The ants found me before my parents did, drawn to the sticky sweet blood dripping from my head onto the stump, following the line of my chin. Suicide is nothing to fuck with. I know that now.
I had been drinking peach schnapps and getting gradually braver and more depressed. I looked out the window for the umpteenth time at the ugly sharp stump three stories below. It taunted me.
A lightning and wind storm had downed our old evergreen. It took us a couple of weeks to clean it up and cart off the logs, but the broken part left attached to the stump whittled up to a sharp point about five feet high. I decided that it would be quite a statement to jump to my death, and have my parents find me, impaled through the middle - a final fuck you to the ever-nasty pair. I never thought about what would happen if I missed. I soon found out I didn’t need to worry about that. I just didn’t impale the part I wanted to.
I swung out on my windowsill, letting myself sway, closer and closer to letting go. My grip weakened so I knew there was no changing my mind now. I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t lost my nerve and tried to swing back away at the last second. I wonder if I would be dead now, and I wonder if that would be better.
I woke in the morning, cold but not shivering, the sun beginning to warm me, Waking up the insects around me. My parents slept in, sleeping off their drunken fight. I couldn’t move, and with my good eye I could see the pointed shaft of wood protruding out of the other half of my face. I was blind on that side, I could tell. From the angle of my view, I could tell the wood entered my upper back, near my neck, and exited my eye socket or very near it. The upside? No pain. I spit away the ants biting my lip and tried to scream.
I lived. Unfortunately? You tell me. They turn me regularly to fight bedsores, though I wouldn’t know if I did have them. Maybe I would by the smell if they got bad. Somehow, I can still smell. I can still hear. My good eye shows me whatever view I am tilted toward. I can’t tell them to turn down the lights or change the channel. I can’t tell them to kick my parents out when they argue, quietly, so they don’t get asked to leave again.
I can’t tell them I wish I hadn’t tried, or that I wish I tried harder. I can’t try again even if I want to. I only got one chance. And my one chance turned out to be, as they say, a swing and a miss. I hate that fucking tree.