Welcome to Enlightenment

You know you’re beyond help when not even Google can help you.

And that’s exactly where I found myself, in that strange limbo where not even I could be saved by internet access. Where everything is nothing and humanity is just one big infomercial, the kind that play after midnight with things that are more useless than the next, selling themselves, screaming: Buy me, buy me! I’m important! I promise!

That’s a sad place when society revolves around Google and its infinite oblivion of useless knowledge. It’s what we’ve centered our lives around, when in doubt: Google. Google is our new God. But what happens when not even the almighty can save you?

That sort of thing inevitably leads to self-destructive hobbies, which is straight on the train of suicide. That’s what happens. Welcome to the world, have a nice stay, we all know it won't be for much longer.

But the only people that care about that are the ones that get paid. Everyone else goes straight to the grand finale: What happened? Why are you okay? Why are you still alive, here, breathing?

Humanity’s strong point was never sensitivity, but I’m really the last person to criticize flaws. I can’t even fucking die.

It’s the burning question lodged in everyone’s throats: am I immortal? Is it simply impossible for me to die, does the blood of the God’s run through my veins? Am I a vampire? And the answers is no, I’m not anything special like that. The only blood pumping through my heart is that of past alcoholics and tired businessmen or both. I wasn’t the chosen one or the prophecy child, I was conceived in the bathroom stall of an airport. I was just Charlie.

Ms. Borkowski across the streets tells me that I have a guardian angel watching over me, helping me in my time in need, saving me. I tell her that really, I don’t, I’m just one unlucky son of a bitch. She sniffs, offended, and takes her wide load of an ass to water her carnations. I smile at her but at the strain my lips crack and blood trickles down my chin, and it’s not as comforting as I want it to be. It doesn't matter, though, because I am enlightened.

But maybe, for a moment, I like to entertain the idea with a twisted sort of pleasure- maybe I am immortal. This all could be one sick joke, and I wouldn’t doubt it, considering this is what life was all about. Hello, how can we fuck you over today? Let’s see how outrageous we can get. Please take a number, we’ll be a while. Why yes, yes even you have to wait for your turn to damnation. Patience is a virtue, son.

So I sit on the frumpy, burnt orange couch and cross my legs and then uncross them and then re-cross them again because I can play the waiting game with the best of them.

Funny, those who would slash the throat of a million children for immortality see their end much younger than they’d like, and here I was with the gift of life trying to off myself at any chance.

I guess The Lion King's Circle of Life bullshit just didn’t apply to me.

It all started on a day I can’t be bothered to remember and you can’t be bothered to care about, when I finally made the decision. It’s something that was always there, always hovering in the back of my mind like a bad case of herpes, but it only took a moment for it to flare up. A passing second was all it took and suddenly there was no going back. There is no reverse enlightenment. Knowledge is like a disease that devours the naive, ignorant sanity you’ve been gorging off of for years. You cannot un-discover the truth.

It’s almost midnight and what I’ve come to expect of the streets behind my house that are usually too-busy and too-loud and too-civilized have become a ghost town. Bathed in the murky dehydrated piss colour of the streetlights, I walk. The fluorescents of a giant yellow M glare at me.

McDonalds at midnight is a little like rock bottom but with more yellow and grease and burnt out college kids. The drive-thru is my yellow brick road, the path to the rest of my life. I knock on the window.

Half-lidded bloodshot eyes greet me, all dilated pupils and unruly blond hair and purple acne decorating his cheeks.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

I look at him, unflinching, uncaring. “I want to die.”

“You want a fry?”

I say, “To die.”

He says, “Okay, a small fry, got it. One small fry coming up.”

And it was okay because then at least it wasn’t only just in my head, nothing tangible but nothing imaginary either and that’s a thin line that can mean absolutely everything or nothing at all. Life and death seems to lose its prevalence when all you want to do is get a taste of the afterlife. But it was concrete. Stable.

I mean, I was fucking enlightened. I could do anything.

And that was it. The disease had spread, seeped into the marrow of my bones and the recesses of my mind; contaminated me like I contaminated everyone else.

I was going to kill myself. And I tried, damn did I ever try.

First attempt: an inch thick rope, found in the old shed in the backyard no one ever used. A ceiling fan, because I was really cliché like that and it’s hard to find something sturdy to hang yourself on, really, when you think about it. Boy Scout knot, tight, unbreakable, unlike the raw flesh on my neck.

Climb up the chair with a big breath, you can do it. You can do anything, the potential dancing between your fingertips is endless. If you can be an astronaut, a fireman, the president, you can damn well die. You’re invincible. That's the mindset that they breed us on, that's what our teenage years are all about, we are reckless abandon.

It felt odd, with the twine rubbing against my skin and tearing through the flesh, staining red, knowing I was about to die. I couldn’t deny my heart pounding in my chest and the adrenaline thick in my veins. I could feel my head spinning, light and airy and enlightened.

Death was terrifying to think about when all I’d ever known was being alive. But it was that very feeling that seduced me into suicide in the first place.

There comes a point, and unless you’ve been there you’ll never really know, when everything is sick. Absolutely disgusting. And you’ll take anything just to escape it. Even your life.

A moment, a blink of my eye and suddenly my feet are dangling in the universe and my fingertips are brushing euphoria and it was funny. It was funny that mere heartbeats from death, I had never felt more alive.

That's all it takes and you are nothing. You are insignificant trash. You cease to exist. You are your own goddamn Google.

And yet, you are a special and unique snowflake all at the same time.

Something human inside of me, however remote, grabs at my neck, but there’s no passion behind it. I want this too much.

And then snap, it's gone. Everything is gone. Poof. Vanished. My ass on the ground and the pain shooting through my spine and human instinct draws in a breath. I blink. The broken rope lay next to me like roadkill.

Wake up and smell the goddamn roses, you're alive.

Alas, I reassured myself, only a minor bump in the road to enlightenment. This was nothing, I shouldn't even bother myself.

I was wrong, my humanity shining through, it was only the beginning.

Second attempt: midnight sky and a full moon are the backdrop, the sterile off white bathroom with harsh fluorescents and a streaked mirror. A bottle of sleeping pills rest daintily on the sink's edge, the light is bleeding through my eyelids and I am determined.

Follow them down with half a bottle of flat coke and grip onto the porcelain until my knuckles wash white. Feel the contamination spread with delight. This is it, dipping my toes into nirvana, staring into ecstasy, I am about to die. This is the grand finale we wait our whole lives for.

Until suddenly, an uninvited appearance graces the stage. Vomit pushes past my lips like a colourful waterfall. Control begins to fade and the loud crack of my head meeting the bathtub echoes through the room, my fingers intertwine with the curtains and bring them down with me.

They find failure sprawled out on the bathroom floor.

It’s gotten tricky, with the crocodile tears of my mother, blaming herself as all good mothers do. I reassure her that it's not her fault in the short intermissions between her sobs as all good sons do, that I'm sorry. We were good people like that.

She brings him up again and I want to laugh, though the ripping pain shredding up inside my stomach only produces a flinch. Mother blamed him like she always did and I blamed absolutely everything else. Guilt’s a funny thing like that.

Blame yourself only when you know that you’re not in the wrong; devour the reassurance like a starving stray. But only when you’re not at fault, of course. Only when there’s precious sympathy on the line.

When you’re truly guilty though, the real stuff, you’ll do fucking everything to get rid of it.

The secret’s out, lying in that hospital bed there was no turning back. My mother was now a whispering campaign in the neighbourhood of Waterdale.

The people in that neighbourhood are the type who host brunches and dinner parties, all the men wear Italian shoes and the women are poodles with opposable thumbs doused in cough-inducing perfume. But she always wanted to be a part of them, my mother, even though I liked her better without the perfume.

My sister is smart though, not just school-smart but people-smart too, the one that counts. Three years younger than me, she knows it's not her fault and as she chews on a protein bar I can tell in her eyes she knows that nothing can be done. I appreciate her. She's smart, my sister, she really is. I think if there was a sliver of doubt in my mind, it would be because of her. I really do. But there wasn't. I am a walking deadman.

“You shouldn’t kill yourself,” she says.

“I know.”

“Mom’s gonna go mental, you know. She’ll probably start some charity with your name on it. And she’ll probably get a really ugly picture of you,” she says.

“I know.”

“Can I have your TV then?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, and uh, Charlie... I love you," she says.

Her voice is growing distant with every deep breath I take. Reality is slipping away again.

She chews on her protein bar and I stare back at her and we're silent. I hear that the percentage of dysfunctional families is higher than the normal ones and I wonder if that makes us the normal ones, then. We’re the majority. Maybe dysfunction is the new normal. Maybe normal is the new broken.

If I wasn’t going to screw over my family, someone was. It’s in the statistics. Someone needs to be the sacrificial lamb. Jesus would be so proud.

We’re all a little fucked up in the head, I guess.

They brand Suicide Watch over my head and bring in the big guns- Dr. Chernobyl. I laugh. They squirm.

Third Attempt: I'm getting desperate. I no longer feel reassured; I remember that a part of me is still human, that a part of me is still tied down to this unenlightened earth. Worry infects my thoughts and the pressure is forcing itself down my throat. Why can't you just die, Charlie?

Teenage arrogance is wearing thin.

Desperate time, desperate measures. No one to buy a gun from and no idea how to buy one from the internet. Television has installed in my mind that everyone on there only wants a piece of my ass. I go Old School, my life is a black-and-white movie with horrible quality and not enough boobs.

Mother is gone and Sister is busy upstairs. They never leave me alone now. They say I'm a hazard to myself, but they don't understand. The world is a hazard to my enlightenment. The air I breath is a hazard to my life.

I am a hazard, a hazard with a knife.

Not anywhere near my face, I want to leave something decent in my place. I want an open casket so all those nowhere brave enough can watch me in envy as I am dead in bliss. I find happiness in other's misfortune. I'm a bitch like that, sometimes. I am the majority. We’re all a little broken inside.

Two shallow breathes, close my eyes, and plunge.

The blaze of pain spills into my side and a gasp rolls off my tongue, water gathers in my eyes shut tight. With my heard whirling in divine torture the control fades again. I am close I tell myself, I am finally going to achieve. I will win.

But my body slams into the cupboard and a pot of spaghetti crashes onto the ground, a plate shatters across the tile in a shattering rendezvous and sprints in every direction. Footsteps pound down the stairs, lips and teeth and tongue scream bloody murder, the blare of the ambulance rings through the silence. Reality like a tidal wave collides into my chest.

I can not fucking die.

Months are spent trying hopelessly to swallow the overbearing truth, the lump in my throat that will never disappear, the fat ass elephant in the room that is my life. The burnt orange couch under me, I cross my legs and then uncross them and then re-cross them again. The waiting game is too long. My virtue is no more. I want to die.

Dr. Chernobyl yells progress, Mother pats the back of the good son, the lies spill too easy. I am lost. Where is my Google? Where is my philosophy? Where is my mug?

Then I met Doug.