#HOWRU
by Jowell Tan
So you've decided to take your life.
You, on the edge on the bridge, about to jump. In your bathroom, razor blade hovering over your wrists. Sitting on your bed, sleeping pills and water in hand.
You, with your explanations - "It's too difficult", "I can't go on anymore", "Everyone'll be better off with me"-
Let me stop you right there.
Now, I'm not going to try and stop you - You seem to have already made your mind up - But what I am doing to do, is to tell you about the aftermath of your decision.
In one word: Spaces.
Where you used to exist, there will only be spaces.
Your mother will open your bedroom door to find an empty space where you would normally be, blasting music through your stereo while re-reading your favourite book.
Your family will sit at the dining table across an empty chair, the roaring laughter and conversation of times past replaced by a deafening silence.
Your spouse will spend hours in bed, crying buckets while caressing the sheets where your weight used to press upon.
Your friends, playing soccer in the astroturfed caged field under the flyover, will look for you to take the ball to the back of the net, but now the ball will merely bounce weakly off the walls of the cage.
I know what're you're thinking right now - "Those spaces will get filled by others better than me, and soon it'll be like I was never there" - This is the truth: That space you create by your leaving, can never be filled.
Because that space is not merely a physical one, it is also an emotional one - that you-shaped hole you punch into their hearts can never be filled by anyone else. Their lives will be marked by your absence, divided into Before & After You. Every moment they have will always include a thought of you. Every moment they have will be "less", because you won't be around to share in their joy, their sadness, their emotion. Everything everyone does from then on will be tainted by your decision.
So no, no one will be "better off without you" - things will only get worse.
Suicide never takes just one life.
You, on the edge on the bridge, about to jump. In your bathroom, razor blade hovering over your wrists. Sitting on your bed, sleeping pills and water in hand.
You, with your explanations - "It's too difficult", "I can't go on anymore", "Everyone'll be better off with me"-
Let me stop you right there.
Now, I'm not going to try and stop you - You seem to have already made your mind up - But what I am doing to do, is to tell you about the aftermath of your decision.
In one word: Spaces.
Where you used to exist, there will only be spaces.
Your mother will open your bedroom door to find an empty space where you would normally be, blasting music through your stereo while re-reading your favourite book.
Your family will sit at the dining table across an empty chair, the roaring laughter and conversation of times past replaced by a deafening silence.
Your spouse will spend hours in bed, crying buckets while caressing the sheets where your weight used to press upon.
Your friends, playing soccer in the astroturfed caged field under the flyover, will look for you to take the ball to the back of the net, but now the ball will merely bounce weakly off the walls of the cage.
I know what're you're thinking right now - "Those spaces will get filled by others better than me, and soon it'll be like I was never there" - This is the truth: That space you create by your leaving, can never be filled.
Because that space is not merely a physical one, it is also an emotional one - that you-shaped hole you punch into their hearts can never be filled by anyone else. Their lives will be marked by your absence, divided into Before & After You. Every moment they have will always include a thought of you. Every moment they have will be "less", because you won't be around to share in their joy, their sadness, their emotion. Everything everyone does from then on will be tainted by your decision.
So no, no one will be "better off without you" - things will only get worse.
Suicide never takes just one life.
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Author's Note
my day job recently did a suicide prevention ad - Google the title and you'll read all about it - and I was watching and I thought, "this thing needs a voiceover". So i wrote this as a reflex action to a commercial I saw that I believed could be done better.
Other stories by Jowell Tan
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<3
Good stuff. It addresses well the flailing mind of someone who's afraid to think anymore. *
I've had friends and family members commit suicide.
*
Ah, yes. The self-absorbed never consider the results of their selfish action. Suicide is easy, life is hell. *