TAKE ME AWAY

It's the everyday that wears her down. It's the everyday routines and the constant sense of being out of place in the world that causes her to want to escape. Causes her to want to say 'I've had enough. Take me away.'

Waiting in her car the middle aged woman finds herself wonders how often do people think they would prefer not to be alive. She's not surprised her mind is thinking about such things. She thinks about suicide a lot. The thoughts consume her at times but mostly they just hang over her waiting to be noticed. Waiting to be entertained. They are always there. Always jumping in and out of her consciousness. Perhaps most often when she is waiting for something or someone. When she is feeling restless or bored. Seems those are the times when she feels most alien in the world. She watches people coming and going outside her car window. She imagines them living lives that while filled with ups and downs are also lived with a kind of constancy that she doesn't know. The sense of being alive in a world with people more like themselves than not. Part of the world rather than outside the world the way that she feels most of the time.

She doubted there was anyone else in the world who felt as alien as she did. For years she thought every one thought about suicide. She thought it was normal until she found out that it wasn't. She'd ask people if they ever thought about suicide other then when they might feel depressed. It surprised her to find out how rarely the average person ever thought about suicide. This of course affirmed the woman's own sense of oddness.

Even though she entertained such thoughts the woman knew that no matter how often she craved life to end she wouldn't suicide. She'd wait out her life's destined course. That was one thing about life she understood. It is guaranteed to end. "Patience dear heart. Your time will come", she'd say to herself with a sigh.

Three near successes were enough for her to get the message that it wasn't an option for her. It wasn't her destiny. For reasons foreign to her she sensed there was a higher authority preventing her from walking out on life. When her son was born she knew she had given up the fantasy forever. Suicide could now only be a passing thought. A fleeting wish that would never be fulfilled. She wasn't going to leave him with that legacy. She wasn't going to leave him with the imaginings of what he could have done to make his mother want to live. The obsessing over what he should have done to prevent it. That much she knew for sure. It didn't make the thoughts or the cravings go away but she knew she would never satisfy their urgings. She wanted her son to want life. She didn't want him to know how much she struggled with it.

She'd lost her own mother to what was likely suicide. No autopsy was ever performed to confirm it or deny it. The doctor shared the same suspicion as she did so tests were avoided to protect the innocent. A head injury was the official cause of death. A head injury that didn't bleed. A head injury that was almost undetectable but it served the purpose of providing an official cause of death. It provided the answer to most people's question.

She often wondered if her mother thought about suicide everyday like she did? Was it a thought that popped into her head even when her life was going well? A thought that would always be there no matter the mood she was in or the life she was engaged in. Or was it just the circumstances in her mother's life that caused her to determine her final destiny? It remains a mystery. A mystery the woman knew one day would be answered.

How can someone value life and yet always contemplate death? Why do the thoughts engage her? Why are they as natural as breathing for her? She knows she's not ready to die. She knows she has reasons to want to live. Maybe she's just bored or maybe she just hates feeling alone in the world. Not belonging in the way she craves to belong even more than she craves to die. Maybe she contemplated dying because she doesn't believe she'll ever belong. Ever feel normal. Ever relate to the world she lives in. The people who go about their business everyday who never think about suicide in the way that she does. Who will never know the kind of aloneness which causes an ache that seems only to grow with time.

She had the chance once to choose death and in that split second of time she chose life. She was guaranteed that if she chose death that no one would suffer. If she chose death it would be as though she never existed. She was shown a different life that would be hers in place of the one she had and she chose instead to stay. She chose her son's life. If she didn't exist than neither would he. She didn't want to loose him. Nothing was worth that loss.

She thought it had been a dream but she knew she was not asleep. She thought it was an hallucination but she knew she wasn't stoned. She'd sat down in a chair in the garden. Was taking a break from the pulling of weeds. Tilting her head back she closed her eyes and faced the sun to feel its heat as it warmed her skin. The light was so intense that the blood in her eyelids caused her to see pink rather than darkness. Lights flashed all around like tiny organisms wiggling under a microscope. Soon a single dot began to appear. Sitting silently straight up in her chair, head still tilted to the sun she strained at first to keep the dot in focus. It started to take her further and further into it's bright light until suddenly it opened up. What appeared was like a scene from a black and white 1940's movie.

Four people were speeding gleefully down a highway in an open convertible along side a wide ocean beach. Palm trees were swaying, the sun was shining from high up in the mid-day sky. People could be seen on the beach as the car zoomed by. One of the women in the back seat slowly turned and looked up and back at the visitor and smiled. Hanging onto the scarf that was keeping the wind from blowing her hair she said with a warm, happy smile, "Come... jump in."

At that very instant the visitor knew that the woman was her. At least it could be her if she wanted her to be. All she had to do was decide to jump into the car and that would be her life. Instantly the life she had, her real life would be exchanged for the life of the woman in the car. The life of a woman who was beautiful and free and happy. A woman who obviously belonged in her world. A woman who had no reason to feel like an alien. "But hurry, you must decide now. We can't stop and wait for you", the woman said, still smiling to the visiting eyes.

Suddenly the eyes popped open and the woman in the garden chair felt her heart begin to race. She felt as thought it had stopped beating for a while. It took a few minutes for her to catch her breath and for the sensation that she might faint to finally pass. She had no idea what to make of what had just happened. She was certain whatever it was it was real. She'd almost jumped into the car but suddenly the face of her son appeared and just as suddenly her eyes popped open. She knew why she came back. She couldn't wipe his life out along with hers. He was worth staying in the life she had. He gave her life a meaning that the woman in the car didn't have.

Every now and then when she finds herself sitting in the garden the middle aged woman tilts her head back to let the sun shine down on her face. She searches again for the dot that can bring the movie back into view. It's not hard to find it. In fact it gets easier each time she looks for it. It's there every time. She knows now what it means. She knows its a sign of her choices. She knows its a symbol of her personal power to determine her own destiny. To choose her own life. That the life she lives is in fact the life she chose and chooses to live.

She gets close to zooming in on the movie. She tempts herself with thoughts of what it might reveal. She wonders what decade or century it might be set in. She wonders what the woman might be wearing or doing or even what she might say. Fear is what stops her from going closer. She has a sense that it won't be a choice next time. Once exposed she will be pulled in to stay there forever. At least until she discover the dot of light again. What she knows to be true today with her eyes open will be gone forever. Who she is and who she loves will vanish as though they never were.

Still most days she finds herself thinking about suicide. She thinks about ending her life as she knows it. Even though she knows she won't do it. Even though she has chosen her life over every woman's fantasy, over her ultimate fantasy. Still she entertains thoughts of suicide. Still she can't make them go away.