Nov
25
Guest Post: Adam Poncharoensub
Itchy Suit
He walks into the gym locker room. He drags his feet to the bathroom. He stops in front of the mirror and looks into it. He sees his stupid hair, his stupid eyes, his stupid nose, his stupid lips, his stupid face. He grits his teeth in disgust and gets another headache. He clenches his fist and punches the mirror. He feels something warm oozing from his knuckles and looks to see shards of glasses embedded in his skin. There is a particularly large shard of glass in the sink. He takes hold of it and walks into the showers. He turns on the water and allows it to wash over him. He grabs the shard tightly in his hand and presses it to his left wrist, slowly carving a line down his arm, separating skin and lacerating his veins. Isn’t that the proper way to kill yourself? He repeats the process on his right hand, but it doesn’t come out as straight because he’s right handed. He drops the shard and puts his wrists to his forehead. He allows the blood to flow over his stupid face. His vision is blurring and he stumbles. He falls on his back. He looks ahead to the drain and sees his blood spiraling down it. It’s thin and wispy. He wonders if he was so fake and empty that instead of blood, he simply had red paint flowing through his veins. His thoughts are fading and then there was black.
***
I’m at his funeral today. I’m wearing the black suit that my dad loaned me and it’s starting to itch. Everyone he knows is here, looking solemn. There is a large black coffin in front of us, which presumably houses his body. There is a priest behind the coffin, reading from the Bible. And to the priest’s right is a picture of him. He looks happy. I look around and notice nobody is crying. The priest begins talking about his life and the wonderful things he did and what he meant to us. I’m supposed to be his best friend, but I can’t seem to believe any of it. He was a shitty person. That’s the truth and I’m going to say it whether he’s alive or dead. I’m willing to bet everyone here would agree with me.
It’s strange how whenever someone dies, we always have to sit here and reminisce about what a great person they were and how they inspired us in some way. Why is that? Is it because we’re obligated to only remember the good things about them? But that doesn’t make any sense, because what if they were shitty people? Imagine an old and greedy power-hungry factory owner. His employees hate him because he works them to the bone and his family hates him because he didn’t care about them. But when he dies, everyone sits at his funeral and talks about what a great person he was, when they all hate him.
Or could it be that death and mourning is inherently selfish? That their death makes us feel bad that it suddenly becomes more about the mourner than the actual deceased. And to ease that grief, we talk about what a great person they were. We use them to get over them? Also makes no sense, because if we really liked them so much, it’ll just make us miss them more to remember how great they were.
Or it is because we feel guilty for not feeling all too bad about their death? Are we sitting here listening to the good things about this person to alleviate our own guilt? Is it that somehow speaking about how wonderful the person was, it makes us feel better about ourselves? Do we lie to ourselves and to each other just to cope with the guilt of really not caring? That definitely seems to be the case here. It certainly looks like everyone’s got that veil on today. His parents don’t even look all that shaken.
Maybe that’s why he offed himself? Maybe he realized that his loved ones never really loved him? And in turn, he found out that he could never really love anyone else. It makes sense. I don’t know. All I know is this suit is really itchy and I can’t wait to get home to get it off.
Adam Poncharoensub can be found lollygagging with a group of misfits at Dropping Loads Productions: , where he co-hosts a comedy podcast and produces comedic sketches. Otherwise, he’s at Dark Knight News: , writing semi-coherent ramblings about the one and only Caped Crusader. Sometimes. he goes on Twitter:
4 comments