The rare prose piece from back before this blog focused on poetry. – Owen
I can still clearly picture the events of that day.
It was a little after lunch when they sent me home from work. It was April, beautiful and bright where I lived, just a hundred yards are so from the white sands of the northwest Florida beaches. I came in to the apartment and put some food and water down for my cat. The beautiful calico stood up on the edge of my dresser for me to pet her as I removed the keys and wallet from my pockets.
I went from there to the medicine cabinet, where I had filled two bottles with sleeping pills, each carefully removed from their individual wrappers for this day’s use. I left no note; I didn’t care. The world was only nothingness, and into nothingness I would go.
After swallowing as many as I could without throwing up, I lay down like Socrates waiting for the potion to work its magic. I put music on as my cat stood on my headboard looking down on me with pity:
The blinds were drawn: I lived alone, no one (except the landlord) had a key to the place. My parents lived twenty miles away and we often went weeks without calling. I had no girlfriend and all my close friends had moved away. I was sick: I’d been sick for years and I was tired of being alone.
I would say I was tired of feeling like I deserved to be alone, but the truth is, I felt nothing whatsoever. No anger, no regret, no … nothing. I felt nothing.
Like the singers in the choral music piece playing at the time, I asked God (who I didn’t believe in) to have mercy on my soul.
And the world went dark…