Status: FYI: two chapters posted March 20; COMPLETED
Do Not Resuscitate
Prologue
I decided to kill myself on a Tuesday.
It wasn’t even some mind-blowing, earthshaking decision. One minute, I was lying in bed, trying not to cry like a whiny bitch, the next, I was thinking about how much better off the world would be without me, how fragile the human body really is, how easy it would be to just… die.
And I realized I wanted to die.
I should have been scared. I should have cried and fought and told my mom, who was at work anyway so she would have been no help, not that she would have been any help to begin with. I should have been shocked. I should have told myself that I’m not like the student from the seminar Monday, the one who took a gun to his head and splattered his brains all over his driveway, the one who everyone mourned even though no one knew his goddamn name. I don’t know why I didn’t do those things, at least for a minute or two to say I put up a good fight against the inevitable.
Instead, everything calmed. The whole world slowed down, the weight lifted off my shoulders, I had this startling moment of clarity. I was going to die, and everything was going to be okay.
It was magnificent.
I don’t remember a time I ever felt that calm, that okay, that light. I’d found a solution to my existence. I was going to fix the mistake my parents made, the one they didn’t fix when they had the chance. They’d be so proud if they knew.
Not initially, of course, but eventually, they’ll see that I did this for them. They’d just have to get over the shock of finding me, of rushing me to the hospital, of realizing it’s too late to save me from death because I’ll be gone, floating away to nothingness, returning to the factory that created a defective product. Dead.
I’m giddy just thinking about it.
I was going to do it right then and there. Tears still dramatically resting on my lashes, a suicide note reassuring my parents that this wasn’t their fault set on my bedside table, I was going to grab my mom’s sleeping pills and take them all. Every single one. I was prepared for it. The stomach pains, the vomiting, and the hallucinations associated with overdoses. I was ready to hurt. I deserved to hurt. I’ve been on a path to self-destruction for years, taking razors to my skin, refusing to allow myself meals, forcing myself to vomit in the name of punishment.
I had the bottle of pills in my hand, was struggling with the safety lock, tears dribbling from my eyes, because damn, I’m melodramatic, when I realized sleeping pills would be too easy. A few hours of pain and then, it’d be over. No, I deserved something worse. I deserved a death that dragged on painfully for weeks until I finally died.
Which is why I haven’t eaten in a week.
Death by starvation. I’ll waste away to nothing. By the end, I’ll be bedridden, and everyone will be too busy to notice. I wonder what will fail first. My organs. My heart. My brain. Everything all at once. I already feel like I’m halfway there. I hurt so much. Walking down the hall to the bathroom takes all of my energy. I haven’t done any homework because I can’t seem to stay awake long enough to do it. And going to school, ha, that’s a joke. I didn’t go yesterday. I didn’t go today. I’m not going tomorrow.
Not that anyone’s noticed I’m skipping. They call to tell my mom I’m not there. The school, that is. They like to rat students out for skipping. Too bad for them Mom isn’t here. Mom’s never here. She’s busy plotting her corporate takeover, spending nights at the office, like always. They could try getting ahold of Dad if they wanted but he lives in a different house, fifteen minutes away, with his wife and kid, and what is he going to do about me skipping classes at the fancy private school his child support pays for when I don’t live with him? Nothing.
No one is going to do anything.
No one is going to stop me.
And when I finally do die, they’ll give me a large headstone engraved with cupid angels and vines and big, flourishing words that say:
Dannilynn Sanders (1998-2014). Thank you.
It wasn’t even some mind-blowing, earthshaking decision. One minute, I was lying in bed, trying not to cry like a whiny bitch, the next, I was thinking about how much better off the world would be without me, how fragile the human body really is, how easy it would be to just… die.
And I realized I wanted to die.
I should have been scared. I should have cried and fought and told my mom, who was at work anyway so she would have been no help, not that she would have been any help to begin with. I should have been shocked. I should have told myself that I’m not like the student from the seminar Monday, the one who took a gun to his head and splattered his brains all over his driveway, the one who everyone mourned even though no one knew his goddamn name. I don’t know why I didn’t do those things, at least for a minute or two to say I put up a good fight against the inevitable.
Instead, everything calmed. The whole world slowed down, the weight lifted off my shoulders, I had this startling moment of clarity. I was going to die, and everything was going to be okay.
It was magnificent.
I don’t remember a time I ever felt that calm, that okay, that light. I’d found a solution to my existence. I was going to fix the mistake my parents made, the one they didn’t fix when they had the chance. They’d be so proud if they knew.
Not initially, of course, but eventually, they’ll see that I did this for them. They’d just have to get over the shock of finding me, of rushing me to the hospital, of realizing it’s too late to save me from death because I’ll be gone, floating away to nothingness, returning to the factory that created a defective product. Dead.
I’m giddy just thinking about it.
I was going to do it right then and there. Tears still dramatically resting on my lashes, a suicide note reassuring my parents that this wasn’t their fault set on my bedside table, I was going to grab my mom’s sleeping pills and take them all. Every single one. I was prepared for it. The stomach pains, the vomiting, and the hallucinations associated with overdoses. I was ready to hurt. I deserved to hurt. I’ve been on a path to self-destruction for years, taking razors to my skin, refusing to allow myself meals, forcing myself to vomit in the name of punishment.
I had the bottle of pills in my hand, was struggling with the safety lock, tears dribbling from my eyes, because damn, I’m melodramatic, when I realized sleeping pills would be too easy. A few hours of pain and then, it’d be over. No, I deserved something worse. I deserved a death that dragged on painfully for weeks until I finally died.
Which is why I haven’t eaten in a week.
Death by starvation. I’ll waste away to nothing. By the end, I’ll be bedridden, and everyone will be too busy to notice. I wonder what will fail first. My organs. My heart. My brain. Everything all at once. I already feel like I’m halfway there. I hurt so much. Walking down the hall to the bathroom takes all of my energy. I haven’t done any homework because I can’t seem to stay awake long enough to do it. And going to school, ha, that’s a joke. I didn’t go yesterday. I didn’t go today. I’m not going tomorrow.
Not that anyone’s noticed I’m skipping. They call to tell my mom I’m not there. The school, that is. They like to rat students out for skipping. Too bad for them Mom isn’t here. Mom’s never here. She’s busy plotting her corporate takeover, spending nights at the office, like always. They could try getting ahold of Dad if they wanted but he lives in a different house, fifteen minutes away, with his wife and kid, and what is he going to do about me skipping classes at the fancy private school his child support pays for when I don’t live with him? Nothing.
No one is going to do anything.
No one is going to stop me.
And when I finally do die, they’ll give me a large headstone engraved with cupid angels and vines and big, flourishing words that say:
Dannilynn Sanders (1998-2014). Thank you.