June Fifth, Twenty xx
Dear Little Miss Elise,
Do you remember when I was fourteen, and we went to Paris? (Who am I kidding? Of course you don’t.) Anyway, it was you, Mori, and me. We stayed in a suite at The Peninsula, with a view of Le Tour d'Eiffel from our room, and I tried to kill myself while Mori was asleep. You weren’t asleep for some reason, and you had a lot to say to me about suicide. I hadn’t considered that you had many thoughts on suicide, or any thoughts at all. We’d only known each other for around a year, and in that time, I had not grown fond of you in the slightest. You were more peppery of an asshole than you are now, and I think it would have been much more likely that you would encourage me to commit suicide than try to prevent it. I was standing on the balcony, ready to climb over the beautifully sculpted black iron fence, staring at the glowing Eiffel Tower that stood unabashed in the starless Paris sky. The lack of stars felt intentional, not like a consequence of the city’s existence and all the lights adorning the tower. Non, the tower stood in the darkness like a ballerina or opera singer onstage, illuminated on its own with nothing else to take attention away because it was perfect and lovely, kind of like you.
Having looked at it for very long while also imagining my remains splattered across the streets of Paris, I think the Eiffel Tower is a massive, steel affront to architecture. While imagining my remains splattered across the streets of Paris, I heard a very small voice behind me speak:
“You better not do that.”
I was frankly insulted. Suicide is a private thing, as you’re aware, and to be not only interrupted but lectured during such a deep contemplative moment is incredibly upsetting. I turned around to give you a piece of my mind and was met with the visage of a doll-like little girl in a white nightgown, clutching a brown teddy bear. Of course, I would be, but sometimes all the knowledge of your true identity obscures what you are at your core. You’re just a little girl. For a moment, for a spark, something inside me felt terrible, guilty, imagining you, or a girl like you, seeing me on the sidewalk and having suicide explained to her by a mother, or nanny, or au pair. Somebody would have to tell one of the many Elises of the world that, for some reason, a boy only a few years older than her did the unthinkable. It would be traumatic for her. For the rest of that Elise’s life, she would be haunted by my pancaked body on the sidewalk, a great black hole of tragedy consuming all the good from what was meant to be a lovely vacation. My mind floated to all the countless people who would be impacted by what I did. The people who would have to report the body, the ones who would clean me up, and each and every passerby. I even thought of Mori for a moment, the poor man. Suicide is one of the most personal choices you can make, with one of the most daring impacts on other people. I know that very well now, and yet I still yearn for it. I can’t confidently determine if it’s as selfish as everybody says. I think sometimes, selfish people commit suicide for selfish reasons. That said, I think a selfless suicide is definitely attainable, and it is something I dearly want.
I wish I remembered more about Paris than this, but sometimes, people will have dark spots in happy times, or times that are supposed to be happy but ended up falling apart. The difference for me is that all of my time is a black hole. I don’t think you understand that. Every happy memory I’ve managed to scrounge together is haunted by the black hole, this big, inescapable threat that is Osamu Dazai. Every time something good happens, or when I’m piss drunk or high as a kite, with people I love, or destroying someone I hate, unzipping someone’s pants, or unzipping my own, the black hole’s ultimate gravity still manages to weigh down my heart. It tells me, “When this is over, you’ll still be you.” I’m many things, but I’m not faster than light, faster than complete darkness. I’m only me, and I wish I weren’t.
Anyway, I responded: “I wasn’t gonna. I was just thinking about it.”
You said: “Well, you shouldn’t think about it, either. Rintarou would be really upset.”
(I’m giving up on good transitions in our conversation.)
“I know he’ll be upset. I already said I wasn’t going to do it.”
“But you thought about it.”
“Can you shut up? I’ll make you shut up. I’ll come over and smack you upside your head, and you’ll disappear until Mori wakes up, and I’ll be free to contemplate or commit suicide as much as I want.”
I’ll admit, at the time all this happened, I was not the loveliest person to be around. I appreciate the fact that you still put up with me during this conversation.
“Rintarou would be really upset. I’ll scream and wake him up before you can do anything. He can’t cut anyone down again. He shouldn’t have to,” You clutched your teddy bear close to your chest when you said this, and I could even see some tears welling in your big doll eyes. “I don’t like it when people kill themselves. It makes me really upset, too.”
I never learned more about this. I think about it a lot: Mori’s connection to suicide. Yours, too. What on earth have you two seen before me? I remember being strapped down to that operating table, his imposing figure above me, staring with such big, empty eyes. I still can’t believe he’s managed to cry every single time he’s found me. He’d sob and sob about how much he loved me, and made me promise never to hurt myself ever again. I think he really believed me when I said I wouldn’t. Not because he had faith in me, but because my doing the unimaginable was truly unimaginable to him. I’ve only seen him cry in two situations: when I try to kill myself and when I came back for that evening. You’ve probably seen him cry more than I have. You cry for him. What a horrible life you’re subjected to.
He’s had so much blood on his hands. Blood of innocent people, blood of guilty people, my blood. He put up with so much for me. It makes me feel like an ungrateful child to live like that, leaving him alone forever with you in his ivory ebony tower; however, surely you know I had no choice but to do it. It wasn’t because of Mori; it was because of Odasaku. Mori was just collateral damage. He knows a lot about that, collateral damage, but I think he hasn’t been collateral damage himself in a long, long while, and his calluses to it had worn down to nothing. Or maybe I really did mean that much to him. Whatever. I don’t care to know.
Sorry, back to the story.
I responded:
“You don’t hurt. You don’t feel anything. You could never understand how this feels. You will never, ever be me”
Of course, you would become me. You will become more and more like Osamu Dazai by each passing day. Nobody should have to do that. You do a lot of difficult things, Elise-things nobody wants to do; you’re something nobody wants to become, and for that, I am eternally grateful to you, despite how it may seem. You’re so many wonderful, thankless things: A mother, a daughter, a therapist, a nurse, a teddy bear, a small dog. Thank you for being them. I know you are not thanked often.
You looked at me again with your big blue doll eyes and frowned. Then, you turned away. You went back into the cruel, empty expanses of the suite and left me out there. It was all cruel. I was cruel, mocking you like that. I’m cruel for even writing this to you, making you remember it all while constantly bringing up your lack of sovereignty, your lack of awareness, and your lack of a mind. You poor empty gourd, filled with trickles of other people, nothing of yours. You have so much, you spoiled little girl, and yet, nothing belongs to you. How strange that really is. You’re just meant to fulfil things.
You left me outside to stare at the Eiffel Tower. I sat on the cold tile of the balcony with my face pressed against the even colder steel bars that keep people from falling but not from jumping, and it twinkled in the night as Paris bustled below me. I sighed loudly, in hopes you’d come back out and argue with me again, but you never did. You went back to sleep and left me to wallow in my shame of getting caught. I felt like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I was a kid at the time, but only in appearance. I think it’s why I’m still one now. Deep down within me, the part that was meant to be a kid got shoved into a little jar, and it’s sat in the back of the fridge of my heart, stewing and fermenting. It may have botulism or something, but I won’t open the jar to check. It’s so disgusting, Elise. My childhood just stews within me and reeks. Whenever I open my heart, something rancid seeps out, and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t get rid of the jar. I may need it someday.
I stared at the Eiffel Tower for a little while longer and breathed. I glew glowed for a bit and finally stood up and went back inside. You know this part: I climbed into Mori’s bed, and he put his arms around me whilst still asleep. He’s so vulnerable whilst sleeping. We all are. I wonder what he dreamt about. What on earth can a man who has everything yet nothing at all even dream of? He has you. He doesn’t need to dream, but his mind does it anyway. The mind is so queer. It’s not like you’d know anything about it, but people aren’t supposed to kill themselves. It goes against every survival instinct to do so. Even while killing themselves, people sometimes break free from the grasp of suicidality and want to live. People who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived say that once they’re halfway down, some survival instinct kicks in and they regret it. They find something to live for, and don’t want to die anymore. Mori told me that after an attempt. He said I’d regret what I did, but every time I’ve tried, that’s never happened. I want my brain’s survival instinct to kick in and solve all my problems, for my brain to work properly again. I have plenty to live for. I just can’t bring myself to do something like that. Living.
I want to lie down on the grass one day and seep into it. I’ll be a worm and the soil, a weed pulled and a shrew. I want to walk into the sea and be accepted by it, into the water. I’ll become part of the water, the ecosystem. I’ll become one of thousands of fish in a school, a barnacle on the side of a rock. One day, I’ll be the air and sun in the sky. A baby bird. The problem was never life. I’m just not someone meant to be alive. When I become a barnacle, I won’t feel. I won’t be me, a mass of millions of selfish choices. Barnacles live selfish lives, you know. They hurt turtles and other animals sometimes by preventing movement, but they also filter the water so animals can eat and breathe. Their selfishness is forgiven because the nature of their existence is, typically and fundamentally, harmless. Barnacles aren’t capable of malice, so they aren’t capable of guilt.
It’s a similar situation for you, Elise. You’ve technically killed countless people like me, but I’d never blame you, even if you don’t feel guilty. You wouldn’t blame a gun for someone being shot. It’s just the nature of its existence. A lion isn’t evil for killing a gazelle. It’s not evil for living, surviving. I am. I don’t know if I feel bad for the lives I’ve taken. I know I don’t feel as bad as I should, and that makes me feel worse. When you’re a scared kid, you feel like a hungry lion when you’re actually a gazelle. Guns are so heavy when you have tiny hands. The trigger was so much harder to pull than I thought it would be. You really have to push. It’s as if the gun is resisting, telling you not to.
I didn’t cry when I killed someone for the first time, or the tenth time, or any time after that. But I still cried when Oda died, as if I had any right to.
The brain is a funny thing.
When Mori woke up, he chuckled and asked why I slept in his bed. I told him I had a bad dream. Mori smiled. He protects a lot of people, but he never really sees it. He likes knowing people don’t fear him, even if he lies about it a lot. He likes being needed; we all do. He’s too human sometimes, all the time, and it’s his greatest fault. When I told him I had a bad dream, you looked over at me with the same eyes you had on the balcony. You have such strange eyes; they’re a colour of blue I’ve never seen, and your pupils don’t dilate. Not when I was out in the dark. Not then; not now. They’re just little pinpricks in the sea. Little barnacles. It makes people feel too seen. You should stop that. There’s a reason why only one person loves you. Why only one person can.
Anyway, nobody had to scrape me off the pavement. Nobody even knew. Thank you for that. You keep lots of secrets.
Always yours,
Osamu Dazai