How much longer must I wait? I have read all the magazines.
I will have to be shampooed again.
Lonnie? Lonnie!
Oh, Lonnie, you look drenched, but doesn't the rain feel good?
Before I forget, here's that article I had Xeroxed for you--all
about boredom, remember?
Oh, no, no, no, no. Sorry, that's not it. That's my suicide note.
Well, not my suicide note . . .
It's one I've been keeping because,
well, I found it,
and I haven't been able to throw it away, because . . .
well, I don't know exactly, it's the strangest effect. . . .
Where shall I start?
When I was in L.A. I found this suicide note in the
street where my exercise class is. I don't know why I
picked it up.
I had no idea who it belonged to. Anyone living in that
neighborhood had reason to want to end it all. I couldn't
bring myself to throw it away.
I was saddenedy by what she said in the note--
but I felt even worse when I realized that losing the
note could only add to her feelings of low self-esteem.
Further evidence that she could never do
anything right. I should
imagine there's only one thing more depressing than writing a
suicide note, and that's losing the one you've just written.
She seemed so fragine and yet courageous, too. Ironically,
there is in this suicide note more feeling, more forgiveness,
more capacity for life . . .
Whatever this person is, or was, she was not jaded. She was
not bored. Her only real complaint was something she called
"false hopes."
If she ever did commit suicide, it would be out of feeling too
much--not too little.
There was nothing dramatic--
no big tragedy,
it seems, just,
a lifetime of being . . .
dismissed . . . by everyone, apparently . . .
except me.