Letters To Jane
A Suicide Note From Jane
11:37 P.M.
Jane put pen to paper.
To whomever it may concern:
If you're reading this, I've attempted suicide. I hope I've succeeded. God knows I should have tried to kill myself years ago.
I don't blame anyone for this. My death is my own decision. In truth, I think dying young is much preferable to growing old. I won't have to see my body grow ever more decrepit with age or know that peculiar heartache that comes with seeing everyone I ever gave a shit about die before me.
Once upon a time, someone told me they were scared of dying. I didn't understand it then, and I don't really understand it now. I'm not scared of dying. I'm a little bit scared of what comes after, and I'm scared of growing old, and I'm scared of what happens if my suicide attempt is unsuccessful.
As I write this, I feel like I'm going to be doomed to failure. My life will waste away in this tiny little town that nobody cares about. I'll amount to nothing here. Doesn't that scare the shit out of you? That you might be doomed to be just another loser who's still working as a cashier at The Reject Store ten years after you've finished high school?
It scares me. I think it should scare you, too. I'm fifteen years old and I fear that's going to be me. Everyone keeps beating it into me that I can't be that person. But what if I do end up being her? What if I'm not good enough to be anything other than that person?
I won't pretend that this is the only reason I want to die. I've wanted to die for so long that I don't even remember why I originally wanted to die. Maybe the reasons why don't matter anymore.
I think there's a part of me that's always been this way. God only knows the number of letters I've written just like this one that have started "I've long since lost count of the number how many of these I've written" or something like that.
I've written so many of these that they've become their own special form of catharsis. Writing a suicide note is more addicting than anything else I've ever done. It's more addictive than self harm; it's more addictive than cigarettes. If I could bottle up the feeling I get from writing notes like these, I could be rich.
But that's the thing, isn't it? I've become so addicted to writing notes like these that I've forgotten that they're meaningless if I don't fucking die afterwards. They have less meaning than my life.
I've wanted to die for so long I don't remember why I originally wanted to die. It's like it was some vague notion I've always had that I eventually learned the vocabulary to describe. Maybe one day I'll have the words to describe the clarity that comes with having learned the word suicide, or having first heard the lines, "Well Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die / But I'm a little bit scared of what comes after."
Maybe there's a part of me that's always wanted to die is what I'm saying. Maybe it just took me twelve or thirteen years or so to learn to articulate it. And maybe, just maybe, the greatest act of self restraint has been to not kill myself over the last few years.
For me now, it's like I've been spiritually a zombie for a long time. It's gotten to the point where my physical death is going to be just a formality.
There's a part of me that wants to be angry for every minor grievance that I've ever had with anyone. That's the part of me that wants to make this letter sound so angry and accusatory that it'd be burned by the first person to read it once they got through the first few paragraphs. (Bold of me to assume it won't happen anyway, isn't it?)
That would be unfair though, wouldn't it? My grievances with others might just be minor ones. While those grievances may have stoked the flames of my suicidal ideation, the fire itself was already burning.
I'm only mourning for the girl I once was and everything she could have been. Were the signs of my ideation so opaque that nobody noticed? Did I really mean so little to you people that it never even crossed your minds?
I suppose these are questions I'll never know the answers to.
Sincerely yours,
Jane.
Jane picked her pen up and read what she wrote.
"No," she whispered. "This isn't the perfect suicide note."
She scrunched it up and threw it into her drawers.
Jane put pen to paper.
To whomever it may concern:
If you're reading this, I've attempted suicide. I hope I've succeeded. God knows I should have tried to kill myself years ago.
I don't blame anyone for this. My death is my own decision. In truth, I think dying young is much preferable to growing old. I won't have to see my body grow ever more decrepit with age or know that peculiar heartache that comes with seeing everyone I ever gave a shit about die before me.
Once upon a time, someone told me they were scared of dying. I didn't understand it then, and I don't really understand it now. I'm not scared of dying. I'm a little bit scared of what comes after, and I'm scared of growing old, and I'm scared of what happens if my suicide attempt is unsuccessful.
As I write this, I feel like I'm going to be doomed to failure. My life will waste away in this tiny little town that nobody cares about. I'll amount to nothing here. Doesn't that scare the shit out of you? That you might be doomed to be just another loser who's still working as a cashier at The Reject Store ten years after you've finished high school?
It scares me. I think it should scare you, too. I'm fifteen years old and I fear that's going to be me. Everyone keeps beating it into me that I can't be that person. But what if I do end up being her? What if I'm not good enough to be anything other than that person?
I won't pretend that this is the only reason I want to die. I've wanted to die for so long that I don't even remember why I originally wanted to die. Maybe the reasons why don't matter anymore.
I think there's a part of me that's always been this way. God only knows the number of letters I've written just like this one that have started "I've long since lost count of the number how many of these I've written" or something like that.
I've written so many of these that they've become their own special form of catharsis. Writing a suicide note is more addicting than anything else I've ever done. It's more addictive than self harm; it's more addictive than cigarettes. If I could bottle up the feeling I get from writing notes like these, I could be rich.
But that's the thing, isn't it? I've become so addicted to writing notes like these that I've forgotten that they're meaningless if I don't fucking die afterwards. They have less meaning than my life.
I've wanted to die for so long I don't remember why I originally wanted to die. It's like it was some vague notion I've always had that I eventually learned the vocabulary to describe. Maybe one day I'll have the words to describe the clarity that comes with having learned the word suicide, or having first heard the lines, "Well Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die / But I'm a little bit scared of what comes after."
Maybe there's a part of me that's always wanted to die is what I'm saying. Maybe it just took me twelve or thirteen years or so to learn to articulate it. And maybe, just maybe, the greatest act of self restraint has been to not kill myself over the last few years.
For me now, it's like I've been spiritually a zombie for a long time. It's gotten to the point where my physical death is going to be just a formality.
There's a part of me that wants to be angry for every minor grievance that I've ever had with anyone. That's the part of me that wants to make this letter sound so angry and accusatory that it'd be burned by the first person to read it once they got through the first few paragraphs. (Bold of me to assume it won't happen anyway, isn't it?)
That would be unfair though, wouldn't it? My grievances with others might just be minor ones. While those grievances may have stoked the flames of my suicidal ideation, the fire itself was already burning.
I'm only mourning for the girl I once was and everything she could have been. Were the signs of my ideation so opaque that nobody noticed? Did I really mean so little to you people that it never even crossed your minds?
I suppose these are questions I'll never know the answers to.
Sincerely yours,
Jane.
Jane picked her pen up and read what she wrote.
"No," she whispered. "This isn't the perfect suicide note."
She scrunched it up and threw it into her drawers.