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The Red Evening
There’s a little red droplet going down the drain.
You get up and look around, contemplating the last month of your life. The grades you got on your final exams, the appointment with the campus dean. That cold and misty November afternoon, when you thought your life was over. It wasn’t, though, at least not yet. You began to contemplate other ways to keep on going, other paths to tread, how to get over it. But then again, that wasn’t the real concern in your head, was it?
You began to walk around, thinking about how you would tell everyone. How to tell your best friends, who have supported you throughout everything? How can you face them, tell them that you failed them yet again? You remember those moments at the café, talking about the future as if you knew what laid before you.
A few more droplets go down the drain.
You went to the same café that evening, spending all the money that you have in your student credit card, knowing that it will soon be unavailable, just as your options for the future. You don’t know what to do, how to process it. If you don’t know how you’re going to choose your coffee, how are you going to choose how to do it when you get home?
You took out your phone. Just as a comfort, to call a friend. Except you don’t know who to call, because, oh God, the café could be full or empty and you’d still feel like you were the only person in the world, always alone, alone, alone. And if you called, would they answer? Would you answer back? You have always had that doubt, if people would just… listen. Understand. Want to help. You locked your phone and went out, leaving a huge tip for the bartender, hoping someone would make your day better just like you made his.
You turn the water on.
You came home then. You grabbed the key from that little pot you made for your parents when you were little. Strange, isn’t it? How your past achievements come to you at the moment when you’re at your lowest. You put the key in the knob and turned it around, seeing your family in the living room watching one of those silly holidays movie you used to like when you were a kid. Your mother and father are holding your brother in their arms.
You walk past the living room and they barely notice you. Good. It would be weird if someone noticed you at the end. Your mother turns momentarily to greet you. It’s strange thinking that she of all people would be the last you see. You began thinking about all those nights in, she telling you that you not seeing your friends was for the best, about how you should’ve spent the weekend studying and not out drinking. Maybe she was right, but maybe there was nothing to be done.
You went up the stairs, hearing the sound your boots make upon touching the floor, hearing them more like doomsday sirens than for what they really were. You opened the door and took the thin metal that would soon take all of you.
You begin to think about everything. Think it through… really through. You begin to think about today, the last month, when you were growing up… what they did. What he did. What they all did to you. What the world could’ve been. What the world would be without you. How you could’ve grown up. What the world will be without you.
Suddenly it looks like a dam is breaking, the huge accumulation of it all. You need to let it out, you need to be yourself again, you need it, you need it, you need it.
The last thing you hear before you close your eyes is your mother screaming.
