A Moments Collision

She didn't want to die, so why did she do it?

She hadn’t wanted to die, that was what they didn’t understand. They thought it was an attempted suicide but if she had died she would have failed in her aim. Of course they spoke about it in hushed voices and they had to ask her but when she said it wasn’t they only pursed their lips. They must have thought she was hiding from the shame or the truth but she wasn’t.

When she was lying in the hospital bed a man came to see her. He introduced himself as a doctor but she knew he was a doctor of the mind. She told him what she had told everyone else, that it was an accident, a moment when she wasn’t thinking quite straight and she just slipped up for a moment. It wasn’t a complete lie, it was caused by a moment, but it wasn’t a slip or an accident. He went away eventually and she was able to lie alone in her bed staring at the ceiling.

Her parents tried to give her pills one day. A nurse brought them in and was obliged to explain what they were and when she heard the word anti-depressant she shook her head. They were left on the table and she didn’t bother to put them in the bin. She wasn’t depressed, and the nurse had explained they help other things to but she wasn’t going to listen.

At times it crossed her mind that she could of easily died but she knew that if she had died she wouldn’t of known to regret it.

One day when she was young she was with some friends writing scooters around the cul-de-sac. It was her turn to go streaming down the road and as she did a car turned into it. She wondered what it would be like to keep going, to connect with the bumper of the car. She was lucky she had more than a moment for she swerved and instead scraped a little off her knee in falling onto the curb. But she wondered what would of happened.

People expected her to be traumatised, regardless of whether it had been an accident or not. They used words like victim as if she had fallen prey to an evil. It surprised them how well she slept and how she didn’t mind being left alone.

When she walked out of the hospital three weeks later she almost wished she could step in front of another car. They didn’t understand she didn’t want to die, she just wanted to stop for awhile.

As she had stood in the middle of the medium strip waiting for the cars to pass she felt the heavy books in her hands, the work she had to go to, the people she had to see. She thought of the day she had almost continued on the scooter and the second that slipped through her mind wondering if perhaps life would be easier.

It had been 11 years and she had found the scooter still rushing down that hill.

As she had lain in the hospital bed staring aimlessly up at the ceiling, not having to think or worry about anything, she didn’t regret any of it. Her scooter had finally collided with the car and the split moments of wondering were now known. She had been able to stop.

 

Author's Note

Sometimes I wonder what's going through my head