Response to a Suicide Note

From one cursed woman to another

Hey Mom.

In keeping with business as usual, it’s been a long time since I’ve talked to you. I have dedicated myself to a practice of general unreachability, and it’s really nothing personal. As it turns out, getting away from you was not enough to fix things. You infected everything, everyone I knew. Craig, Lani, Michelle, Dawn, other Dawn, Chad— I want to ask them silly things like, “How’s work going? Is the pay any better?” But you’re hanging there behind them, tight-browed and smiling. I guess I just can’t work up the courage to face that. You. So I don’t text back, I don’t return calls, I just go to work wearing your perfume and I pretend none of you exist, like I simply emerged from the seafoam without any mother or father. Sadly, I see now that I was carved from your rib. You don’t answer either.

It is with that knowledge that I feel armed enough to tell you (if perhaps you did not know) that you’re kind of a bitch. I mean really, who actually commits suicide? Do you know that a certain Godmother was so torn up, she was convinced you had pulled a Gone Girl? Those were her exact words. “I really think she pulled a Gone Girl, ran away to Paris or something. She’s gotta be out there.” And the note you left, my GOD, talk about overdone. I was in a dark place and I couldn’t get out; how passé. I heard that from every one of my cutter friends by the lockers in seventh grade. It sounds like something I’d make up for dramatic effect in a Substack post, but no, that was your explanation. The part I actually liked was the three pages after of instructions for refilling my prescriptions. That has single-handedly molded my entire conception of humor.

I’m a bitch too. People keep dancing around saying it as if I’m not trying. I’ve come to respect Brits because they refer to me as an Agony Aunt, which I guess translates to “bitch who writes.” It’s funny; I only recently stopped to think about how you used to write too, and post videos and care about fashion. You never aged either. It’s like your face froze at twenty-one, some mercurial property about you welded in place, encased in porcelain. I think about how you acted, how you were the coolest and sweetest girl I knew, but just such a massive bitch. We would’ve been best friends, I think, in another life. Or, you could’ve been me and I’d be you, and I’d just tell Dad to leave so we could get ahead of things.

You know, I was terrified of you. And after years of saying nothing, offering nothing, sitting there as you destroy me and doing nothing to stop it, I believed him when he said he was too. How could I not? He knew how I watched the mirrors to check for you around corners. He knew I could identify your approach up the stairs without looking, just by the click of your knees. He knew so much, and when he finally said it, I felt real for the first time. He told me how good it felt to cheat on you, how it made him realize he didn’t want this. I still regret that I was sympathetic. On his side, even. To think of it now tastes like sulfur in my throat.

I know a good mother never speaks ill of her child’s father, and you wanted so much to be good. Even now you probably won’t tell me your side. Since I last saw you, I’ve gone completely psychotic just guessing at what he put you through. Burning all of your journals was deeply unhelpful, by the way, but I still managed to piece a few things together. I know Carly wasn’t the first. You remember Jessica? He told me the story about bringing her home to “let the dogs out” in the middle of the workday. And he goes, “She went fucking crazy about that and accused me of cheating with her for months.” The silver of his tongue is sharp, but it wasn’t sharp enough to gloss over that.

I guess I don’t need to bore you with all of this rehashing. You’re omnipotent now; the forest and the trees and all the dirt beneath it or something. Does betrayal still sting in Heaven? If I don’t believe that Jesus rejects those who jump from chairs, which I do not, then I must also question the idea that death is a release from pain. I hope you’re thankful that I ask more questions than you did. But in all of your terror and rage, you were just so glorious, like a goddess from some ancient myth, star-crossed with her fate. I wouldn’t change you, and I know I couldn’t. But I’m trying to ask you something, because my heart still beats, and for that reason I am selfish.

Did you do it to get the last word? Vacuum the house, mop the floors, feed the dogs, tighten the belt and jump so that he’d have to confess to everyone what he did? Because if so, you must know he didn’t. He flew your whole family out, paid for their hotel rooms, and spoke at your funeral. Did you do it because we were both leaving you? In my defense, I was all but forced into college—and I was not very good at it either. I know I was too late, but I did come back when you died. I still refuse to leave. I’ll refuse as long as you like if that was indeed the reason. Or was it the most likely scenario that since I was born, you were living on borrowed time?

That’s what you said in your old, old journals—the ones you forgot to burn. I have them all in that gnarly green trunk you left. They smell like shit, you know. All of these young girls nowadays romanticizing the scent of a dusty library, beaten leather and timeworn pages—what a load of shit. Anyhow, I plugged my nose one night and I read them all. I know what happened in those years you disappeared. Nobody knows where you were except for me, and as it just so happens, I disappeared at eighteen too. You left, and I lost myself, and I just shut my eyes behind the wheel. I was furious at you then and glad you were gone, but at some point I found you in that darkness, in the words you had written. I’m posting all this shit online, but I won’t tell a soul where we were.

The point is that I know you didn’t come back. You and I, we never liked sentimentals. If I’m any good at writing, you might tear up when you read this, but I’m watching Friends as I type. Rachel just crashed Ross and Emily’s wedding. It’s not that serious. You never came back; it is what it is, I get it. But you should know I had to look at everybody you left behind and promise them I wouldn’t follow you. They wouldn’t leave me alone for months. I couldn’t have a meal, go for a walk, or even take a fucking nap without my pockets being checked for sharp objects. I bought your sister weed and smoked it in the Hilton with her. I had the worst sex of my life a thousand times over and I barely remember any of it. I did a bunch of drugs, I got too skinny, and worst of all, I got spiritual. But I came back, Mom.

I’m doing all the things you didn’t get to and all the things you should have but didn’t. That second bit really fucking sucks. I feel like I ruined your life. You got stuck with me and because of that, you got stuck with Dad, and you didn’t get to be a big-shot journalist or perfumer or poet. But I think I saved you for a little bit too, before I was just another You. Since that time I have shed all of my skin, and I’m left a writhing ball of exposed nerve endings, and everything has hurt so badly, but it’s all been completely worth it. I would strap myself to the front of an eighteen-wheeler, butt-ass naked with my entrails strung around my neck, before I would ever give it up like you did. I need you to hear that from me. It sucks, and it’s worth it.

I have a boyfriend now, you might’ve noticed him from above. His name is Alex and I intend to marry him. I’m taking his last name and your middle name, and my dress will be a strapless cream number with a veil so long it’ll put Mother Mary to shame. I will be a gorgeous bride. He’s wonderful to me. I remember you leaning down in front of me and saying, “You wait to get married until someone treats you like the sun shines out of your ass.” Your eyes were so wide, wagging your finger to hide it trembling. He really does, Mama. You would have truly loved him. He’s too smart, shy at times, but miraculous like the inside of an abalone shell. I suspect you may have sent him to me, a romance to challenge my ambition.

Maybe we’re cursed women. I found out about your grandmother too, how she died the same exact way. But my teeth are steel, my tongue a sawed-off shotgun, and I have grabbed God by the throat more than once and spit in his watchful eye. I am bigger than curses and blessings, and I eat so fast I often forget to chew. I will not go back. I carry that picture of you, the only one I have from your wedding, and I kiss it gently each night after wiping the gore from my blade. You were the worst, I love you.

I forgive you.