Before the Rain

Fifteen: Mutally Assured Self-Destruction

Sorry for the slow updates I've been oddly busy for the past week.

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I'm not entirely sure how I ended up in my father's office; the day not particularly wasting away as it usually appeared to, yet here I was.

I've been sitting in front of his marble-topped desk with one of the wooden drawers toppled over its hinges. Inside of the drawer just so happened to contain a small yet dense in weight object covered by a red blanket. The unfortunate curiosity got the better of myself as I slowly unwrapped the object.

My breath caught in my throat in such a terribly exciting way, the intrusive rush of adrenaline consuming myself. I held the cool metal with my left hand up into the blue reflecting out of the windows. It was evening now, naturally the horizon now a soft blue and gray palette began to flood the dark arm quite generously. My index and middle finger pressed up against the center generating an alarming clicking sound.

I dropped the metal on the ground and glanced around the room quite frantically. Auspiciously, no one was bursting into my father's office questioning my motives. Or rather desperately restraining myself from doing whatever the fuck I wanted.

After the brutal and unreconcilable realization of my actions, I rewrapped the arm inside of the red blanket and carried it off towards my room.

I placed the red blanket underneath my  lamp stand in mind that my mother would not think to clean or even have a pressing matter to check under there.

With the red self-emancipation object as another means of a way out at my convenience, I collapsed onto my bed. The dangerous thoughts of Adam Olivas and the reassurance of my own death carrying myself off into sleep.

❧

"May I ask you a personal question now?" Nuygen, the relentless student councilor, inquired myself.

I brought my feet together to cross at the ankles, in no way could I prepare myself for whatever blanching imperative she just has to ask myself.

Nonetheless, I nod.

She beams in such an obviously ostensible way; or at least it appeared so, "What were you feeling the moments right before you attempted to take your own life?"

I quietly scoff at her choice of words. You know what I was feeling? Do you so desperately want to know? Because perhaps it isn't the goddamn answer you were particularly hoping for. I was feeling pure and entirely shameless
bliss. I was actually okay with everything, including myself, in that moment. Yet everyone claims that that is not the way about how I should live my life, let alone everyone else's. The irrationality of my statement is clear, I am aware, yet is it really so? I am really not to be considered depressed, when in actuality I am the happiest whenever I so much as think of my very own ending. Why does everyone have to be like everyone else? Why does happy exist? More importantly, why are others putting standards on what defines their "healthy" and "appropriate" version of happy? I must succumb to these standards, it's the way of the fucking world. That's part of the reason why I so desperately want to leave it. But I am still here. And of course, as almost all of my thoughts end up centered around the one and only, Adam Olivas.

"I don't really know."

She hums a disappointing sigh, "Regret, maybe?"

Definitely anything but regret, but of course anyone with that kind of outlook would resort to such a comforting conclusion.

The truth was, I never quite regretted anything I'd ever done, besides letting myself go under Adam, and even that was not something I had decided quickly. Everything was careful and somewhat incredibly safe and boring; my anxiety kept myself in check in that way. Regardless of what I was doing, insignificant or not, it was always something never going without consideration. I enjoyed the control, whenever I didn't necessarily want to die, I would always attempt to seize as much as I possibly could. And I guess that kind of control also came from the responsibility of your own death.