The Curtain Call

She trudged through the bog that normality had in store for her. She had a high paying job which made no sense to her and no use to anyone. The surreal visions of her childhood were rotting in the conformity of the excel sheet. Her world housed 2 kinds of people.

•       The depressing ones who complain they gave up their dream  for a high paying job.
•          The smug assholes, who stood up against the world ,fought their way up by being true to themselves and their conscience, taking up failures more cheerfully for it meant more than success at something they never wanted, and having a honest-to-self, happy life.

Her problem was that she never had a dream job. She hardly aspired to be anything in her life. For her, merely surviving was a tough nut to crack that she left her future to unfold as it took its course. Kindly go ahead judging her for lamenting about “surviving” when she had a comfortable upbringing. 

Are we done? 

Yes? 

Moving on then. She never felt “at home” even at her own house, feeling like an outsider with her kin. A recluse who preferred doing "nothing", doesn't ring normal but she preferred being that. For in all her "nothingness" she saw herself, in the absence of an actual life she felt lively, enjoying the dormant state her life had been pacing for 25 years.

It was not the inert part of her life that had pushed her to contemplating about ending it, but the parts which had activity. She hated being called an idiot for not knowing the coldest place in the world while she sat under the asbestos roof of her classroom on a 40°C day. She hated being slapped when she complained to her mother about the family friend being too friendly with her. She hated having her food taken away for the society felt she was gaining girth. She hated being paraded in front of families that were looking for a mate for their male heir. She hated being ridiculed when she acted a little crazy and tried to blend in with the world. In spite of the hatred, she masked them all to conform. She learned how to spell Vostok Station in Antarctica, smile and participate when the family friend visited them, eat smaller meals and sleep hungry, and put up her best feminine presence for the familial congregations for spousal hunting. Living made her want to die.

She never planned out a suicide or ventured about exploring the various options available. She wanted to embrace death when it came, but she wished it to come soon. What depressed her more than the thought of killing herself was how her long gazes at the knives and razors went unnoticed by her family. Her tear and kohl stained pillow cases drew rage than concern from her mother and discussing about life for her parents after her death, sharing her various insurance details and nominee information got her appreciation from her father. She wondered if this was normal and if it was, she was happy that she was better off being abnormal. Despite the picture she paints about her family, they were good people who were simply ignorant about their daughter’s suicidal thoughts.

The void in her being and the alternate offered to her simply drove her insane. She didn't know what had pushed her over the ledge, but she picked 5^th of November, to stay remembered. She had sorted all her affairs, written her “Letters from Beyond” to her family and the few friends she had, crafted a will regarding to whom she wanted her material possessions to go to and insisting on a burial. Though her rational thoughts were against this, the little part of hope for her family wanted her to be buried so that they can visit her. She felt e-burning to be quick and final, that it robs the mourners of their final moments with the deceased. You at least get to stare at the funeral pyre but to be incinerated by an unknown person behind closed doors seemed sad.

It was a cloudy and dull dawn on the 5^th of November. She woke up to early but stayed in bed admiring as the sky changed its shading by the passing minute. After what seemed to be an awful amount time, she was up and ready. She remembered that she needed to pick up something from the market before she left. As she journeyed to the market, she realized every little thing that she saw would probably be her last experience. She thought about all the books she wouldn't read, all the music she wouldn't listen to, all the movies she wouldn't watch, all the people she wouldn't meet. She laughed at how obscure everything seemed as she waited for 62 seconds for the traffic light to change, to cross the road.