Content note: suicidal ideation
Dear Laura,
Do you think it is more unpleasant to/Would you rather burn to death or drown? Warm tendrils licking at your fingers, suckling your skin until it’s been sufficiently fused to the bone. Or perhaps cool hands would caress your throat, pulling you down to a familiar depth from which all life originated. I feel like both would make for a poetic albeit painful end. Nonetheless, I hope freezing isn’t up there with the most agonizing elemental demises.
I apologize for the cryptic start. It’s been a while since I’ve written a diary/letter and I’m a tad unsure what is appropriate. Dr. Martinez said it was a good idea to write out my thoughts, share my many musings before I am left to muse no more. I don’t think he’s very happy with me. I don’t think I care.
I figure my opening is fitting of the news I wish to share with you: namely, that I scheduled the procedure today. In exactly one month’s time, I’m going to undergo cryostasis courtesy of the Cryonics Corporation. For some form of “future progress,” I am to be put in a pod and frozen for fifty to a hundred years. Or was it two hundred? Either way, the compensation for my sacrifice salvation contribution to science will be in the form of a thousand dollars per year of my cryogenic slumber. I assume their hope is that even the measly sum I’ve been promised will be rendered obsolete/negligible by the time of my return to the land of the living. That is if I return at all.
Whether it would be preferable to wake up in some future hellscape as a fool unaccustomed to its precedents/causes or succumb to the icy abyss is really a matter of preference. I would probably take the latter, but I digress. This is getting a little too dark for my likings and you don’t deserve that. Nonetheless, I figured I should just let you know, if anyone, regarding my plans not that anyone else would care. It’s getting late now, so I should probably turn in, but I will write to you again in the coming few days.
Your reflective/decisive/contemplative friend,
Malakai
***
Dear Laura,
I’m pretty sure that burning would be worse, I’ve decided. The fire would hurt like a motherfucker whereas I imagine drowning would be akin to someone choking you for a minute before all your organs begin to fail in a relatively painless fashion. This is probably me attempting to cope with the fact that drowning is said to feel similar to freezing, but rather than asphyxiation being the cause of death, it’s hypothermia. Not that this is going to kill me/I’m going to die, but the thought of being pumped full of cryoprotectant and taking a dry ice bath is starting to feel a little less appealing as each day passes. I shouldn’t have googled the details of the procedure.
As for worldly updates in the week since I’ve written to you, I put in my two week notice today at the bakery. I feel like quitting on the spot may have been more appropriate, but that wouldn’t have been fair on Joe. I’m sure He sends his regards. Serving cakes and coffees isn’t the worst way to spend my final weeks of consciousness, though it’s getting harder to customer-service smile my way through every order. Not that you (or they) could ever tell. As my manager, he seemed pretty sad to be losing my unmatched counter staff skills. As my friend, he was pretty mad that I wouldn’t tell him why. Whether out of guilt or embarrassment, I couldn’t admit the reason I’m leaving: why he’ll be stuck with a bunch of college kids and high-schoolers who stay only as long as their school-sanctioned breaks allow. They come and go as everyone does. It’s getting colder here and the leaves are changing: fiery reds and sunset oranges, just the way you like liked them, yet I’m leaft to watch them alone.
Leaf puns aside, I’m starting to think I should have gone to college. Perhaps things would have turned out differently. But I couldn’t bear the thought of leafing you behind–okay, okay now I’m really done. If I’d flown the nest, would we have gotten as close as we did? After all, long distance relationships never really work out in the early stages, but we’re making it work now, aren’t we? You’re god knows where, and I’m freezing myself because I can’t bear the depression resulting from your absence! Yay!
Not that I blame you. I hope you don’t blame me for taking the easy way out of this existence. Maybe in my frozen state I’ll be able to astral project myself to your location and we can be together again. I’d like that.
Your nostalgic friend,
Malakai
***
Dear Laura,
I think I’ve just about beaten the question to death (as it were), but now I think I might just be on team burning. At least fire has a sort of spontaneity to it. One moment you could be sitting on your couch, petting your cat, watching a basketball game, and–kerblam, game over. I miss my cats. I miss you. I could set myself on fire right now and I feel like it would be less painful than waiting for the day of this procedure. Dr. Martinez offered me a higher antidepressant dose for my final two weeks but I don’t think they’re really helping anymore. So I’ve now decided to let my brain shit itself sertralineless.
Sorry this entry is more crass, but I promised I would write to you at least once a week, and this is me drunkenly trying to keep that promise. I don’t think it was a good idea to write to you when I’ve been in such a dick mood for the last few weeks days. But at the rate we’re going, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through these two weeks. It feels pathetic, contemplating death when it’s already been scheduled for me–at least I can say so with ~50% certainty. Wanting to end my life. Pathetic.
It’s not fair that I have a choice when you don’t.
Didn’t.
I fucking hate the past tense.
I hate the way I’m such a sorry testament to the way you chose to spend your too short life. You would have been able to bounce back if I was the victim of the accident. A few bad months and you would have been back on your feet, probably championing awareness about the danger of drunk driving in my memory.
No, you wouldn’t be drinking yourself to death in your shitty apartment. You definitely wouldn’t drive while being completely fucked, tearing down the highway trying to know what you felt like in that moment.
Fuck, I could have been the one behind the wheel.
I should have been there for you.
It should have been me.
All this to say, I miss you. I miss you so much that it’s fucking killing me.
In the likely chance my oncoming headache could be alcohol poisoning, I’m gonna go to bed. It’s the least I can do to live up to what you would have wanted.
Your pitiful/shameful/sorry friend,
Malakai
***
Dear Laura,
One week left until the procedure. No fire nor flood is going to change that. I’m too much of a coward to join you in such a spectacular fashion. I’m a coward because I’m clinging to the idea of a death with a possible life after. How very selfish of me. I’m sorry for how I left things between us in my last entry, I would say that was an anomaly but lying to your ghost would serve no purpose. It hurts, Laura. It feels like two angry hands are around my throat squeezing so tight I’ve become skeptical of their phantom nature. Your spectre would be highly preferable to the demons dancing around my head. The shadow of death seems to beckon them, its invitation stronger than any excuse for resistance I try to provide. I’ve already caved to your master. I feel so alone.
No poetic nothings are going to change the situation I’ve found myself in. I’ve sentenced myself to death by frost and there’s nothing I can do about it (except break the contract, but I have an eerie feeling that I’ll be subjected to the one-time cost of my kneecaps). Seriously, what kind of organization pays people to freeze them? I guess I’ll never know.
I know I shouldn’t waste precious space in one of my last full entries blaming the Corporation for the circumstances I’ve found myself in. It’s not their fault, though it’s much easier to blame them in place of my own poor decision making. I’m going to end up frozen, suspended between life and death. I should have just taken sleeping pills instead of leaving myself to wallow in this purgatory. At least then maybe we would be reunited. Damn it, I can’t even die properly. I let you down.
It hurts so badly. Every moment. I don’t even know how to describe it any more, but I guess I’ll try for the record, so you can understand my corporeal sensations. My muscles won’t unclench, their tension causing a permanent dull ache in my extremities. My bones itch to escape from their mortal confines and my fingers can’t help but obey, raking my skin until a pattern of red lines is sown. Not to mention my permanent semi-strangulation. I guess I can’t help but make my pain poetic to make it bearable.
Simply put, I think I want to die.
I want to die.
Do I want to die?
Do I want to live? What’s the point even if I keep on living?
I’m so fucking scared: for what might be on the other side and for what might not be. Scared that I will live/die because of this stupid decision and that your memory will die with me. I think I feel so shitty because I know that I let you down, and I’m too much of a coward to take the leap and join you. To hear you say it to my face. Not that you would, but still. I’ll try and write to you one last time before the procedure. Hopefully, by then I can stop crying.
Your regretful friend,
Malakai
***
Dear Laura,
I know I’m about to be frozen to death but I didn’t think the waiting room would be a literal ice box. I mean I got a hundred years of solitude (so the contract says) to wait, like what’s the hurry? God, at this rate my last written contributions to this world are going to be a sarcastic remark. It would be a fitting testament to the worthless life I’ve lived.
At this point I don’t even know what’s worth writing on my final day. I don’t know how much time I have. They’re leading me into the chamber now, and the lady said I could write right until they’ll have to put me under. I almost wish she’d just do it so my last words could just be some mysterious cutoff, more interesting than anything I’ve written to this point. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So I guess here are my final words/apologies:
I’m sorry, Dr. Martinez, for letting the depression win.
I’m sorry, Joe, to leave you with all those high-schoolers and college kids.
And I’m sorry, Laura, for most definitely letting you down. Perhaps I’ll see you soon to your ultimate disappointment. I love you more than this stupid diary could ever indicate.
Sorry.
– Malakai
***
[Malakai Halia – 20XX – Record #1173]
FREEZE YOUR FUTURE. FREEZE YOURSELF TODAY.
And find your future happiness!
[Property of the Cryonics Corporation]