once again, and my parents discovered I had been sneaking out at night to have some companionship and comradery which was missing from my life. They really put the pressure on at this time, asking when I was going to take the chuch seriously and dedicate my life to god etc, and I can’t recall how many sleepless nights I had trying to figure out a way to exit the cult, yet somehow retain a place to live as I couldn’t support myself yet, as I was in survival mode.

For the sake of brevity, after leaving the religion and moving out, I discovered that my behaviour had shifted markedly towards that of the dictator’s behaviour. Over the course of a few short years of living out of home, I have become an alcoholic/weed-dependent recluse who has no respect for other people and can neither accept nor provide love or affection (except at times on a superficial level). I spent almost three years at university and didn’t make ONE friend, I was so afraid of people and relationships. I gradually began to do what I do with all of my friendship groups by pulling away. The cave clan, my skate crew, my core group, my courier family, all treated with a cold and distance only a broken soul could harbor…

And so we get to my current state, one which has lasted for too long. I have too many neuroses to function happily, and even when I am happy, I quickly reprimand myself for feeling good and divebomb into fear and depression – a cycle I was taught a long time ago. I am a living account of what kind of creature abuse and self-denial creates. I believe there is only one way to live and that is to make your own meaning out of life, and what life has taught me is that people are cruel, they don’t give second chances, they don’t want to help if it makes them slightly uncomfortable. People like the easy way, preferably the way everyone else does it. People are afraid of doing anything which might attract attention, and fear gets followers better than love. We are animals. Like a trail of ants, we are all pursuing one purpose – the survival of our species, and if you ever noticed, if you squash one ant in the line, there is chaos until eventually the other ants clean up the mess of remains. I feel that I am that squashed ant, and I can do nothing but disrupt the flow and create chaos and negativity in the life of everyone who crosses my path. It seems that despite what I thought as kid, I am turning out to be more and more like my shit-stain father everyday, hating humanity more and more, and receiving exactly what I deserve.
So I am at the point where I have to choose what to do. Some say choose life. Choose to make something of yourself is what everyone tells me. You have to do it for the people that love you, people will miss you when you’re gone etc. Well from what I can see, what people call love is not really love. 90% of the time, it is really just a form of domination or possession, or a feeling purely to do with what people can get from you. I know because these are the only feelings I know when I think about love. And if the people around me really cared, they would have actually done something beyond a few “I’m there for you if you want to talk” platitudes. And really, the question is, WHY should I do anything with my life? Religion has tried to come up with a motivation to do something with our lives (based on fear of what will happen in the future, mind) and when at the end of the day humanity as a whole is unaffected by the loss of a depressed individual, I fail to see why there is any onus on me to keep it up. It takes too much energy for too little payoff.

I know there are many who will ask the question why, if I could put this much effort into a letter and ending my life could I not put that effort into living? In life, nothing is guaranteed. You have one success, the next few tries could be failures. One step forward, two steps back. That’s most people. I have one success for every ten failures, and when you’re on a roller coaster with so many valleys and so few peaks (and nobody else with you to make the ride bearable), it seems the effort used to end my life has a much better payoff – peace, or at least an end to the pain. Because there doesn’t seem to be any source of peace of mind for me on earth. And I guess some will think that what I did is cowardly and selfish… and I guess from one standpoint it is, but no matter how you live – as a hero or a coward – at the end of the day everyone dies, people and born and the world keeps moving. Just make sure you don’t stop moving or the world will leave you behind.