The pen feels heavier than it should.
It is a simple ballpoint, black ink, chewed slightly at the cap, a nervous habit I never managed to break. It rests in my hand like a lead weight, an anchor dragging my wrist down to the paper.
I have been staring at this blank page for an hour.
Outside, the city is doing what it always does. It breathes. It honks. It screams. I can hear the distant siren of an ambulance, the rhythmic thrum of the bass from a passing car, the laughter of a couple walking their dog three floors down.
They are so alive. It is almost offensive how loud their life is.
My apartment, in contrast, is terrified into silence.
I cleaned it today.
I scrubbed the baseboards until my knuckles turned raw and red. I bleached the grout in the shower. I folded every towel in the linen closet, so the corners aligned perfectly, a geometrical apology for what I am about to do.
I didn't want to leave a mess. That is the first rule of leaving: Do not be a burden.
I have been a burden for so long. Or, at least, that is how the space inside my chest feels. It feels like I am carrying a backpack full of stones, and every time I ask someone for help, I am asking them to carry it for a mile.
Eventually, everyone gets tired.
Eventually, even the strongest legs buckle.
I am tired of watching people buckle under the weight of my sadness.
So, I write.
To whom it may concern,
No. That's too cold. Too legal.
To the ones I love,
Too cruel. If I loved them enough, wouldn't I stay? That is the question they will ask. That is the question that will haunt them at 3:00 AM on Tuesdays when the rain hits the window. I don't want to lie to them.
I crumple the page. I toss it onto the floor, where it joins three others. White paper corpses.
I start again.
For those who come after.
Yes. That is better.
Because someone will come after.
Someone will have to open this door. Someone will have to smell the stale air. Someone will have to decide what to do with my winter coats and my half-finished knitting projects and the stack of books on the nightstand that I swore I would read this summer.
To you, the person who finds me:
I am sorry.
I am sorry that I made you part of this memory. I hope you are a professional. I hope you are a stranger. Please, let it be a stranger. I cannot bear the thought of my mother's eyes seeing the finality of this room.
If you are my mother, stop reading. Close the door. Call the police. Let them handle the inventory of my life.
But if you are still reading, there are things you need to know. Practical things. The mechanics of a life interrupted.
The rent is paid through the end of the month. The check is on the fridge, under the magnet shaped like the Eiffel Tower. I never went to Paris. It seems silly now, to have a magnet for a place I never saw, but I liked the idea of it.
I liked the idea of a lot of things.
I liked the idea of being happy. I liked the idea of waking up without that heavy, gray wool blanket suffocating my brain. I liked the idea of falling in love and growing old and complaining about arthritis.
But ideas are not enough to keep the lungs inflating.
Please be careful with the succulents on the windowsill. They are resilient, much more than I am. They only need water once every two weeks. Don't drown them. That's how most people kill things—with too much attention, too much water, too much worry.
Just let them be. They survive best in the sun, left alone.
There is a cat.
His name is Barnaby. He is hiding under the bed right now because he knows. Animals always know. He has been pacing around my legs all morning, winding his tail around my calves, crying a low, guttural sound that vibrates in my bones.
Please, do not send him to a shelter.
He is old. He is cranky. He only eats the paté kind of food, not the chunks. The chunks make him throw up.
There is a number on the fridge for my neighbor, Mrs. Gable. She likes him. She once told me he was the only gentleman she'd met in ten years. Give him to her. Tell her... tell her I had to go somewhere where cats aren't allowed.
Don't tell her the truth. She brings me cookies on Sundays. She thinks I am a nice young woman with a bright future.
Let her keep that lie. It's a kinder inheritance than the truth.
My hand is shaking.
The handwriting is becoming jagged, like the readout of a failing heart monitor.
Why is it so hard to explain?
People want a reason. They want a "because."
She did it because she lost her job.
She did it because of the breakup.
She did it because of the chemical imbalance.
But it isn't one thing. It is everything. And it is nothing.
It is the erosion.
It is the slow, steady drip of water on a stone. One drop doesn't matter. One drop is annoying, perhaps, but bearable. But a million drops? A billion? Over years and years?
It wears you down. It carves a hole right through the center of you until you are nothing but a hollow shape where a person used to be.
I am hollow.
I walk through these streets, and I feel like a ghost. People look right through me. Or, worse, they look at me and they see a mask. They see the smile I painted on this morning. They hear the laugh I practiced in the mirror.
They ask, "How are you?"
And I say, "I'm fine. Just tired."
"Just tired" is the greatest lie ever told.
I am not tired of sleeping. I am tired of waking up.
I am tired of the effort it takes to pull air into my lungs. I am tired of the performance. I am tired of the noise inside my head that tells me, constantly, incessantly, that I am not enough. That I am broken. That I am a waste of space and resources and love.
Especially love.
I have been loved. I know that.
To Mark:
I know you tried. God, I know you tried. You tried to fix me. You came at me with your toolbox of optimism and your hammer of logic. You thought if you just loved me hard enough, if you just took me on enough vacations, if you just bought me enough flowers, the gray would go away.
But you can't love the cancer out of someone, Mark. And you can't love the darkness out of me.
It wasn't your fault.
Please, if you read this, burn that sentence into your mind. It wasn't your fault.
You were trying to water a plant that had no roots.
I left your sweater. The blue one. It's on the chair. It still smells like you—like cedar and rain. I hugged it for a long time before I sat down to write this. It was the hardest part. Letting go of that smell.
But you deserve someone who is whole. You deserve someone who doesn't look at a sunset and wonder what it would feel like to never see it rise again.
You deserve the sun. I am just the eclipse.
The sun is going down now.
The light in the apartment is changing. It's shifting from the harsh, honest white of afternoon to the soft, forgiving gold of evening.
The shadows are stretching out across the floorboards. They look like fingers, reaching for me.
It is time.
I have organized my finances. My passwords are in the black notebook in the top drawer. My bank account has enough to cover the cremation. Do not spend money on a casket. I do not want to take up space in the ground. I have taken up enough space.
Scatter me somewhere loud. The ocean, maybe. Or a busy intersection. Somewhere where the silence can't find me.
I look around this room one last time.
My sanctuary. My prison.
I see the dust motes dancing in the shaft of light coming through the window. They are beautiful. Aimless, floating, catching the light for just a second before disappearing into the dark corners.
That's all we are, really. Dust in the light.
I hope the next person who lives here is happy.
I hope they paint the walls a bright color. Yellow, maybe. Or sky blue.
I hope they have loud dinner parties. I hope they burn toast and laugh about it. I hope they make love on the living room rug. I hope they fill this silence with so much life that my echo is completely drowned out.
To those who come after:
Forgive me for the mess.
Forgive me for the silence.
Forgive me for checking out early.
The bill was just too high, and I ran out of currency a long time ago.
I am putting the pen down now.
The tea I made is cold.
The world is still turning outside. I can hear it. It sounds like a river, rushing forward, unstoppable.
I am just stepping out of the current.
Goodbye.