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Wristcutter’s Ballet

Posted on March 29, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

I slice my cigars with scalpels and I wear a noose as a neck tie. Not because it makes me cool but because of how scared I can feel when I have that thing threatening to choke off my air or that other thing itching to drag a furrow through my veins. I don’t have patience for multi-step programs because they tell me what I already know and I don’t think repetition is the way for me to learn.

That life is beautiful.

That suffering builds character.

That an animated conversation is better than just-lying-there sex.

That the future is what I make of it.

That the past can only hurt me if I let it.

That she loved me once but once was a long time ago and now she loves him and I should move on.

It’s ironic how everything swims into focus in that moment before oblivion. Most people don’t have the opportunity to take it all back. I did because I didn’t realise that the thumping in the background was not a sound in my head. It was the air and pressure and contact of skin and muscle-encased bone against three-layer painted wooden door. It was my friend Vinay bruising his shoulder and hurting his neck so that he could get into the bathroom and save me.

As I lay there in that hospital with the life threatening to leave my chest cavity because I had been so stupid, he didn’t yell at me once. Nobody yelled at me but it’s not because they didn’t want to. Only Vinay. He was the only one who didn’t want to yell at me. He didn’t think I’d tried to do the right thing but he understood why I must have felt the way I did.

He became the reason I decided to go on. His bruised shoulder and his hurt neck gave me the strength to push past my own pain. I wanted to feel so much more than I had done so far. I hadn’t seen the Eiffel Tower yet and I hadn’t breathed the air in Berlin. I didn’t know what Varanasi smelt like and I had no idea where Uttar Kashi was. But I wanted to know and I wanted to find out because I wanted to be the sum of my experiences instead of becoming the sum of my failures.

It helped though that Vinay didn’t yell at me. Or rebuke me. Or scold me for wanting to kill myself over a girl.

It seems so stupid now. I nearly killed myself over a girl. What a girl but really, only a girl.

I’m better now but I make it a point to always remember how I used to be. Because forgetting is the best way to make the same mistake again.

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