Stepping away from existence

The first time I remember wanting to die, as in not wanting to be in the state of existence we call 'being alive', was during the summer before my second birthday. I was playing in a paddling pool beneath the pine trees in the garden of the officers quarters where we lived in Hampshire. Across the wire fence that separated our garden from the gardens of the children who were of a senior rank to me- ie their fathers were a senior rank to mine, which meant their mothers ranked over mine, and they in turn ranked over me. Women and children found these things important, and seldom were you allowed to forget it. Deborah was a little girl who not only out ranked me, at 3 years of age, she out- aged me, so when she came to the wire fence to excitedly brag that they were having a birthday party for her baby brother Lindsay that afternoon, I scampered over the pine needles and asked if I could come to the party. Deborah grabbed one of Lindsay's T shirts from the washing that her mother was pegging on the line and began to windmill slapping me about the head with it, screaming no no I couldn't go. Of course I started to wail and ran back to the paddling pool where I lay down in it and waited to die.

Army children knew all about death, even before they were two years old, then. This was the 1950s, not long since the War, and the Blitz. We all knew about how babies could be sleeping in prams in the garden one minute and blown to smithereens by a bomb the next. Everyone had someone dead, and we were all always prepared for the possibility that our Daddies would go to work and die. It happened.

The grown ups were always warning about not going near the edge of the pond in case I drowned. I guessed drowning had something to do with not being anymore, so I was sure that lying in the paddling pool would take away the pain of humiliation and rejection, because if there was no you, no one could hit you with their baby brother’s wet T shirt. It would have been better if the airplane dodging in and out of the rock-and-tower clouds could have dropped a bomb on me though, then I wouldn't have been responsible for not existing and no one would hate me for doing it. However, my life was probably defined from this point by there having been a slow puncture in the plastic ring sides of the paddling pool, and a leak in the bottom where it had been placed on a stone or somthing, so the pool had about half an inch of water and was pratically as flat and useless for drowning purposes as a used and discarded condom. At that moment though, Mum came down the garden path and said that we had to get ready to go to the NAAFI to get a birthday present for Lindsay. She asked why I had so many red marks but I don't think I could actually articulate that Deborah had attacked me with Lindsay’s wet T shirt and said I couldn't go to the party because I was too inferior,, and I wanted to die and be planted deep in the ground where no one could be nasty to me, and even if I could have done, it wasn’t the done thing to complain. There was nothing Mummy could have done about it because they out-ranked us. In Northern Ireland once, my big brother had thrown a tin can at the Colonel’s son and cut his ear because he had been nasty to him and said I was an ugly baby, and it was my Daddy who had got into trouble because he was only a Captain.

There were many occasions following that over the next ten years, when I simply wished to cease to exist right there and then, and fantasised about ways that it might happen. I never seriously contemplated actually killing myself, suicide. I heard the adults talking about cowardly people who killed themselves. I also heard all the rows and the fights that sounded like Dad was killing Mum, and I assumed it was my fault for being born and wished almost everyday that I hadn't been and could miraculously be unborn, especially when there were whispers about what to do with me if there was a divorce and how I could stay at Boarding School and go to Grandpa’s in the holidays would hardly notice any difference.

When adolescence struck it got worse in some ways and better in others. It was fashionable to want to die then, and a few of the people at school tried it. A couple succeeded. Meanwhile I still tried to think of a method that would be quick and relatively painless. One reason I never attempted suicide, never really thought it was the solution to ceasing to exist, was that I was unsure about the existence of the afterlife. I mean, what if you killed yourself, only to find that death was not oblivion after all and you had to go through it all over again with the embarrassment of knowing the consequences of what you did? That would be no better than continuing to be alive. The thought of being in the spirit world, there in a parallel universe watching yourself make a complete and absolute dick of yourself and seeing what happened and what they all said when they found out that you had failed this week's Maths test miserably, or that you had a crush on a boy in the sixth form and people had found out about it, or that it was you who accidentally scratched the Georgian bookcase, or that you had farted as you got up to do the reading in Assembly and everyone knew it was you and never stopped teasing you about it.

The idea of ceasing to exist by dying was supposed to take that embarrassment and humiliation away, but what if hell was being forced to keep going through it, watching the reaction of your family when they found out why you killed yourself and you faced an eternity of living it in an eternal loop. It was enough to put anyone off the idea. However, a bit of razor blading your arm and watching the crimson beads form on the parallel slashes met half way and there was always the possibility of slipping and accidentally catching an artery, or even getting Lockjaw. I used to get Tetanus and Jaundice confused. imagined that a rusty blade would give me jaundice and I would go all yellow like my brother who was born in Malaya- I somehow got the idea that he was yellow anyway, so it didn’t kill him like tetanus should really, but I wasn’t born in Malaya, I was born in Ireland, so it probably would kill me, but I wasn't keen on being yellow when I ceased to exist, so that was not the ideal solution either.)

Adolescence passed, at least I think it did. It probably returns periodically, something like once every couple of weeks until the day of the ceasing to exist happens. I engaged in activities where accidentally ceasing to exist, or being killed through no real fault of my own, and thus having an insurance pay out when it happened to ameliorate any desires by my nearest and dearest into investigating why I did not want to be alive, and therefore not hurting their feelings because they might think I didn’t like them and wanted to get away from them permanently, were a likely result. I think the term is seeking out death and danger, taking risks for a living. Hey, this way I could cease to exist by the method that might actually do someone or society some good in the meantime. It failed though. My existence continued despite dangling it brazenly in front of greedy fates. Obviously it was not tasty enough for them. Back to the cuts and burns.

As middle age came upon me, amazed to have got so far, I thought that at last ceasing to exist without any intervention was going to be a doddle. There have been a couple of glitches like giving up smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol except on odd occasions, eating healthy food and taking exercise and somehow maintaining a body that is more healthy than I , as a studied hypochondriac needs. In fact, as middle age bit hard, I discovered a temporary solution to ceasing to exist. Or should I say rediscovered it. As a child I had the ability to completely cut off from the world that rejected me and go into an inner world of my own making, in my imagination. I could be anything, do anything I wanted until I was rudely dragged back into the world I wanted to stop living in. Even then I could do back to the world what it did to me- be on the outside looking in and refuse to be drawn into it.
Of course as a functioning member of society, outwardly I cannot literally do that, but what I can do is look at through a backwards telescope. Today there is a label or labels for what is in my head, the desire not to exist and the disconnection. I don’t need the labels, just to pull the darkness over my head from time to time, until it really is time not to exist.