Third Saturday Fiction

Excerpt from
The Suicide Diary,
a novel

By Michael Hanson

[Editor’s Note: The narrator is a 27-year-old novelist whose girlfriend, Karla, has recently left him. He has decided he is going to commit suicide but will keep a diary of all that transpires prior to the precipitous act, identifying it as his new novel and leaving it for his editor to find.]

I remember when books mattered to me, poetry and prose poured forth prolifically from the Great Dead Geniuses, I remember when records mattered, music that made life worth living and I can remember when paintings were important and the lives of those who made them, and I can recall a time when the company of family and friends was enough to keep me on track, when movies meant as much to me as anything could have, or when all I've written was proof of my worth and significance and publicly displayed my all-important place in the world, there was a time when I ran seven miles every single day to keep myself physically fit and this seemed to matter, I remember when a good night's sleep meant something, though I always felt somewhat sorry for it since I loved being awake so much that sleeping through what little time is allotted us made me guilty and regretful, something so simple as a great meal and even sometimes a not-so-great one gave to me a gratitude toward being alive that knew no limits, no kidding, I remember when compassion for the plights of various people around me bestowed a beatific sense of myself as a good person, someone who carries with him the empathy that’s capable of saving souls somehow, offering a sort of tacit companionship that made life at least a little less lonesome, I can't but recall a time when I could sit alone in a room doing absolutely nothing save relishing the realization that I was here, practicing and perfecting the Buddhist do-nothing with the world washing over me like a tidal wave to leave me soaking wet with wondrous joyful amazement, and I remember when the sound of my cat Pablo crying for his food was enough to cut through all of life's sorrows, at least for a few moments, and the sight of him sleeping curled on the sofa caused me to love and pity every creature on the planet.
    I can remember when the task of making myself better, improving myself by whatever means, was a daily concern, and though I felt sorry for those suffering from a depression similar to my current malaise I always attached this to a failure of the WILL and therefore placed blame on those people for not working their way out of the hole into which they were sinking, I remember when sex was something I appreciated as a gift, after which I would always send a silent thank you to the gods for having allowed me to have it, which reminds me of a time when I believed in Something outside of myself, certainly not what my old friend Chris called the name-brand God we were brought up to believe in but just a sense of something More, something Other, and though I didn't give credence to the rules established by men I tried very hard to live my life in accord with that Unseen Spirit and can remember – or imagine – a time when hope was something tangible that I held in my heart like love and let carry me along through the most trying of times….
    I can recall a time when I considered myself a romantic, I would catch tears coming into my eyes because something made me feel so happy and Karla used to just shake her head at my sappiness and say she loved me, I can remember feeling sympathy for my father as the world's most miserable man but figured he got what he deserved, which reminds me again how passionate was my determination not to be anything like him yet here I find myself a carbon copy, that which I loved and loathed I became, also I remember when recollecting my past was a pleasure, not sad and painful and replete with regret like it is these days but something I enjoyed, which is why I've such a knack for it even now when it no longer produces anything satisfying but instead makes me the world’s most miserable man junior.
    I can recall a time when suicide was something I abhorred like the plague, when it seemed to me not only incomprehensible but also uninteresting and I wouldn't waste so much as a second of serious consideration on it, and the only reason anyone did was because it became fashionable, was a guaranteed means to martyrdom, not to mention a perfect way to get one's name in the paper, yet here I am plotting my own demise like a paperback and a predictable one at that, which reminds me that writing – of all the things I remember – is perhaps the one I find most remarkable for it was the one facet of daily life I figured would never fail me, while people might be dropping like flies around me I always imagined myself writing and feeling a sense of supreme satisfaction from that alone, I revered it and its progenitors the way other people worship priests or popes or politicians, it was my one shot at salvation (as I saw it) and though it caused me a lion's share of frustration at times it was also responsible for making me happier and more alive than anything else ever seemed to, I believed back then that having an impact on the world was the most important contribution one could make to it, whenever I would see some poor soul who was old and bitter and spoke in cynical slights fired at this or that thing I would think to myself that they had wasted their precious energies, and if only they had something like writing to which they could’ve turned things might’ve worked out differently, for there was no Higher Calling that I could see than wresting the literature from life for all those who needed it, and my god the world produced plenty of those and I knew I was one of them because whenever the scary pinch of insignificance would sink its teeth into me nothing could cure it quite like writing, one morning's work even if it produced only a paragraph would restore my faith in everything, most importantly my place in the world as an entity operating out of his own unseen impulses, which at the time was my personal definition of success: if you weren’t on the scent of the spirit within yourself then you were wasting your time, waiting around like all the other lackeys who thought success was measured by – and in direct proportion to – the amount of money you made, indeed for me the meaning that we all look for could be found at four in the morning with a steaming cup of coffee and an empty spiralbound notebook waiting for words, my words, speaking out of the darkness in a language known only to the heart and which would give to life that one thing it inherently lacked….
    But what could be more naive than to think that such a thing actually matters, that the hours I spent slaving over sentences was for the benefit of us all, a notion that was at last put to rest once I published my first novel and witnessed the way a work of art quietly expires . . . sinks silently to the bottom . . . it's amazing to me I ever fell for such drivel in the first place but I suppose I needed Something so would find it virtually anyplace I looked and that happened to be a book, but it's still hard to believe that with people homeless and starving and killing one another with reckless abandon that I or anyone else could continue to fool themselves into feeling that fiction is important, these things matter only to those fatuous enough to find meaning where there is none, but I'm setting the record straight right here and now: you can read on if you want but by way of admonishment I’m not about to take credit for wasting your time, there will be nothing to learn or gain from these pages that goes beyond the simple fact of our ultimate inconsequentiality, look out your window or just around the room you're reading in and tell me that my misery makes you feel better, or worse, or matters in some significant way, and what I’ll say in response is that I’m not buying it, I too lived a life filled with meaningful things and now all I can do is recollect them, painfully reminded again and again that there’s nothing but regret at the end of all rainbows.

Copyright © 2015 by Michael Hanson