Becoming Nothing

I sat on the armchair in Trent’s room, watching him lie in bed, propped up against the headboard, laptop on his lap. We’d spent so many nights like this, reading Twitter and giggling at YouTube videos. He couldn’t see me, of course. I knew he was sad. I knew everything now. So I also knew he’d move on.

My father took my suicide the hardest. He would never be the same. He would go to work and go to church and go to the Elks Club meetings as if he was. But he would never be. I knew that before I killed myself though.

My mother, of course, did all the right things. She went to a bereavement group. She found a therapist. She spoke to local youth groups because she thought it would make a difference. Also because a tiny part of her enjoyed the sympathy she got, the compliments about how brave and how strong she was. She felt like she deserved that for what I had done to her.

My sister was angry. She’d always been resentful of me. Outwardly, she was sympathetic to my long history of depression, but, even when I was alive, I could sense that it was a veneer of concern and understanding. Now, she was as dutiful as she could manage but to her husband she raged about me and how I had finally ruined everything, just like I always wanted. She had always thought I was selfish, that I was self-centered, that I got a bit more attention from our parents. I knew now that wasn’t true. It was a hell of a price to pay to discover it.

My friends responded in various ways. My best friend didn’t blame anyone. She knew I was in pain and, late at night, she hoped I was at peace now. I was, but I couldn’t tell her that, of course. Some friends posted on Facebook about me being in a better place. Others donated to a local suicide prevention hotline.

Most of my colleagues were shocked. They all came to my funeral.

You learn everything when you die. All of the secrets people kept from you. Where your childhood dog really went when he ran away. How your mother secretly pitied you for not being as pretty as she was in her youth. How genuinely proud your father was of you. You learn more than just secrets though. You learn what truly makes an individual a complete human being. How emotions work. How dark matter works. Why soda erupts violently when you place Mentos in it. If there is a god.

Trent was angry at himself for not seeing just how much pain I was carrying. And he was sad. But mostly, he was upset that he wasn’t upset enough. The day he got the news, he was devastated. That night, as he fell asleep, he knew he would move on. And that was devastating in its own way. I asked him what he was watching. I knew what was on the screen. Or, rather, I could know, but I didn’t feel the need to know. He looked up and his eyes focused on me. He rubbed them, in this way that he always did, forcefully with the back of his hand, and stared. I was still there. But he couldn’t see me. He felt something. A prickly feeling on his neck. A slight pressure on his chest. He couldn’t understand that I was there. He put his laptop away and then got up and walked to the bathroom. I could hear him taking a piss. He didn’t wash his hands. He turned off the light and got back into bed.

I became nothing.