I’ve Been There
Today at 0:25 my egocentrism rose sky-high and beyond the point of acceptance. I am looking nowhere now, thinking about the things I have done wrong and the things I might have done better while counting the minutes and seconds till I finally bleed out. I can hear people calling at me and laughing in my face. They’re saying, “Anna! Why was everything you’ve ever done wrong? Just conk out! Why don’t you conk out? It’s easy!” So I submit to their kind request and fall. I am falling deeply as if I wasn’t even trying to hold the breath of life in me anymore. I am spontaneously dissolving into the surrounding air.
Everything’s fuzzy. With my remaining strength and limited sense of reality I scribble a little note. It says: GOODBYE IDIOTS. SEE YOU IN DISNEYLAND. It is a little overreacting, I know, but that’s all I could think of in that moment. After all, it is not an every-day situation. It will never be repeated.
But then, I sink in. It is as if I was just dreaming. Just as if I was running like a barefooted child across grass but much, much better. Time is whirling around me. Space is whirling around me. The shapeless shadows are slowly turning into something definite. So many ideas and subjects are running through my mind, preoccupying the whole capacity of my brain that I am slowly losing myself in that never-ending circle of memories. I don’t know where I am, but the one thing I know for sure is that I am dead.
My body is lying in a coffin right in front of me. It is a nice coffin with a laced skirting. Quite a masterpiece! How did my parents know that I would like this coffin? It is so surreally psychotic that it makes me laugh. We’ve never discussed coffins.
Oh, life is so trifling and vain! I can even see that people from the burial industry did a good job collecting my remains from the asphalt. After I jumped, I must have been totally scattered across the pavement. Surely they had difficulties identifying me.
But now, I am quite pretty. Much prettier than I was alive. The employees of the burial industry probably did this in order to prevent my mother from getting a sudden hysteric seizure after looking at my body. However, it is not me in that coffin. They could rather buy ground meat in Tesco and say “Mrs. Röder, this is your daughter.” It would be more authentic and as a matter of fact, better. Idealizing reality means pretending it doesn’t exist, which doesn’t make sense.
Nothing actually makes sense! Neither life, nor death. Neither reality, nor illusion. Not even the huge vase full of white roses standing beside my coffin. Everything is so strange to me.
I touch my own white cheek in the coffin. It’s cold. There is even some white, slightly sticky powder on it, probably decomposition. Why am I rotting so fast? Is it because of the state of my soul? Do we really marry our bodies?-I ask myself.
It is in that moment that I notice them; other people waiting for my funeral. All of them have the compulsory sad expression on their faces. How very grotesque! I laugh at them.
My dears, I will make you all bleed! I will appear in your mirrors, lift your blankets, and strangle you with my own ice-cold fingers till you all lose your wicked minds! And no, I will not be merciful! Because of you, I hated the whole world and myself! Because of you I tried to be different in order to prove you that despite all my faults and wounds I still do exist!
I wanted you to like me. I wanted to be with you, to be one of you, but you treated me like vomit somewhere in a corner of a bus stop! You knew I was there, but you didn’t talk to me! You left me alone! Just like that! But the situation has changed, ladies and gentlemen. You are down there, listening to the priest’s sermon themed “an innocent child killed itself, God have mercy on us sinners” while blowing your nose on purpose. But I know that all this comedy of yours is not real because you are not real. You are not real!
My mother starts crying. She cries continuously and without stopping. Everybody in the crematorium can hear her. She screams, “Why Anna?! Why have you done this?! Return to me, darling, please!!!” I count every minute, hoping that she will finally shut up. I don’t want to listen. I’ve already decided! I’ve decided to die! So why does she still pretend, hysterically crying on the floor and screaming that she loves me and wants me to return? It’s too late! It’s over!
But she doesn’t stop. Father is trying to lift her up, but she still lies on the ground screaming crazy words, which ingrain in my memory like red-hot coals.
“Mum! I am sorry! I love you! Please, forgive me! I didn’t want to hurt you! I didn’t want to hurt anybody! I didn’t want to create such evil! Please!” But no one hears my words. No one notices my presence. Then the man who was standing beside me all the time takes my hand and whispers, “Come!”
I am waking up. I can see a blurry room full of beeping devices and a bunch of doctors standing near my bed. I can barely see their faces, but I know that they are strangely slab-sided by stupid smiles.
One of them says, “Good morning miss. How are you doing?”
I say nothing in return. I don’t like this place.
“What is your name?” Someone asks again.
Don’t they see that I am not very fond of talking?! Why are they asking me at all?!
One of the medical students that are standing around me responds instead of me: “Her case history says that her name is Anna Sofia Röder. She slashed her wrists and overdosed herself with Risperidonum and fluvoxamini hydrogenomaleas ….”
“No, I..I jumped from a bridge!” I interrupt her sleepily. I don’t remember cutting my wrists. I knew there was a lot of blood around me, but I didn’t take Daddy’s pills. I was on a bridge and fell on the pavement!
“Thank you Miss Wasikowska, but since this patient has recently woken up and is, as you can surely see, currently unable to process any reasonable information, you have to speak to the legal representatives.” Says an older man who was surely the professor of this class. I am quite grateful for him because chatting with medics is the last thing I want to do.
“Students, I would like to speak to this patient alone if you wouldn’t mind.” He adds.
All of them leave the room in a minute, mumbling and complaining among themselves. I can still smell their chewing gums and odors of perfume and tobacco. Their distinct voices still echo in my head.
I am now alone with the professor and we are quiet as if we both didn’t want to speak up first. He observes me and writes notes in his little medical notepad. Patient suffers from amnesia, hybobulia, anguish and depression. Not responding to the treatment. I can see his notes quite clearly and they piss me off. What does he know about me?! Nothing!
“I know quite a lot from empirical observation, Anna. It is my job.” He answers my unsaid question. I am not surprised. He’s a psychiatrist after all. He knows things normal people wouldn’t. He can easily get into my mind.
I observe the old man hiding behind his spectacles. I want his wisdom, his age, his nonchalantly calm manner, and I hate him for all of that. I hate this good doctor.
“I’ve been there. In the shadowlands.” I say.
“Yes, it happens sometimes.” He answers. And that’s the end of it?! Doesn’t he really say anything else? Do I always have to be hated by everybody?
“No, you don’t understand. I saw him. I saw God. He was disappointed with me!”
“No! God is not disappointed. He understands. Now sleep, Anna. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”He concludes and puts his notepad in his bag while pressing a tiny blue button of some device.
I’m starting to feel dizzy and suddenly everything’s circling around me as if I were somewhere in a place with no gravity. A shadow falls upon my eyes
“Is it morphine that you gave me?” I mumble.
“No, something less addictive! You wouldn’t like to be addicted, would you?” He says winking at me while walking away and leaving me alone with my own wounded consciousness.
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