Running to Stand
Still
(Title stolen from U2,
obviously…..)
We all know some people who didn’t make it out of life alive. People who commit suicide evoke certain reactions from others that range from rage to pity. But there is a category that no one ever likes to speak of, or even consider. What about the ones for whom it was the best choice?
Suicide is classified by those who haven’t felt it before as a “permanent solution to a temporary problem.” We’re not supposed to go this route because things can always get better. Hell, that’s what TV tells us, it’s what our parents tell us, and it’s what those leeches on society called psychiatrists tell us.
Enter a sixteen-year-old girl. Let’s call her Marla. I knew her when I was fifteen, she was seventeen. She’d had it rough to that point. The victim of three violent rapes, and one father who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, to put it lightly. Social Services at this point had completely failed to take care of her, even when she went running to them at the tender age of fourteen because her father had been using her for two years.
Marla didn’t have a violent bone in her body. She was quiet, she was intelligent as hell, and she had this haunted look in her eyes, a thousand yard stare that would pierce you if you looked at her for too long. She was beautiful. Brunette, almost black hair. Green eyes. Voice like an angel.
We met at a place where they put troubled teens. Teens who have tried to commit suicide. It was one of those “feel-good” camps where the counsellor’s entire existence was to turn every single one of us into a conforming model of society so that we would just blend into the background, becoming part of the hum of streetlights and neon. There were six of us who saw right through that shit. Each of us was unique. Each of us was smarter than this. And each of us had attempted suicide for roughly the same reason: we couldn’t see a future for us.
It was a time that changed all of our lives. Marla was there. So were a few others whom I don’t care to name. By the time we all left there, we knew that we would all stick together. Retrospectively, after this story happened, I sort of moved away from this group. Actually, from what I understand, all of us did. But that’s another story, and it honestly never occurred to me until just now, that we parted ways because of this.
Marla was an intense person. She knew more about the underside of life by the time she was seventeen than most people will ever know. As I said, she was haunted. She was almost totally unable to be intimate with someone, she could barely stand to hug someone. It was probably the worst case of abuse I have ever seen in my life (though there is one other that I’ve found that was similar.) She was there because she got sick of being rented out, and had attempted to take her own life. Unfortunately, her father found her, and managed to get the paramedics there in time to save her.
Now, at this time, there was a law that stated that any attempted suicide had to be treated; there was no way around it. The camp was free, at least, paid for by social services. And for some reason, the counsellors weren’t interested in trying to figure out WHY we were there, they only wanted to make sure that we knew that they were “our friends.” Well,
Sparky, let me tell you, my friends are people whom I choose for various reasons. And never once has a counsellor been on that list.
By the time she had hit fifteen, she was a solid drinker. She was a smoker. She had started in on the pot early, too, though I never found out when she started that. But then, I guess the buzz started wearing off on that, too. So she started in on needles.
I have to say right now, I don’t like needle drugs, nor needle drug users. She was hooked on junk by sixteen, and it had started wasting her away. During the camp, we took turns trying to keep her reasonably calm and sane while she had the shakes and the sweats. She honestly did try to go straight at that point. She hadn’t touched it for a week, maybe two. I don’t know; I never got that out of her.
The reason that I don’t like needle drugs is because of what they do to people. Sure, a lot of people sit in their living rooms, watching TV and seeing that drug use is up. Those same people figure that drug use is just something that can be fixed, avoided, or just plain stopped. Those same people have never known an addict. If it could be shot, snorted, smoked or swallowed, she did it. She knew it would kill her. But she wanted to die.
Her grades in school went to shit. You can’t even imagine how badly she did. She got suspended, then expelled, then she just never went back. She could see no future for herself because to her, there was no future. Her future was an endless line-up of tricks, needles and pain.
She broke under the strain of it during that camp. Few of us realized it, and fewer still knew what it meant. I think I did at the time, but I was still too young to understand the import of her calmness. She calmed right down. Became one with her “inner self” as the counsellors put it.
About a week after we were all released, she disappeared off the face of the planet. No one could find her, and unfortunately, not too many people were looking. No one seemed to think about her or care about the fact that she was still (in retrospect) obviously in distress. But her father didn’t see much of a need to find her, and threatened my life when I asked after her. I wasn’t welcome in their house.
One night, I get a phone call, about a month later. It’s Marla, and she’s asking me to meet her at her crash-pad. She’s sad, and she wants to take her life. But she didn’t want to do it alone, she wanted someone to be there. It would give her death meaning, she said.
I stole a car, drove like a madman to her address. It was in the worst part of town imaginable. I left the lifted vehicle on the street, knowing that within minutes, it would be gone. I ran up the stairs, and almost broke down her door knocking on it. She yelled that it was open, and I opened it carefully.
Her place was a mess of contradictions. Her bed was neat and tidy, even if it did consist of a mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag that was tattered and worn. There was garbage all over, except in the bedroom. There was dirt on the walls, on the windows, on the floor, in the air. It smelled like stale death, except for her; she had on a perfume that I can still recall. And she was dressed very nicely, hair done well, a touch of makeup to pronounce the features that were best on her face, or what was left of it.
She looked like an angel, the patron saint of the lost.
There were candles everywhere. The room was softly lit. She had a small table next to the mattress, and on it was a large needle, and a very large bag of junk. She turned on the radio, turned to look at me, and gave me a smile of honesty. A smile of warmth, of love.
What followed was an argument over whether or not she should commit suicide. I, of course, was saying she shouldn’t. Everyone should live their life to the fullest extent possible, everyone should be able to see it through. Her point was simple. Her point was that she didn’t have any future. I watched her cry it out, mascara running down her cheeks, the whole nine yards. But in the end, she always came back to the same point.
She was too sad to live.
I truly pray that you, the reader, will never know someone like this. To see a human being, a mind as beautiful as hers, consumed by sadness. I think I’d rather see someone get shot. Or run over. The surest sign of death was the deadness in her eyes.
Marla had been consumed by the sadness inflicted upon her by others. Not only did she suffer at the hands of her father and his “associates”, she suffered at the hands of others, too. She suffered at the hands of drug dealers, pimps, government authorities who should’ve helped, but didn’t. She suffered, finally, at the hands of herself, guilt-ridden for things that weren’t her fault, or couldn’t have been any other way.
God help me.
I actually agreed.
You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear someone argue you into agreeing with them that suicide is the best option. Marla knew that she’d never be anything but a drain on society, and she didn’t think that was fair.
Fair.
I think of people that sit on welfare now, and bitch about how the government doesn’t give them enough money. I rage. I see red. I lost a good friend so that they could sit there, on social assistance.
Fair.
I don’t think she even valued her life enough to see that she could still help others, even if as a deterrent. That, or she saw that through her death, she could do better.
I watched her prepare the needle, with what appeared to me to be a lot of heroin. She was calm, didn’t even have the shakes as she drew the drug up into the syringe. With remarkable dexterity she tied the rubber band off on her arm, and was getting ready to inject it. I took it from her at that moment.
The minute or so that passed between us was the longest minute I’d ever felt. I could’ve stopped her there, I could’ve “saved” her. But at that time, it occurred to me that not everyone can or should be “saved”. Marla was suffering from sad sickness. She’d likely never be happy. I considered my options, to the best of my abilities. And I came to only one conclusion: I had to inject it for her.
I’d never done it before, but it was remarkable how easy it was to insert the needle, and get it into the vein that she had pointed out to me. I looked her in the eyes, my vision blurred by tears, and saw tears in her eyes. I said to her, “Last chance.”
“Do it, “ she said.
I pushed the plunger down on the needle. I can remember exactly how it looked, through the tears, as the drug rushed into her system. She looked up at me, as she took the band off her arm. She brushed the back of her hand down my cheek, and said “I love you.”
I couldn’t say anything. I was wracked with sobs and grief. I held her, as her body started to realize it was in trouble. Her eyes were still relaxed, full of coherent sadness, as she whispered “thank you.”
Her eyes looked into space, defocused. The last words she said were “it’s beautiful.”
I let her go. I lay her down gently, almost afraid of hurting her.
I stayed.
I stayed until the last breath had left her body, rattling the way that death does. She was my friend, my secret lover, for such a short time. Maybe I could’ve saved her, could’ve done something different. But I didn’t. I did what I thought was right.
It was a long time before I left. But I blew out all of the candles, left the shabby apartment, and walked for hours. I finally stopped at a pay phone and called for an ambulance.
She never even got a footnote mention in the newspaper.
Years later, I sit here writing this thinking about her, and astonished that I’m willing to write these words. I feel her spirit with me sometimes, but whether it’s actually her, or my guilty conscience, well, I’ll leave that up to whatever power there is out there. I am at peace with it. So is she.
I am not a Christian. I don’t particularly believe in the concepts of “Heaven” and “Hell”. The only hell I’ve ever seen is that which we inflict upon each other. But if it is the way that things work, according to that faith, a suicide goes to hell. I know Marla was a Christian. And she didn’t commit suicide. I killed her.
I’m listening to the song “Die Born” by Days of the New. I don’t know why, but for some reason I actually feel her sitting there next to me, fifteen years ago, smiling, laughing. Her hair flicks back from her face, her eyes afire with the light of a soul burning brightly enough to act as a beacon for others to follow when they’re lost. She turns those eyes to me, gazes deep into my soul.
And she forgives me.
Marla, wherever you are: thank you.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that it took me so long to get it written. I wanted to make sure that I could do you justice.