Читать книгу True Confessions - Electa Rome Parks - Страница 8

My name is Kennedy and I’m a coward. Coward. Such a small, simple six-letter word. A word that has applied to me for most of my life. I know I’m a coward. Always have known. I accept that fact just like I accept air to breathe for my very existence. I’ve been afraid of so many things during my twenty-eight years of life. Ask Mother and she’ll tell you how, as a child, I was afraid of spiders, snakes, rats, hairy monsters, and, the biggest one of all, the dark. Like most children, I was a big scaredy cat when it came to dealing with those imagined or unimagined fears and things that go bump in the night.

For most people, when we become adults, our fears subside. Not me. I’m still afraid. I’m terrified of not being loved. I’m afraid of not being wanted. Of saying the wrong things. I’m afraid of showing my true nature. I’m afraid of saying no and standing up for myself. Bottom line, I’m petrified of living life to the fullest for fear of someone disapproving. And that’s how all my problems begin and end. Plain and simple, I’m a coward because I realize these things and won’t do anything about them. It’s easier to turn a deaf ear and hope they’ll magically go away. Not.

Don’t let anyone tell you any different. It’s easier to take your life than to deal with your reality. Taking your life, committing suicide, doesn’t take an ounce of courage. The courage is in living and tackling your issues head on.

I guess you’ve figured it out by now. I survived my suicide attempt—thanks to Mother. You see, she calls me every Sunday night at exactly seven o’clock P.M. on the dot. Rain or shine. She never fails. You can set your watch by her, almost to the second. We use this time to catch up on our individual weeks, even though we don’t live that far from one another. The majority of the time, it is Mother who goes on and on about something or another. I usually listen and make a comment here and there to let her know she still has my captive, undivided attention.

I consumed the bottle of pills at approximately 6:45 P.M. Talk about a pathetic case of crying out for help. Could I have been any more obvious? When the cordless phone sitting on my nightstand started to ring at exactly seven o’clock P.M., I couldn’t ignore it. With each ring, the noise became louder and louder as it wracked my nerves to no end. I just had to pick up the receiver and hear her voice one last time. By seven o’clock, I was slipping fast into an unconscious state, but I had enough strength to murmur a faint greeting.

You can figure out most of the rest. As I had predicted, even through my haze, when I heard Mother’s voice, I told her everything the best I could in my foggy state of mind. I stumbled on about Drake and how unworthy, undesirable, and unhappy he made me feel.

Mother kept me talking, awake, sent help, and saved my life. She was able to dial 911 on her cell as she talked and listened to me on her home phone. The doctor on call in the emergency room pumped my stomach, and then I rested as comfortably as I could for the remainder of the night.

I vaguely recall Mother faithfully by my side, holding my hand and uttering soothing words in between her muffled, hidden sobs. I turned my head away because I couldn’t bear to see the sadness in her brown eyes, unhappiness that I had placed there. The nurse asked who Drake was because she said I called out for him a few times in my fretful sleep. I dreamt of darkness, pain, suffering, and the devil coming to take me away. I awoke in a cold sweat, shaking, and a scream on the tip of my tongue.

Through it all, or at least the parts I can partially recall, I wondered what he, Drake, would think of my failed attempt at taking my own life. He was constantly reminding me how I never completed anything, outside of work. I’d start a project and never see it through to completion, or I’d have so many different things going on at one time that I could never give 100 percent to any one task. Oh well, I guess this is the perfect example of not completing a project. I am alive and breathing, even if I am not well.