When you read these words I’ll already be dead…

One would think the worst that can come out of writing these words with serious intent is pretty obvious… shows how much you know.

Ever since the accident, I wrote this sentence seven times, and deleted it six times.

Six months ago me and Betty went out to celebrate our 3 years anniversary. Took her to a nice restaurant, we smiled a lot, held hands and told each other the biggest clichés in the world - they all made perfect sense at the time.

I pulled out the ring, got down on one knee… it was all like a dream… she squealed, hands over her mouth, she never looked more beautiful… yeah well, that changed fast. We were on our way back home, one hand on the wheel, one hand holding hers… I remember everything so vividly! Her hand was warm and soft, she was holding the ring up to admire it (you really had to hold it close to your face to actually admire it) and it was sparkling… David Guetta & Sia’s “Titanium” was playing on the radio and she was swaying to the beat, huge smile and all. She turned to me and said “You know, I… and that was it. There was a flash of light… screech of metal… one of us screamed… darkness.

I woke up to beeping.

They said I was lucky to be alive, I just broke both my legs, shattered my right shoulder and arm, 3 ribs and cracked my skull. It was pain that woke me up and it stayed with me, mocking the morphine, or whatever it was they were feeding my veins. Worst of allwas the headache.

The other driver was drunk and swerved and died in the crash.

Betty was dead. The drunk driver hit us on her side and she never had a chance.

I missed her funeral because I was out for 2 weeks…

Everything around me looked fragmented and tinged in red. Reality itself was broken… when I looked at photos of me and Betty (including ones from out last evening) we didn’t look human anymore… everything was nightmarish… I stopped looking in the mirror.

Everyone just assumed they knew how I was feeling. No one asked really but the psychiatrist (and I didn’t answer, I just stared at him). I hated them. All. The more they cared for me and fussed about and got me fruit baskets and put up "get well” signs the more I hated them. They were all fakes.

I think the first time I thought about ending it all was when they told me they already buried Betty. It just felt so unfair. I went to see the grave when I could, being pushed there on a wheelchair… very classy. It was just a stone… I felt nothing… empty.

2nd time was when I re-broke my leg in physiotherapy. 3rd was when my mother was crying by my bed when she thought I was sleeping… Seriously, it’s not like it was hard for me to come up with good reasons to kill myself.





This is us, about 40 minutes before Betty was killed…





Love of my life, now gone. They never did find the ring I gave her in the wreckage…

Fast forward 6 months. Half a year of physiotherapy that led nowhere but pain (as I managed to slip and re-break my leg). Psychotherapy where, what I assume was a professional (the diplomas on the wall were the only indication), tried to reassure me that the driver that killed Betty and crushed my body (and soul too really) was to blame and not me (I blocked out his voice and just nodded every time he stopped talking). Friends came and tried to “be there for me”… no one looked human to me anymore. I saw no point in continuing this “mock life” anymore… I knew my parents were suspecting something of the sort, because they did not leave me alone with any of the assorted painkillers and other pills, they would bring me my dosage every time I was supposed to take it… I started hoarding the pills that were supposed to make me sleep (grey, oval and flat with a line in the middle)… trust me that was NOT easy. The pain, even after painkillers, was never gone, and it felt that it was always just bad enough to keep me from sleeping… so I hardly slept and reality became even more twisted. My pile of sleeping pills grew bigger, so were the headaches. Combined with the lack of sleep, I would pass out sometimes, which was good, because my parents thought I was sleeping and would leave me alone. It also made me impatient to get to the point where I thought I could do it - 10 pills. 10 days of not being able to sleep more than a delirious few minutes at a pop. It was like a countdown! 10 more pills, 9 more pills, 8, 7…

Eventually the final night came. I had a glass of water to crush the pills into. A laptop to type my suicide note with (a last moment decision, because although I couldn’t stand hearing or looking at them towards the end, in the final night I felt it would be too cruel to just leave without saying nothing).

I crushed all the pills into the water, propped myself up a bit (almost blacked out from the shooting pain) and started to write the note. I got all the way to:

“When you read these words I’ll already be dead”

That’s when my mom got in the room. She had a flower vase in her hands (she would put fresh flowers next to the bed every night, when she thought I was asleep, so I’ll wake up to fresh flowers every morning, only for me they stank and looked black and twisted). She was surprised to see I was awake and as I slammed the laptop shut and she looked at me, sensing something was very wrong… I said nothing, just reached for the drugged glass of water and gulped it down, finishing it all before she dropped the vase and got to me.

She was screaming for my father, but it sounded far away… an amazing calmness washed over me… For the first time in six months I felt no pain at all! I think I was even beginning to smile as sweet, sweet, darkness washed over me… a few seconds later something amazing happened. My vision cleared and I was seeing my body, laying down on the bed underneath me, not moving, with my mother shaking me, screaming for my father to dial 911. If she only knew how serene I was at that moment and that the pain was gone, I’m sure she would’ve been far less distraught… As mom was trying to give me CPR and as I was going to tell her not to bother, another thing happened. Just like I read dozens of times before in the accounts of people with near death experiences, an opening in the ceiling appeared and blinding white light was pouring through… the light felt GREAT! and I was drifting into what appeared to be a tunnel of that white light. Last thing I saw before I got in was my father burst into the room with a paramedic (how long WAS I floating down there?!!?). Last thing I thought was that, quite possibly, I have just written the crappiest suicide note EVER and maybe shouldn’t have bothered.

I was floating up, surrounded by white light and it seemed as if it was washing away all signs of the injuries I suffered, scars disappearing, metal rivets gone and all dark thoughts forgotten. If I knew that that’s how it feels to die, I would have done it ages ago!

Then things started to go wrong.

The white light flickered a couple of times and my ascension faltered until I was just floating there. Not worried or anything, just curious. Then black blots appeared on the white tunnel walls, spreading like inkblots on white cloth… Soon enough there was no more white light… The blots opened up like sores and oozed something red and bloodlike and a low moan, not unlike that of a strong wind started getting louder and higher in pitch, until I was deafened by a wail that felt like it was going to tear me apart. I’m pretty sure I was screaming at that point. I started falling. The tunnel was now all black and oozing red and pulsating as if I was in the belly of something…

On my way down, I flew by my room again and for a split second saw them trying to revive me before whooshing past and further down. I may have fallen for a few seconds or it could have been decades, I have no idea, but, just as I thought the noise and wind would make my eyes pop, ears bleed and the flesh to be torn from my bones, it ended in me going through some black smoke and an audible “splat” that knocked me out…





Happier days: