“I’ve lived a life that’s full…”

Frank Sinatra crooned from my computer as I scrolled through my memories.  My beautifully browned body in a bikini surrounded by Miami’s ocean blue water.  My bright-eyed hopeful smile on Graduation Day.  My glowing face against a Jamaican sunset.  Damn, I had lived.  The best moments of my life played out before me on the computer screen and I was at ease with my decision.  The 5000 milligrams of acetominiphen I’d ingested would settle in and I would leave this earth young and beautiful.  Everyone would remember how bright and charismatic I was.  The men I’d loved would recall the sweetness of kisses.  My friends would reminisce over my wit and humor.  My mom would cry hysterically and remember me as the light of her life.  They’d all wonder how such a beautiful girl could be so sad.  They’d never see me this way.  Hopeless.  Scared.  No one would ever have to know this side of me.  It would die today.  That smiling girl in the photos?  She would be immortalized. 

I was starting to feel loopy.  Were the pills setting in? I couldn’t tell.  I had a tendency to be easily affected.  I thought of my funeral.  Nobody knew that I wanted Sinatra’s “My Way” to be played at the service.  I needed to write that down.  Maybe add a PS to the end of my good-bye memo.  (“Good-bye memo” sounds so much better than “suicide note”.) I wasn’t killing myself per say.  I was making an exit. A lady always knew when to leave and I’d tried to pride myself on being a lady most of the time.  “And so I face the final curtain…”  Yep, Frankie.  This was it.  The end.

Wait a minute.  This was not right.  This was not the way I was supposed to go out.  I was better than this.  “But I’m tired,” I said out loud.  And I was.  I had been clawing and fighting and surviving for what felt like my entire life.  I was indeed tired.  At 24, I had survived my dysfunctional family, low self-esteem, the abandonment of two father figures, four years of college, three major depressive episodes, and a horrible car accident.  I was the gotdamn Little Engine That Could.  Too bad that book never followed the engine post that first hill.  I bet if that book had chapters, the Engine would have eventually run out of steam.  Just like I had. You don’t want to do this, Robin. “But how can I go on? I can’t do another spell of depression.  It’s just too much.” I don’t know. But this ain’t it.  Call someone.  I couldn’t do this. I laid my head on the desk. My God.  Had I really just given myself permission to die?