Prologue from – U Murder U (Suicide)

Her days and her nights had become one. Nothing pleased her, nothing made her happy anymore. She hated the way she felt and hated even more the way her husband and the doctors tippy-toed around her, talking to her like she was a five year old while expecting her to act like a mother and wife. She tried to tell the doctors that her poor appetite, her inability to shut down at night and sleep like a normal person and her constant feeling of low self-esteem were not right and meant that something wasn’t right, not that she was merely depressed. She tried to tell her husband that the fact that she was always tired, moody and wasn’t turned on sexually by him anymore since she had the baby meant that something wasn’t right and not that she was just depressed. No one listened to her and since her baby was four years old they all dispelled the thought that she had ‘baby-blues’. In the past four years she had seen three physicians and five psychiatric doctors and the only thing they all seemed to agree on was that she was showing signs of depression caused by something they couldn’t identify. They took her husband’s money and in exchange gave her drugs to take (uppers and downers) which were supposed to make her feel better but often left her feeling like she was stranded on a desert island, terrified of the water around her and allergic to the sand beneath her – unstable.

The physicians took her blood and tested her hormone levels and the psychiatrists prodded her brain with words and more words; they asked questions and some of them answered their own questions while others completely ignored her answers to their questions and told her what they thought. They told her to write her problems on pieces of paper, put the papers in envelopes and the envelopes in a box and keep the box somewhere safe, only visiting it when she felt strong enough to deal with a problem. She never visited the box. Initially she had tried to explain that she did love her baby but sometimes found it difficult to express the love she felt and because of this she felt guilty, was always anxious that someone would find out and was tired as a result of all the anxiety. She couldn’t concentrate on things and she was always forgetful (a thing her mother-in-law was always reminding her about).

She stared at the jug on the table, the dark fizzy liquid was lighter at the bottom than it was at the top and for a moment she wondered why. ‘Ice’, she thought to herself, ‘it’s the ice in the jug that has diluted the cola at the bottom and made it lighter’. She smiled to herself, happy in the knowledge that she had resolved the question all by herself, without the assistance of one of her many prescribed medications (she had stopped taking the drugs days ago).

“Mommy, Mommy here’s my cup, can I please have some soda?” Anna Lee asked excitedly.

She turned and smiled at her precocious daughter, only four years old and as inquisitive as someone much older. She picked up the jug and poured some cola into her daughter’s cup and added some ice; her daughter loved to suck on the ice. She watched as her daughter gulped the drink down then put an ice cube in her mouth and sucked loudly on it. She poured some cola into a glass until it was three-quarters full and quickly drank it then poured another glass full and quickly drank that. She burped, loudly. Her daughter looked up at her and smiled then burped. They both giggled.

The sound of a raised voice and running footsteps preceded the banging and then crashing open of the door. A man ran into the room; he held a note in his hand – her suicide note. “What have they made you do?” He shouted, confusion and total disbelief etched on his face.

She looked at her husband, always protective, always blaming someone else, the nanny, the doctors, himself – never her. “I can’t bear living like this so I’m leaving and I’m taking our daughter with me,” she told him calmly. The poison was beginning to take effect . . . she felt a sharp pain in her stomach; she was dying, the cola served as a catalyst, it made the poison work faster. Soon, her emotional turmoil and her physical pain would end . . . soon, she would be dead.

“No, no, no . . . not my baby! Not Anna Lee! Think of all the things she could have done with her life . . . all the good things she could have done, think of all the people she could have helped!” Her husband sobbed as he reached for his daughter. His broken, distraught, pain-infused, shock-filled voice brought a semblance of sanity to her foggy brain.

‘Oh no, oh no! What have I done? What have I done? I don’t want to die! Help me! I don’t want to die!’ Her brain screamed as she lay on the floor, moments away from death.

Despite the presence of thousands of people in the room

The room was cold and dark

The room was quiet . . .

Each occupant seemed to be captivated by images on a screen, images that only they could see, voices that they alone could hear. They were unaware of the person standing next to them, unaware of what that person could see or hear.

The room was cold and dark

The room was quiet . . .

This room is one of many rooms, in a place where the living do not dwell. It is a place where people who have taken their own lives, committed suicide, dwell. It is said that because of what they have done they have been initially cast into this room where they watch their lives play on as if they had lived. They watch what could have been – be.

At times, so engrossed in the visual, they forget the factual; they forget that they are dead!