An exercise from long ago : TAKING MELODRAMA TO ELEVEN: Part One

(This is a guilty, self-indulgent pleasure. You think it. I broadcast it. )

Part One : WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO DO SOMETIMES, IF THERE WERE NO CONSEQUENCES TO CONSIDER, TO SHOW EVERYONE THAT I AM NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH (When wronged, or I FEEL like I was wronged) :

I fantasize about ending my own life. I want them to KNOW how serious I was, and how WRONG they were. I want to die and dry up and turn to dust and blow away and fly into their eyes to sting and scratch them, I would find satisfaction finally, that I would know it was *I* causing them discomfort, while they had no idea.

I would like to end my own life by ceasing to eat entirely, just stop. I would become first smaller, and then thin, and then a few friends would notice and ask me if everything was okay, and then maybe become concerned or scared, and they may call my mother, who may visit me and begin to cry, and I would have to promise to start eating again soon, I would promise her, but I would be lying.

Around the time I began to feel faint whenever I stood up, I would go away on a trip to where nobody knew me, I would pay for this trip with the money earned from selling all of my most important and treasured belongings, all of my things, in the month or two prior to buying a one-way ticket to the seaside.

I may experience a tickle of doubt once there/here. I may see the beauty of the crashing waves upon the rocks along the shore, or the endless promise and possibility of the distant horizon, maybe there is a girl working at the post office where I send my postcards - to be routed through another destination before their stamps are canceled, their recipients never really aware of where they came from - This girl; young, beautiful, kind, understanding me more than she should, almost convinces me (effortlessly, without being aware that she does) to stay here in this world, not to give up. BUT, there is some final insult cast, an event, or, tragic misunderstanding that re-enforces my original desire to exit this smorgasboard of disappointment.

The local people do not know me. None but the girl care that I look sick and weak.

I will give what is left of my money to a needy and deserving acquaintance back home.

Once I notice I have trouble breathing and begin to lose my perfect eyesight - everyday foggy and blurred now - I buy a small boat. I buy a small boat that I find tied to a local pier, with a FOR SALE sign affixed to it with a phone number and email address, I buy this small boat without ever having to meet this previous owner of the small boat. I buy this small boat with an outboard engine, and I buy two five-gallon gas cans which I have filled with gasoline, and I must ask for help to load these into my boat, as I have become too weak to carry them by myself by this time.

FINALLY, in late afternoon on an Autumn day in this coastal town, I manage to pull hard enough on the rope to start the engine of my tiny boat. I manage to finally start the engine of my tiny boat, and as all the other boats - the fishing boats and the sailboats, and the much bigger boats head into this little harbor - I will pass them on my way out, my tiny boat jostled in the wake of these other boats, rudely lifted and then dropped, again and again, as I aim my tiny boat with the little bit of consciousness I have left, towards the distant horizon.

I will lift the bottle to my mouth once the sounds and sight of the shore are safely behind me. This will be the first time I have had a drink in months, and the liquid will burn my throat, now unaccustomed to substance of any serious intention. I understand this will be the last thing I ever drink. This thought reassures me.

My little boat steams on, now calmly across the flat brown water towards the spot where the sun will fall and extinguish itself in just a couple more hours. I will twist the throttle of my tiny boat's engine a little bit more to accelerate, racing the sun to that understood definite point straight ahead of us.