The Journal of Oedipus

Suicide and Exile

Scribe:21300001

Jocasta, my mother and wife. Her body lifeless, her neck snapped. Her skin pale, cold. There she hung, from the middle of the room. She had ended her life, rather than live with the embarassment and guilt which filled her with the discovery of my completion of the prophecy. I, the King of Thebes, had brought my own mother to send herself to the underworld, with my search for the answers, to maintain my honour and pride. If only I had stopped seeking the truth, she would still be, living, breathing, her heart still beating in her chest.

Guilt consumed my own soul when I saw her hanging, her feet above the floor. I took the pins from her dress, and I, Oedipus, stabbed them through my own eyes. Now I only have to live with what I have brought upon the people I care most of, and not see their misery and pain. Why should someone like me deserve to see anyway. 

Arrogance is what I should rename my pride. Confidence in my own ability to solve any riddle, any problem, and disbelief in the prophecy, brought me to this point. I ordered Creon to exile me from the city, as I proclaimed, that the killer of King Laius, and the bringer of the plague, would be exiled and banished from the lands of Thebes, I must serve that punishment, left to wander Greece for the remainder of my days, blind. 

By trying to escape the fate the Gods had laid before me, I had ran straight into its jaws. By running from who I believed to be my mother and father, I ran to my true parents, stabbed one through the heart, and drove the other one into complete guilt and disgust. I should've never doubted the prophecy, never tried to challenge it. But now, now I must wander, no longer as Oedipus the King, but Oedipus the Blind, the one who fulfilled the prophecy he tried so hard to escape, and the stories will tell, of my most utter misfortune.