Sorry To Bother You

(note: not an actual suicide note)

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now so I don’t want you to think that I just walked off and simply got the idea from something I saw or something I met in those few moments on my way to the water fountain that touched me deeply enough to make me do something like this. This act was the result of many hours of heavy contemplation, and I believe that, while it may not be the only path I can take, it is the best.

There are a few things I suppose I will regret. Sadly though, none of them are things I might be able to change. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to do anything to help Max. I wish the odor that had filled my head hadn’t been enough to make me lose Kiowa. I wish I would have told Sally how I felt about her before it was already too late. However, all of that is in the past now; there’s nothing I can do about it. Max and Kiowa are dead and Sally is married. I suppose I should be contented by the fact that she’s happy. Wishing that she’d be happier with me is selfish, but I still wish it were true. Many nights I consider what it would be like if she was right there along side me in my truck, cruising along, just the two of us, not a care in the world. She would be a much better conversationalist than the six cans of beer that occupy the passenger seat on most evenings.

I’m sorry for troubling you with this; I really don’t mean to. I just had to get a few of my thoughts out before it was too late. I don’t want you to think I’m just bellyaching about my life, it’s been a good one. I’ve gone out; I’ve seen the world, seen war, death, friendship. I’ve experienced a multitude of feelings, some of which other people will never get the chance to feel. I’ve felt the sting of loss, more than once in fact. Max, Kiowa, they’re gone, both drowned. Perhaps I should drown myself, have the lives of the three of us meet our own respective fates through the same medium. It would almost suggest some kind of universal causation, wouldn’t it? But, no, that style of irony is beyond me, I’ll keep my death simple, hopefully something that can be carried out, then quickly cleaned up and forgotten.

Now, I’d like for nobody to think that they caused me to do this; there has not been a single person who has led me to believe that this is the path for me to take. I’d like to thank my mother and father, you helped me a lot during these last few months since I got back from the war. Everyone here has been very supportive of me, I just don’t seem to be able to assimilate back in to modern society. War has just inhibited me from easing my fit back in to the mold that normal life presents to us.

I’ve tried to find a way around what I’m about to do, there just isn’t one. I’ve tried to support my parents, or at least get to a point where I can support myself, and worry about repaying my parents for all they’ve done, but I haven’t been able to hold down a job for more than ten weeks since I returned. School is just so pointless and irrelevant to anything that I’ve experienced in my life that I can’t bring myself to accept it as a legitimate means of improving the state of my life.

I don’t imagine my death will be too difficult, human life is so fragile. There are those of us who like to think we’re tough. We’re not though. Death is just such a simple thing, much simpler than life. I imagine I’ll be able to go without too much trouble, Kiowa didn’t seem to have much trouble with it. He just slowly drifted away, sank slowly into the field, drowning in the remnants of humanity. I could have saved him, I know I could’ve. It would have gotten me the Silver Star if I had, But then, where would I be now? The same place, probably. Lingering along my elliptical pathway, constantly moving but not really going anywhere.

I am worried about where I’ll end up when I die. That is, assuming I end up anywhere at all. I was raised to believe that up above me is a loving God that will take me in and shelter me in Heaven. Of course I may also be damned to Hell, in which, considering the nature of my sins, I’ll be placed, standing, in a large field of men and women who have committed similar sins and will, while paralyzed and unable to move, have my arms and other bones broken and mangled. Of course, who’s to say that there even is a God, or that there even is a Hell? Perhaps I’ll die and death will be the simple end of life, nothing further. My being will simply cease to exist and the world will carry on without me, unchanged, not caring about the fact that a single living entity has met its end.

I’ve thought about the issue a lot. Is there a God? Did some higher being place us here to carry out our duties to him like bees to their queen? Even though we know full well that our master will be living long after we’ve fallen. Perhaps the whole idea of religion was created to comfort us, leading us to believe that something does happen to us after we die. Perhaps the human brain isn’t able to handle the feeling of not existing, and so creates scenarios in which we all carry on our meager existences in some way shape or form, even after our bodies begin to decay. Catholicism, Judaism, and the Muslim faith all teach us that we will receive immortality in heaven. The Buddhist faith teaches us that we go through reincarnation until we achieve enlightenment. Hinduism simply teaches us that we are reborn over and over, the universe recycles our souls, transplanting them in to other beings at birth based on how ethically we have lived our previous life. How can we possibly say that one of these is better than the other? With all these arguments, how can we possibly conclude that any one of them is right? Maybe they’re all wrong. Perhaps, after we die, we do simply stop living, and our consciousness ceases to exist.

This meager life I’ve taken up since I returned just seems to me to be the same day lived over and over, with each day being only a slight variation on the last. There’s no one out there who seems to have any form of remote interest in my story, my failure. I sit in my Chevy, drifting along, letting my life drift away with the time. Why prolong the process? The conclusion will be the same, regardless of any feeble amount of effort I put in on my part to change the course of my life, which has become so based on routine that I’ve become trapped in my own loop with no way out. I may as well end it here.

A Corner of the Cloak essay

Both “A Corner of the Cloak” by Brian Doyle and “The Word” by Pablo Neruda use generally grim imagery and similes, along with several abstract metaphors, to describe how amazing and unique human life can be, and that nobody can fully understand its majestic hypnotic nature.

In “The Word” the author discusses the creation of the spoken word and how the first language, which would have allowed a species to be far more organized than any other, would have sent ripples out into the environment. It uses metaphors such as “words give ... blood to the blood and give life to life” to explain that human life, complemented by language, is a strange yet beautiful occurrence. Because of the accompaniment of language the human race has been able to evolve at a much faster rate than any other species ever has before on this planet.

In “A Corner Of The Cloak” Brian Doyle uses a very unique writing style to describe many of the random events that he has experienced in his life. The author starts off very broad, with a tone that suggests that he is in awe of his subject. However, the subject of his work isn’t quite evident until he starts with “for example,” and begins to tell his story. While he does hint at an ultimate coherence relating to life in the beginning his true intentions are made evident towards the end, after he has told his, incredibly detailed and nearly scientifically analyzed, story. Through his euphemistic phrases, such as “completes the life cycle of,” and gruesome similes, like “peels the squirrel like a banana,” he conveys a very interesting series of events that show that life truly is a “magical machine,” and that, no matter how much time one spends examining it, they can never truly understand this “endless thicket” of life.