365
January (2014)
Janice Hargreaves was the first person to notice a body falling from the sky. At 58 years old, she'd never seen anybody die before; after that night, she hoped she never would again. She wasn't a nurse or a doctor, so there wasn't anything she could do but look on in horror. She couldn't stop looking, in fact. Despite the ugliness of the scene, despite the blood and the pink flesh and the splinters of bone, she literally couldn't tear her eyes away. It's funny because I'd been up on the rooftop for several minutes, but she didn't look up until it was too late. If she'd looked up slightly earlier, she might have shouted:
'Don't do it!'
And those three words might have been enough.
Official date of death: 01/01/14. Official time of death: 00:00:37am. This provided a further blow for Janice, as she'd always considered 37 to be her favourite number. Because of me, Janice's favourite number wasn't 37 anymore.
January (2013)
'So, if I could just go through the main details one final time... At approximately what time did the incident take place?'
'Just after midnight. We didn't get into the club we'd planned to spend the countdown in, so we were walking to a different club just off West Street.'
'And what's the first thing you remember?'
'Some big fucker jumped on me from behind. He shoved me forward onto the pavement, face first, and sort of sat on my back with his knees pushing into my shoulder blades. He told me to hand over my wallet or he'd stick a knife in my spine. Charming bloke.'
'And at this point, the friend you were with, a Mr Jay Phelps, he…' She stopped and averted her eyes from mine, busying herself in her notebook.
'Yes, he ran off. Without looking back. Ok? He left me to be mugged and God knows what else. I think we've been through that detail with a fine-toothed comb already, haven't we? Don't worry, I'm not going to nominate him for a 'Friend of the Year' award or anything.'
'Please try to remain calm, sir. We need to ensure we have all the details so that we have more chance of catching this man. What happened next?'
This, without a doubt, had to be my worst New Year ever. And, believe me, I've had my fair share of shit New Years.
Starting 2013 as the victim of a violent mugging: Check
Debilitating hangover: Check
Woke up alone: Check
Abandoned by best friend when attacked at knife-point: Check
Friends: See above
Job that I despise: Check
Girlfriend: Let's not even go there
I'd always found the process of setting a New Year's resolution pretty easy; the only part I found moderately difficult was deciding which exact area of my crappy life to focus on (and ultimately lose interest in fixing by February). The eventful New Year's Eve of 2012 made my choice easier in a way: I needed some new friends.
I heaved myself out of bed in search of coffee (hangover ritual: stage 1). Jay's clothes were strewn across the living room floor, which riled me instantly. When you live in a flat the size of a postage stamp, even the smallest amount of mess can induce claustrophobia. Despite having explained this idea to Jay, the dickhead still insisted on littering every inch of shared floor-space with his belongings.
I was pouring my coffee when I heard him on the stairs. The interior staircase leading up to the flat was black and metallic. Along with the slate-grey walls, the entrance hall didn't exactly make visitors feel welcome. Not that I cared. I didn't get many visitors. Unfortunately though, the metal stairs also meant that I could hear every single sound made on that staircase: the 'Diet Coke' couple from number 10 having an argument about whose turn it was to pay for the cocaine on which night; 'Old Shit' from number 8 tottering down with her irritating, yappy dog every night so that he could do his business outside our front door and she could pretend to be too old and decrepit to pick it up. I'd never bothered learning any of the neighbours' real names; they didn't seem like my kind of people. The 'Diet Coke' couple were probably both in their early thirties, but the fact that they spent 95% of their time high on some kind of substance meant they looked closer to fifty. I didn't see much of the woman but the guy was pretty terrifying. His skin was grey and sallow, and he had black bags under his eyes that were so big, he'd probably need to pay additional luggage allowance if he ever boarded a plane. Together, the two of them probably weighed about ten-stone, hence the 'Diet' part. As for 'Old Shit', well…her nickname was pretty straightforward.
I knew it was Jay coming up the stairs because of the footsteps. Weighing considerably more than anyone else in the building, his sound sort of carried. Also, he had to pause in between every seven or eight steps to catch his breath. Every time he stopped, you could hear this wheezing, panting sound - like one of those really old, slow, overweight dogs that only gets up off its fat backside to see what's in its bowl. He was livid when he first moved in and realised the building didn't have a lift. Not many other people would consider four floors to be 'lift-worthy'. My block was one of five multi-coloured towers that used to be council flats; that's why the rent was so cheap. I lived in the mucky brown one; that's why the rent was even cheaper. The one and only time Mum visited, she described the colour of it as 'burnt umber'. She was always doing that – trying to dress my life up so that it was less excruciating for her. It irritated me.
I could hear Jay gasping away at the top of the stairs. He seemed to be moving even more slowly than usual. I suppose you're unlikely to hurry if you're on the way to see someone who's just about ready to punch you in the face. I leaned against the hob, trying to decide exactly how honest to be about how much he'd pissed me off by leaving me for dead. Finally, the door swung open.
'Si? You home?' As I heard his voice, it suddenly struck me; I should've made sure I was out all day. In fact, I should've left the house for a few days and totally disappeared – turned off my phone - then he'd have been really worried. Then he'd have felt even worse about what he did. Hindsight is such a bastard sometimes. 'Oh, there you are.' Jay's cheeks flushed even deeper with the embarrassment of finding me in the kitchen. He'd probably been hoping to sneak in unnoticed and lock himself in his room until his guilty hangover cleared. 'So… How are you feeling?'
Hmmm, how am I feeling? Well, Jay, I'm feeling on top of the bloody world! I'm actually struggling to decide which part of last night was my favourite: the part where we couldn't get in anywhere for the midnight countdown because you were too drunk to stand up straight and had vomit on your t-shirt (which is still there, by the way); the part where an aggressive stranger pressed a knife against my back and stole my wallet and my watch; the part where my best mate ran off and left me to be attacked; or the part where I spent four hours in a police station answering the same inane questions over and over again.
'I've been better.'
'Look, man,' he started, pausing for breath before he could continue. He was still recovering from his stair-climbing expedition. 'I'm really sorry about last night.'
'No big deal,' I lied. 'I'm sure anyone else would've done the same.' Anyone else who is also a massive twat, that is.
'Yeah. Maybe. Are you in a lot of pain? Your lip looks pretty swollen.'
I shrugged. The truth was, I had taken so many painkillers when I'd returned from the police station that I wasn't really feeling anything other than the usual nauseous haze of a hangover.
'Do you want a bacon butty?' Bacon - hangover ritual: stage 2. He really must have been feeling guilty; he hadn't offered to make me so much as a cup of coffee since the day he'd moved in. I shook my head and left the room in silence, grabbing another handful of painkillers on my way out. Some people would've cracked at that point, would've told him that everything was OK and that he was forgiven. I was prepared to let him suffer at least a little longer.
I'd contemplated suicide before. Frequently. I'd even been online and researched the best methods, i.e. the ones with the highest fatality rating. To me, there was no point in trialling something like an overdose of pills when most reports showed it to have less than a 10% success rate. It made me wonder whether people who chose such methods were actually just pitifully seeking attention. Surely, if they were serious, they'd have picked a more successful method; that was just common sense. I'd never actually selected one particular method, but I had the top three memorised just in case.
The thought of suicide plagued me like a malignant boomerang; it would fade into the background for a while, sometimes for months at a time, but it would never go away entirely. It probably didn't help that I found the idea of ending it all so damn invigorating. I often found myself caught in a web of daydreams at work. Down one spine of the web, it would all end with BANG – brains on the wall. Down another spine, SPLAT – head on the pavement like a mouldy watermelon. Ironically, being able to cherry-pick the details of my own death was one of the only things that made me excited to be alive.
That night, I found myself pondering the subject once again. It might have been the thought of a whole new, empty year ahead of me that provoked me into finally voicing my ideas out loud. (On second thought, it was more likely the spliff Jay had left outside my bedroom door that afternoon as an apology.) I paddled tentatively into the shallow end. 'Do you ever get the feeling that you were destined to achieve something greater than you have?' Jay's eyes lingered on the television screen. Tonight's particularly thrilling episode of Coronation Street focused on the woes of that Gail Platt character. You know? The one whose face looks like a vacuum pack that's had all the air sucked out of it? She was prattling on about something clearly far more important to Jay than my problems. I continued, despite my awareness that it was probably more useful to discuss my philosophical musings on the meaning of life with a garden snail. 'I don't mean like suffering with delusions of grandeur; I mean going to University, spending thousands of pounds on your education and then working behind a till at Asda, even though you always dreamed of being an astronaut or, like, the big M.D. of a finance company.'
'Mmmm,' he responded. I'd like to say that I was receiving some acknowledgement, but I think he was just basking in the pleasure of his latest mouthful of Budweiser.
'Take me, for example,' I persevered, '£20,000 of University fees and aspiring visions of a career in journalism. That wasn't even an unrealistic aim! I mean, I'd always been pretty good at English. Yet, a few years later, where did I find myself? Working in a pub and opting to train as a teacher because I didn't know what else to do. All this after years and years of teachers, lecturers and other ignorant bloody adults filling my head with the idea that I could achieve anything if I got my head down and filled my exam results sheet with As and A*s? It's all bullshit!' I banged my fist adamantly on the sofa's stained arm.
'B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t,' Jay repeated, extending each syllable in the hope that his affirmation would shut me up so that he could continue his viewing in peace.
'I mean, no offence mate, but if I'm still sitting here this time next year, stoned and torn between watching Coronation Street or watching you stuff your face with Kettle Chips, belch and scratch your arse, then I really would rather be dead.' In fairness, after I'd said it, I realised it'd be pretty difficult for someone not to take offence to that.
'Yeah. Fair point,' he snorted, plunging his chubby fingers back into the family-sized pack of salt and vinegar. With that, I retired to bed with the deep-rooted frustration of a teenage boy who'd just been refused sex from a sure-thing prom date. My first attempt at telling my best friend I was planning to commit suicide hadn't gone entirely as planned. I needed to reassure myself that I was serious, so I drew up a little agreement. It took a little while longer than it should have done, as I became distracted by the pattern of the wispy hairs on the backs of my knuckles. And by thinking about how a pen manages to release just the right amount of ink at one time. And by how incredibly white my piece of paper was. And how white could possibly be created by So. Many. Other. Colours. (This process probably attributed to the fact that I got so little done at University – I'd spent about 70% of my time stoned.)
Suicide Pact
I, Simon James Bramwell, hereby declare that my life is shit. Nothing good ever happens to me, and nothing ever will. I therefore promise that I will take my own life at some point during 2013 and do everyone around me a favour.
Signed: S. J. Bramwell
Dated: 01/01/13
By the time we were eating breakfast the next morning (it may have been 2pm but it still counted as breakfast if it was the first meal of the day), I'd given up all hope of approaching the matter with any subtlety.
'I'm going to kill myself.' I just came out with it. Just like that. It stopped Jay right in the middle of his boring rant about how his wanker of a boss had put him down for a 10-hour shift on his first day back after New Year. He halted right in his tracks and looked at me.
God, this thing could be conversational dynamite. I might never have to listen to anyone's shit stories ever again.
'Yeah, I know. If Harris doesn't lay off, I'll join you.' He flicked to the next page of his newspaper.
'No, Jay, I'm serious. I'm sick of my crappy life. I'm sick of nothing ever, ever going right for me. I'm sick of my job. I'm sick of this tiny fucking flat that's barely big enough for one person to live in, let alone two. I'm sick of looking around and seeing a hundred million people who are doing better than me at everything. I've had enough.'
I waited a moment to allow the gravity of my words to sink in. I waited for the water to swell in his eyes, building and building like an orchestra moving towards a crescendo, until it could no longer be held in and instead came careering down his stubbly cheeks in torrents. I waited for him to pull me into a dramatic man-hug, reassuring me that I had everything to live for and that he wouldn't know what to do without me. I waited.
'Well, you're a ray of bloody bright sunshine this morning, aren't you?' he snorted. And continued to obliterate his mountain of toast.
'Don't tell me you were fucking serious the other day?' Jay barged into my room bleating. He was holding my notebook in his hand. I put down Aaron Moorfoot's illegible attempt at summing up Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break in 100 words and braced myself. 'Ok,' Jay began, turning the pages with his thick, sausage-shaped fingers, 'Let's take a trip down craaaaazy lane, shall we? Ah, here we are.' He began reciting my notes.
Most successful methods:
(Ignoring less successful methods, i.e. self-harm, overdose, etc. due to low fatality rates)
Firearm – success rate 90%+ but no gun licence
Hanging – success rate under 90% + too slow/painful?
Jumping from height – success rate only 60%+ but increases w/height of building
Jumping into path of moving vehicle (train?) – success rate 90%+ but problems for driver
'What the bloody hell is all this, Simon?'
It took me a while to calm him down; there was a lot of pacing, some very energetic arm waving and a lot of swearing. But we got there eventually. I tried to explain the way I'd been feeling in a rational way – I wanted him to see that I wasn't crying out for help or making some big, dramatic gesture. I told him, honestly, how pointless I felt my life was: I got up, I went to work, I ate and I went to sleep. I wasn't achieving anything of any importance. I hadn't achieved any of the goals I had set for myself as an ambitious teen. I didn't enjoy seeing my family and I had very few friends. The thought of enduring 50 or 60 more years of dreary, futile repetition in a life I despised sent a cold shiver down my spine. I just wanted out. And soon.
Eventually, Jay's flushed face cooled back to its usual pallid white (he was a gaming nerd who rarely saw sunlight) and he was able to speak at a normal volume. 'So, you've even considered how you'd do it?' he asked, pointing once more towards my no-longer-private notebook. I nodded. 'And what did you mean with that 'problems for driver' stuff?' He was pointing at the final item on the page.
'Well, I mean, can you imagine anything worse? Poor bugger would just be doing his thing, sipping his coffee, biting into his jam doughnut and SLAM - a body splats down in front of him before he can even lift his foot to the brakes. Nah, poor guy would get that post-traumatic stress disorder probably. I know I can be a selfish bastard at times, but I'm not that bloody inconsiderate.'
He paused for a moment and nodded his head slowly. 'Shit. You really have thought about this quite a lot then?'
'Yeah. Well, it's interesting, isn't it?'
'How, exactly, would you call killing yourself interesting?' he asked.
'We're living in a time where so many things are out of our control, but just think about how much power we have over our own fate. Each one of us is completely in charge of our own life and, if we want, our own death. We can choose to do whatever we want with our time here. If we want to abuse our bodies with drink and drugs, we can. If we want to starve or dehydrate ourselves, we can. If we want to end it all, we can. Just like that. Every single moment that we spend alive just inches us closer to the death that we all know is coming. A death that we can choose to embrace any time we want. Fascinating.'
For a long moment, Jay paused. He furrowed his brows and seemed to be struggling with something. 'You know there are people you can…talk to, right? People who are trained to deal with this sort of…stuff.' His voice had turned to a quiet mumble and he seemed to be finding the laces on his shoes absolutely fascinating. His hands were clenched into awkward fists.
'Mate, I'm not depressed.'
'Well, forgive me for making assumptions there Si, but you are talking about topping yourself. It doesn't exactly take Sherlock bloody Holmes to jump to that conclusion, does it?'
I wasn't depressed; I'd never have admitted it to Jay, or anyone else for that matter, but I had spent a lot of time on suicide forums searching for other people who felt the same. Jesus, those people were depressed, not me. They kept talking about this feeling of darkness, this cloud that hung over them, how difficult it was to get up in the morning, etc., etc. I didn't feel that way at all. For me, suicide was just a way of speeding up the inevitable. For years, I had felt as though I was simply moving through every day without a purpose – just going through the motions so that I could get the day over with, go to sleep, and do it all again the next morning. What was the actual point in any of it?
There hadn't been a particular turning point or traumatic event I'd suffered that had made me consider such questions. My childhood contained its problems, but whose doesn't? I just couldn't seem to get my head around what the actual point of my existence was. Life just seemed so…difficult. Complicated. I was living in a society where, in order to be deemed a success, you needed a nice house and a shiny Audi sitting on the drive. And five ponies lined up in your own private stable. I didn't have any of those things. Worse than that, I didn't see the point in having them either. Death? Well, that seemed much easier. Much more simple. You do it, you're gone: it's over. Plus, death's inevitable anyway; that's a fact. So, why's everybody so hell bent on trying to put it off? We're all going to end up in the same place, regardless of how many shiny Audis we have. I think I'd always wondered, in the back of my mind, whether it was worth enduring all the problems that life brings when I could just skip to the end - skip straight to death. So, when I really thought about it, suicide, for me, was just a matter of convenience.
I left the room without a word; I was worried which psychiatrist Jay would have me referred to if I shared my actual thoughts on the subject. He could go and 'Sherlock Holmes' someone else's problems.
With the Christmas holidays over, life returned to pretty much normal. I was back at school and Jay was working a lot of late shifts, so we didn't see much of each other. He didn't return to the suicide conversation; I think he secretly hoped that I'd just forget about it. He even tried to take my mind off the subject by resurrecting a favourite practical joke of mine. It had all started on the day that Jay moved in. We chose to lubricate the social friction between us that first evening with shit T.V. and a few too many beers. During an advert break, one of those chavvy 'We Buy Your Gold' type adverts came on and Jay relayed a story he'd seen online about the funny items people sent in for valuation. And so, an idea was borne. That night, we drunkenly penned three or four letters and sent them off but had failed to maintain the practice since. Well, until now:
Gold for Cash
P.O. Box 7781
London
W1A 1ET
15/01/13
Dear Mr Phelps,
We are sorry to inform you that we will be unable to accept the Cadbury's Wispa Gold bar that you sent to us through the post, due to the fact that it is a chocolate bar and therefore contains no actual gold.
Our records indicate that this is not the first refusal letter you have received from us, and I would therefore like to take this opportunity to remind you of the purpose of 'Gold for Cash'. Our company offers customers the opportunity to sell their gold ('gold' here relating only to the precious metal) for its cash value. Therefore, we are in the market for genuine gold products, e.g. jewellery, coins, etc.
We hope that this explains the purpose of our company and we look forward to your business in the future, should you have any gold (of the precious metal variety) to sell.
Yours sincerely,
Mr D. Southwell
(Customer Service Representative)
If my suicide announcement had just been a sad and lonely cry out for attention, Jay would've been doing a great job of distracting me. Unfortunately for him, I remained resolute.
Januarys at school were always a struggle. January 2013 was no exception. Firstly, it was the going to work in the dark and leaving work in the dark that set everyone's bad mood receptors onto turbo mode. Secondly, I never found teenagers more annoying than when they returned from the Christmas break. Every year without fail, they swarmed in all hyped up over their Christmas presents, bursting at the seams to show off who'd been given the most expensive version of the iPhone or designer coat. The part I found the most irritating was the fact that most of these kids came to school in dirty uniforms and lived in a two-bedroomed house with their six siblings (mostly from different fathers) and their mother who sat around on her fat arse, smoking twenty fags a day and moaning that the Government didn't give her enough benefit money. But it was always critical that her little brats had Sky T.V. and the latest mod cons to show off about at school.
January also signalled the inevitable onslaught of parents' evenings. At Conifer High, it was deemed useless to hold a parents' evening in the first term, as teachers 'could not possibly know their students well enough in the short time-frame from September to December'. That was absolute bullshit; I had absolutely no interest in getting to know any of the little brats sitting in my classroom year on year. Whether it was September, January or June, the details of their lives remained insignificant to me.
First up was Year 9 parents' evening: for me, this one was relatively pain-free, as most of the kids in 9SF were fairly decent human beings. For me, this year's 'SF' stood for 'Standard Fare': the group contained your typical mixture of class clowns, chatty girls, quiet swots and disruptive idiots. We had been reading To Kill A Mockingbird and some of the goody-two-shoes had bought the book and read ahead. I hated it when they did that.
George Lomax's mum was 15 minutes early for her 4pm appointment and looked at me with disdain when I wandered down at 4:05 from the staffroom with coffee in hand. I'd met her before, when I'd taught George in Year 7. She was a bitch back then as well. Mrs Lomax was the scholarly sort who thought she could do a better job of teaching her son than any of the staff at Conifer could. The parents in her category were the ones who'd wanted their children to attend the highly-rated Goodhold Academy down the road but just missed out on the catchment area; that left their children attending Conifer instead. Conifer did not rank in the city's top schools. This, as she had informed me during our first meeting, was not to her liking.
I made my way down to the back of the Assembly Hall past the rows and rows of small, square, wooden desks and cheap, plastic chairs. At parents' evening, the staff desks were laid out first by department/subject area, and then alphabetically. For some reason, English always ended up at the very back of the hall next to Science, despite the fact that we made up two of the three core subjects. As a teacher of a core subject, you could guarantee you'd have double the number of appointments than those of a Design & Technology teacher, and quadruple those of someone from P.E.
'So glad to see you're feeling relaxed enough to take a tea break between appointments, Mr Bramwell. School not working you quite hard enough, hmmm?' Mrs Lomax inquired as I sat down opposite her and George.
I smiled and gritted my teeth. Ordinarily, I might have at least feigned some remorse, but since I knew I wasn't going to be teaching her darling George for much longer (nor anyone else's little darlings, for that matter) I was finding it hard to care.
'So, I see on his report that Georgey's only been graded as 'Good' for his effort in English. What on Earth stopped him from attaining 'Excellent'?'
Well, Mrs Poker-Up-Your-Arse-Lomax, that would probably be because I couldn't be bothered to fill in the data sheet properly and I just highlighted the entire student effort column as 'Good', so that I could go home at 3:35. 'Good question.' Hmmm, pause for thinking time. Say something vague. 'Unfortunately, I feel that George just isn't giving his all to the subject at the moment.'
'Well that's simply not good enough, Georgey!' she bellowed. The parents at the next table looked over with wide eyes. Her voice was almost as big as her ego. Little George shrank down in his chair. 'What does he need to do in order to improve? Whatever it is, it must be done. Immediately!'
When I first met George, back in Year 7, he'd been having a tough time because his dad had just left. I vividly remember the day he re-entered my classroom, two years later, and I asked him how things were at home. He told me that his mum had re-married; they were really happy but it was difficult sometimes because the man she'd married was totally deaf. I remember how the hot, brown liquid seeped through the white cotton of his shirt when I spat my coffee over him laughing. Deaf! Of course! Well, he'd have to be.
'Oh I do apologise – are we boring you Mr Bramwell?' Mrs Lomax asked.
Shit. Must stop tuning out.
'Sorry, where were we?'
'I said,' she began, rolling her eyes back in her head and exhaling loudly, 'What does he need to do in order to improve?'
I'd learned a trick during my first year of teaching. When dealing with awkward parents who ask you questions you don't know the answers to, always turn the question back round onto their kid. Worked every time. 'George, what is it you think you need to do in order to improve?' I probed.
'Erm…I guess I could maybe put my hand up more in lessons?' he guessed. Bless him. The poor kid spent so much time with his hand in the air that I was surprised his right arm hadn't turned blue and dropped off.
'Good lad. Let's see that happening from tomorrow, shall we? Lovely to see you again, Mrs Lomax,' I lied, standing up and shaking her hand.
Watching her back as she left the hall, I couldn't help but wonder whether people like her would come to my funeral. Was there a way to ban people from attending? Could you make it an invite-only affair? I made a note in my planner to look into it. I liked making notes in my planner during parents' evening; I would pull my brows together and nod when I did it, as though I was writing something really important and professional. It gave the parents sitting around the hall the impression that I gave a shit.
By the time I got home, it was gone 9 o'clock and I still had marking to do, so I resolved to give out 10 A grades, 15 B grades and 6 C grades somewhat at random to speed the process up. I was halfway through picking my favourite kids from 10XE, to whom I would award the A grades, when Jay shuffled out of his room.
'So, I, erm, I dropped by the doctors' surgery today.' He was doing that strange mumbling thing he did whenever he was uncomfortable. The first time I experienced it was when I walked in on him masturbating to internet porn using Fairy Liquid and a marigold glove; he'd mumbled something about getting distracted on his way to do the washing up. I knew that I didn't want to listen to whatever was coming next, so I refused to lift my gaze from my pile of marking.
'I picked up some stuff that I thought you might find interesting,' he continued. Onto the table dropped a large Pizza Hut takeaway box and a selection of bright orange and yellow leaflets featuring photographs of old people smiling and waving. I was hoping that the pizza was for me but I should've known better. In a rare attempt to be courteous towards Jay, I took my eyes from the page briefly enough to scan the top few leaflet titles:
Feeling Blue? Here's What You Can Do!
Mind Over Mood.
Beating those Blues.
'Seriously, mate, we've been over this.'
'Simon,' he began, lifting a slice of Meat Feast into his mouth, 'I'm not saying you're actually, like, depressed or whatever. Maybe you're just feeling a little bit down in the dumps and you need a pick me up? Look, in here it suggests trying a new hobby - something active?' He leafed through one of the yellow leaflets with his greasy fingers. 'What about mountain biking?' I was pretty sure he could tell by the look on my face that I was not about to start biking up any bloody mountains because some idiot behind the pages of The Five Minute Guide to Happiness thought it was a good idea. Still, I stuck my middle finger up at him just to be sure my message was received.
'It also says here that keeping a diary might help. You're supposed to track your feelings throughout the day and to write down any good bits and any bad bits; that way, you can recognise the positive things that are happening in your life as well as the negative,' he read aloud.
'You're the boss,' I replied, as I obediently ripped an empty page out of Rosie Walker's book and began to scribble.
Day 1
Jay is making me write a diary. I FEEL angry about this. I FEEL that this exercise is pointless. I FEEl that Jay is a dickhead.
'Simon,' he stopped me, 'don't be a wanker. Just give it a go. I mean a proper go. That way, at least if you do throw yourself off a bloody cliff, I won't have anything to feel guilty about because I did try.' I really didn't understand why he'd think that he had anything to feel guilty about regardless, but I didn't want to get into it. I put my diary entry to one side and buried my head back into marking Year 9's books. Unfortunately, Jay wasn't ready to give up on me. 'Look, there's a little quiz thing in here; let's just both do it and see what the results are. Okay?'
'You do realise that anyone could be diagnosed with depression if you rely on a useless thing like that? Everyone's miserable deep down, Jay. Some people are just more honest about it than others. Realising your life is shit and accepting it doesn't make you depressed.'
He ignored me and began reading the questions aloud.
Question 1: How often do you feel little or no pleasure in pursuing everyday activities?
A) Almost every day
B) A few times a week
C) A few times a month
D) Rarely
E) Never
He paused for my response. I continued to ignore him. 'Ok, well my answer would depend on what 'activity' they're talking about. Like, if it's doing the washing up, it'd be every day, but if it's eating dinner, it'd be never.' He paused for my assistance. I continued to ignore him. 'So, I'll go for something in the middle: a few times a week.' I think he was hoping that he'd wear me down if he just carried on.
Question 2: How often do you feel down or hopeless?
A) Almost every day
B) A few times a week
C) A few times a month
D) Rarely
E) Never
Jay decided that nobody could say they were happy all the time, and therefore he would have to go for option C.
Question 3: How often do you have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or sleeping too much?
A) Almost every day
B) A few times a week
C) A few times a month
D) Rarely
E) Never
'I'd say my sleep patterns are pretty normal…'
'What time did you get up today?' I finally decided to interject.
'Around ten.'
'Jay.' I tilted my head and frowned; I wasn't going to let him get away with this.
'No, seriously! Ok, it might have been half ten?'
'Jay.'
'What, Simon?'
'Jay.'
'3pm.'
'There we go.'
'Alright, smart arse. A few times a week.' He paused to lick the garlic butter off his fat fingertips. I was surprised to see that fingertips could even become fat. Stretching his arms above his head, he yawned. 'Christ, even talking about sleep makes me tired.'
Question 4: How often do you feel exhausted and have very little energy?
A) Almost every day
B) A few times a week
C) A few times a month
D) Rarely
E) Never
'Oh for fuck's sake,' he moaned. 'This is just stupid. Everybody's tired, aren't they? It's going to try and tell me I'm depressed next! Yes, fine, a few times a week.'
'Jay.'
'Simon?'
'Jay.'
'Oh fine, Simon! Every fucking day. Happy now?' I loved sniffing out his bullshit. It really was the highlight of my day.
Question 5: How often are you experiencing a poor appetite or overeating?
A) Almost every day
B) A few times a week
C) A few times a month
D) Rarely
E) Never
At this point, he threw his pizza box against the wall. 'Oh this thing's just stupid. I'm going to bed.'
And so we established that Jay's incessant gorging and lethargic attitude to life meant that he, in fact, was suffering with 'depression'. In other words, he could take his quiz results and toddle off to join the back of the queue at the Doctors' surgery, ready to receive his handful of Prozac designed to magically cover up his problems. Perhaps he was starting to see my point.
'I've been thinking…' Jay began one cold Tuesday night over pizza and beer. 'I just don't get why you, of all people, would want to kill yourself.'
Here we go again. 'Mate, I've already explained-'
'No, no, I mean, you've explained your reasons. But I can't help thinking that, out of the two of us, it's really me who should be giving up, not you.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' I asked.
'Well, just look at me for a start: I'm a fat, hairy bastard; I'm lazy; I've got the same shit job I've had since I was 17; I'm single, obviously, when you look at the rest of the evidence; and I'm pretty sure my V plates will grow back again if I don't have a shag soon.'
I couldn't help but laugh; all of the things he'd said were technically true.
'I'm serious,' he continued. 'You've got everything going for you. Gay jokes aside, you're a good-looking bloke. You've got a family who care about you and a steady job. Maybe if you looked on the bright side a little bit, you'd feel differently about this whole...idea.'
He avoided the word suicide like he avoided eating fruit or doing exercise. He would call it my 'idea' or my 'plan'. It was as though saying the actual word might literally push me over the edge.
'Look, I know the diary thing was a bit of a stupid suggestion but I do think you could maybe give a bit of thought to all the positive stuff you've got going on. Maybe you could keep a little list or something, like a pros and cons sort of thing? You might be surprised how many positives there are.'
I promised him I'd think about it, and I did. It was actually in the process of doing so that I came up with the idea of killing myself on New Year's Eve. It was perfect! For a start, I'd always hated New Year. Every December, people reflect back over the last shitty 364 days of their lives, fantasising about how brilliant the next year will be. Around New Year, people say stupid things like: 'Things can only get better'; these idiots genuinely seem to convince themselves that's true. Yet, if you fast-forward another 12 months, they've had another royal shitter of a year and they're saying it all over again.
The night of New Year's Eve itself is another problem entirely. Every year, it's like losing your virginity: you build up and up to it in your head for so long that you actually manage to convince yourself that it's going to be amazing. In fact, it's going to be better than amazing: it's going to be flawless. Life-changing. In reality, you're left with a massive anti-climax and five minutes messy, uncomfortable disappointment. OK, who am I kidding? Three minutes. So, by killing myself on New Year's Eve, I figured I'd be giving myself a countdown to actually look forward to for a change.
Also, by giving myself the rest of the year, I could acknowledge Jay's point and ensure that I wasn't making a hasty decision. What if, after all, 2013 actually was the year that the Universe decided to give me a break? What if, for example, Gisele Bündchen came knocking at my door, naked, having lost all her clothes in a house fire, and begging me for a warm bed to sleep in? (Less warm than hers, naturally.) What if I won the lottery? It'd be pretty rude of me not to give the Universe an opportunity to make it up to me. So, I decided then and there that I would gamble on the Universe; I would offer it one more chance. I would give it almost a full year to show me whether my pitiful life was worth living.
I needed to revise the agreement.
Suicide Pact: The Rules
Throughout the year, I will keep a track of positives and negatives in my life. Every time something positive happens, I will note it down as a 'pro' and place it in a drawer. Every time something negative happens, I will note it down as a 'con' and place it in a different drawer.
Anything I deem important enough can be placed in the drawers.
I will refrain from showing bias, i.e. purposefully finding more 'cons' in life than 'pros'. (After all, it's not real gambling unless it's left up to fate.)
Only events that occur from this moment on will be counted. (Otherwise, the cons would have an overwhelming advantage from the start.)
On New Year's Eve (and not before), I will count up the totals. More pros than cons: I live. More cons than pros: I die.
Signed: S. J. Bramwell
Dated: 26/01/13