contemplation

The blue color of the wall originally, painted to bring calmness, permitted no relief. The pastel shades of the comforter, supposedly a reminder of childhood, brought back no innocence. The slamming of doors and piercing screams of two adults broke through her thoughts; there was just no escape. She remained a prisoner in a house that at the moment was not the most welcoming of homes. Her TV remained tuned into some random channel in an attempt to block out the cacophony of noise. When the screams hesitated for a moment, her hand moved instinctively towards the remote to press the mute button only as a reassurance that her mother still breathed and that the intermission between fights transpired not as a direct result of some fatal mistake. Her heart pulsated in her ears and her body ached from the sprinting blood inside of her. Morgan overheard such confrontations before and in all probability would continue to hear them unless she took direct actions to stop them.1

Something persistent grew inside of her, building up in her mind until it snapped. The constant struggle to calm her heart to a normal rate remained a struggle, but her definition of normal and the world's definition of normal differed greatly. As long as she couldn't hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel the rhythmic beating of a pulse, she knew she could still breathe, but breathing didn't equal surviving, at least, not in her world.2

The battle playing out in the living room intensified. "Morgan! Morgan get out here now. Tell your mother to get off of me. Stop her," slurred Morgan's drunken, alcoholic, stepfather from the furthest region of the house. Morgan quickly turned the TV off and made sure the lights were off in her room, then turned over in bed. She wished she were asleep off in some dreamland that would occupy her thoughts. But sleeping might mean the loss of innocence for another child. Morgan knew that her younger sister had heard the slurred speech of the stepfather; she knew that if the fighting got worse, she could not continue to pretend, and the fights always got worse. Morgan recalled the many nights that sleep eluded her as the two eldest members of the household fought yet again. The constant struggle echoed in the hallways of the house like a silent reminder of all things lost.3

"Morgan, Morgan I said your mother's drunk, get her away from me. Get off of me Liz. You’re drunk, get off of me," the slurred words faded this time. The gloomy bedroom that typically remained black at night looked gray from the involuntary adjustment of Morgan's eyes. She tiptoed from her bed in a corner of the rectangular shaped room to the door on the opposite wall. A simple twelve feet separated her from the war going on in the house. She knew that the right thing to do in the given situation would always be to stop it; but tonight she just didn't feel like it. She never really felt like it; most of the time she just wanted it all to end for some reason. The worst thing about the ongoing war between the adults would always be the fact that in the morning both would forgive and forget, never knowing how Morgan felt. Morgan never wanted to say anything. She didn't care to start the fights she just wanted it to end, all of it.4

She continued across the carpeted room and slowly turned the doorknob. The door often squeaked if she didn't turn it just right. She preferred that no one know what she was about to do. Only two more challenges faced her. She would have to escape into the hallway and open the loudest door of the house, reach inside to find what she wanted, and then return into the confinement of her room, slowly closing the door, meanwhile listening for sounds of faltering footsteps headed her way.5

Morgan succeeded in her mission, making it back to her room unnoticed under the cover of bellowed words. She climbed back in bed only to hear one last round of fighting. The rush of getting the bottle her fist now clenched remained incomprehensible over her throbbing heart. She knew that it would only take a swallow of some ordinary pills. With one gulp of water it could end. The war between them would have its first casualty and maybe each side would see the preposterous nature of the war. Morgan began to swallow the water and finish all her contemplation when it ended, as unexpected and as quickly as it had all begun. The battle of the current night appeared completed. Both adults fell haphazardly into their room making more noise as her stepfather passed out and her mother fell into a restful sleep. Morgan waited for several more minutes before deciding what to do as she waited she thought: 6

How does a life end when there is no clear beginning to the fights and no foreseeable end. Where does the world take you when you simply give in and let fate take over, when you become the follower that everyone knows you're not. When life simply is too much, and no proof exists that the world will improve, why stay? Aldous Huxley once said that “this world is another planet's hell”; well maybe, just maybe, we all came from some other place already burden by a sin, sent to live out a prison sentence that was not our body's asking. Maybe oh maybe the world is being punished for the past and the future that we cannot see, the future that could end in any given second.7

The world as we know it is but a lie, an illusion of all things exaggerated to one extent or another. The utopian world in which all optimists live remains a lie; the world in which all pessimists live is an equivalent to an extreme exaggeration of all things evil in the world. Yet, somewhere between these two extremes lives a world in which the truths rest. Within the truth anyone could see the relative nature of happiness, love, and money; that as soon as you start questioning any of the above the world will disappear. The truth if people knew it, would change humanity. How people looked at others would change; how people thought about God would change; and how the world looked from space would change. From space the world would show its true colors not the crystal blue and green often drawn but rather the murky army green that causes wars, and the blue shade that a dead body takes after it ceases to exist. People would realize that God should not be proven to exist or not exist; that every life views God as a different object shadowed by different events. People all over the world would realize that suicide, no matter how easy an escape it may seem, is only a way of taking control over an uncontrollable life. Suicide is not some method of the mad man, rather of the sane man who sees through the lies of the world we live in. Suicide remains a method of salvation. People need a way to believe, in anything at all, but as soon as they stop believing they stop trying. If you stop believing that a reason for living exists, then why live? If you stop believing that death is worse than life, why not die? If a given person stops believing that there will be an end and that the journey in-between matters, then that person will have nothing to reach for, strive for, and hope for. When after wishing so many times for the same thing, praying for God to assist in the same thing, believing that one of the two will help, and still after months nothing happens, what else is there for a person to do besides disappear into another place? And when running away to a new city, state, or country is not plausible, suicide is the only option left.8

The horrible bitter taste in her mouth reminded her that she still had a chance to live. She spit out the partially dissolved pills into a tissue and tucked them into her trashcan, turning over in bed once again to attempt some tranquility found only in her sleep. The pills in her mouth could and would have killed her in minutes. The thoughts that she wanted to commit suicide recurred as often as the fighting did, however, this time Morgan actually prepared herself to follow through. The fact that she might never wake up always reassured her during the fights, but the reality of never waking up seem impossible. An escape as easy as ingesting several pills seemed so surreal that Morgan often supposed that it wouldn't work. 9

Morgan awoke to the dim light shining between her curtains onto the blue walls and the pastel comforter. She was alive yet again and as the sun rose above the horizon Morgan rose to yet another day of the continuing war. Morgan's mother and stepfather never realized that Morgan only fell asleep  after they had stopped their nightly confrontation. The fight between her mother and stepfather would never stop, simply pausing for the sanity of daytime.10

Just because Morgan didn't swallow those pills didn't mean that no casualties existed. The casualty of the nocturnal battles had a name, Morgan. As long as the two supposed adults fought, Morgan would be lost in the background of her blue painted room and hidden away under her pastel comforter. Morgan's life would forever remain a life of blending into the background or merely being forgotten. But then again this is Morgan’s story.11