As she climbed the last of the steps cut deep into the stone face, she felt her weariness slip away. Unseen hands pulled her up on to the soft slip of grass between the granite. She smelt the blood oranges instantly, perfuming the air of her childhood. She wandered the olive groves, imagining the silky feeling of the oil against her skin. Not far away, a garden of sweet-spicy plumeria bloomed. The world run from as a teen, now she now sought a way back 40 years later.
She felt the island hover, still, not buffeted by time, anger or winds. Let go the tether ropes she thought, slipping deeper into the zephyrs. She’d counted carefully. Twenty-four pills only brought her the image of going home; of the potential of regaining the peace and innocence ripped from her in darkened corners and hot summer fields as a child. Fifty pills may buy a ticket, then, and so on. Til the pieces of her pain would float away, her barge to a perfect place. The brightness of the Mediterranean sun, it’s warmth on the excruciatingly painful parts of her body; it’s brightness burning away all the painful memories from child to adult. While the orange blossom snow and the pan-cracked dirt roads lead from scramble farm to darkened outbuildings, bent wheeled bicycles and the birds sang, and . . .
Her Utopian Ark thudded, skudded back to a flurry of noise and light and sound. Voices ordering her to say with them in rocking ambulance not on the Ark, not in the olive grove. Mediterranean sun was cold light, birds wail of siren, and the pain, always the pain. To fly forever on the Utopian Ark, among the olives and the oranges, how many pills did it take.
Someone close to me attempted suicide this week. She must have started packing for her journey on the Ark before she called me, and continued until her sister called Emergency Services several hours later. She is still an inpatient in a less than desirable mental health facility with limited visiting hours. I sent her a note via her husband, and may be allowed to visit next weekend.
When someone attempts or completes suicide, we look at ourselves differently. Especially if you’ve been to the edge yourself. You wonder how you missed it. How you could be so caught up in your own woes that you didn’t hear the different tone. The calmness or the desperation. I was her only crisis counselor, when in often crisis myself, thinking of my own Utopian Ark. I never councilled she should buy a ticket; I must remember that was her decision.
(A 2nd, more personal entry into JD’s microfiction challenge # 22 [dis]utopian ark)
November 17, 2016 at 1:19 pm
I hope your friend is OK and manages to break free of her abusive husband.
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November 17, 2016 at 11:11 pm
It’s going to be a long hard journey for her. I’ll help as I can. Her husband has to let go.
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November 18, 2016 at 6:21 am
I hope it works out.
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November 14, 2016 at 5:15 am
You made the suffering so real and believable. Wanting so much for peace and normality, and to be dragged out of it by well-meaning people must be terrible. I hope your friend manages to break free of her hopeless relationship before she tries this drastic method again.
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November 15, 2016 at 8:26 am
I hope so to, but . . . he holds everything and has convinced her she is nothing — and not one physical bruise.
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November 15, 2016 at 9:17 am
She needs a lot of moral back up and economic independence. She needs people like you who understand what’s she has to suffer.
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November 15, 2016 at 10:11 am
She does — but her sister here is toxic, I’m her only friend (I hope she meets people thru outpatients) and that hubby will loosen the purse strings. Not a good situation and I’m not the best to be relying on given my own unresolved mental health issues. I hope the facility can put together a plan and support network for her.
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November 15, 2016 at 10:39 am
That’s a big problem, if treatment will stop if husband won’t shell out for it. Don’t you have social workers who keep tabs on people like her as a matter of course?
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November 14, 2016 at 12:32 am
That’s so sad to read….but I hope she receives the love and support she needs…..good friends are not always easy to find….
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November 14, 2016 at 12:51 am
She is not in a good space: her husband is an abuser who controls 99.99% of her life, and won’t allow her to drive, use a computer or the internet, treats her like a maid/servant, but everyone thinks he is perfect because they don’t see his dirty little secrets at work. I’m her only friend, which isn’t healthy for her as you can imagine.
I hope the hospital provides her with a wider world, the medication and therapy she has been refusing to seek, the beginnings of friendships as she transitions from in to outpatient, and access to all the services, etc., I wish I had. I only hope he realizes the role he has played in this happening and truly tries to reform himself, believe in her physical and mental pain, or make it possible — give her a settlement — so she can leave and start a new — or this might happen again. And that would be such a shame.
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November 14, 2016 at 12:55 am
I think in some cases they become more controlling. But I hope she is able to break free. You wonder what it is that drives people to become so controlling.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:00 am
Power. The need to have it over someone. Rage. I don’t know. I just know the destructive nature of it — how it turns strong independent people into mere shadows, wraiths wandering through empty houses of lost lives and dreams.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:01 am
Yes I know a little about that too.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:09 am
I’ve tried about 6 things, and had decided this is one challenge I shall leave for smarter, wittier, better writing folks than I.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:11 am
Well despite that criteria I shall persevere. One day I might get one right?
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November 14, 2016 at 1:14 am
Ooops — this was supposed to be with the abc thingie not JD’s microfiction. I tried to do something for Oloriel’s prompt, but nothing worked. Just not smart enough when it comes to thinking pieces I guess. Zounds, and all.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:16 am
Took me a while too I have to say. Write a bit go away, come back write a bit more then throw caution to the wind.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:17 am
I’d have to throw more than caution I’m afraid.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:20 am
Think I shall go to bed and let visions of ticklish and purring and responsive letters dance in my head. If might awake with a head ache or a post or . . . . Good night Michael, sweet dreams should you nap this afternoon.
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November 14, 2016 at 1:26 am
Well dancing letter can do that to you…..nearly dinner time here…..nite…
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November 15, 2016 at 8:28 am
Damn dancing letters kept me awake most of the night. Did you know that p’s purr and a’s cuddle into the small of your back, and x’s well, I won’t even mention . . . . then the y’s!
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November 14, 2016 at 1:21 am
You get things right all the time.
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