Corey sat in his basement. He was 37 and he had a revolver in his hand. It was empty, you know, for practice. He wanted to commit suicide but was, in his own words, “too chicken shit” to pull the trigger. So, he figured he’d get in some reps. Empty gun. Sit on an old punching bag. Raise it to your temple and pull the trigger.
Click
Repeat.
Click
Repeat.
Click
The idea was that, when it came time to actually do it, the motion would be second nature. Rote. Suicide by muscle memory. He wouldn’t have to think about it or work up the courage. He could just sit down, on the punching bag, and let habit do the rest.
A good plan maybe. You know, if you’re into suicide.
It’s hard to kill yourself. Be it conscience, moral imperative, or evolutionary selection, the brain and body fight hard to stay alive. Even against themselves. Everything in the head can be screaming that you want to shuffle off this mortal coil, but when it comes down to it your reflexes will say otherwise. “No.” Says your spinal cord. “I don’t think we will be jumping off this bridge today.” “I’m sorry,” responds your foot. “I can’t let you drive ninety miles an hour into that tree. We’re gonna have to pump the breaks.”
A curse really. You know, if you’re into suicide.
But Corey had figured out a loophole. If there’s anything in human biology more powerful than the impulse to keep on living it’s addiction. Habit. He would die by habit. It would work. He would practice, every night, for months if he had to, and then, one day, when the wife and kids were out he would leave the gun loaded and sit down on the punching bag.
The rest would take care of itself. Habit. Simple.
He got the idea from James, his brother. James had committed suicide by habit. He’d done it the slow way though. The miserable way. Corey didn’t want that. Being sick and all around your family for years. No thanks. If he did his job well his death would be a total surprise. Nobody would see it coming.
James, the idiot, had picked fentanyl for his habit. A fair strategy for dying but brutal in the process. You can circumnavigate the body’s defense mechanisms by pursuing a frog in water technique. A little alcohol today. A little more tomorrow. Listen brain, we’re not trying to commit suicide or anything, we’re just having a good time. The brain believes you. Lets down its guard. Pretty soon you’re mixing it up a little. Adding a car to the mix or some sleeping pills. Ha. Stupid brain. Stupid nervous system with its stupid fight or flight response. You’ll show ‘um. They’re not as clever as they think they are. Alcohol by itself isn’t great for suicide but it’s a terrific helper drug. Pair it with just about anything else and you can be almost guaranteed to never wake up.
Again, not a bad strategy. Again, if you’re into suicide.
That’s what had taken James out. Corey’s brother had gotten drunk one night and injected his fentanyl straight into his veins. Right there, in the office chair at his law firm. Never came home. The found him in the morning. It was winter and the office was cold so he kept well. Looked very handsome in the casket. “He looks so natural.” Old ladies always say that for some reason. They’re complimenting the makeup artist maybe. Old ladies care a lot about makeup. Wrinkles and so on.
Ah but the suffering James had caused on the way out! No good. Corey wanted to avoid that. James and his wife had fought for years over his addiction. He was in and out of rehab all the time. Goodness… if nothing else, it was damned expensive. Who knows where you even get fentanyl. A doctor friend maybe? Somewhere in town there was probably a physician struggling under the weight of guilt for having given James the stuff. Maybe it was causing him erectile dysfunction and he was having fights with his wife. Corey hoped so. Karmic justice and all. Probably not though. Probably James was just a junkie with a hook-up. His dealer didn’t care. Lost no sleep over it. That’s what Corey wanted too. For nobody lose sleep over it for as long as possible. For everybody be oblivious to his plan until it was over and done. He and his wife still made love. Just the other day he’d taken the kids to the park. They were happy. Mostly. Corey wanted them to stay that way. He put on a big smiley face mask every day and he hoped they were none the wiser. It’d be selfish not to.
Wouldn’t it?
But things just weren’t going well. Corey wasn’t happy. Not at all. He wasn’t sad either he was something beyond sad. Something they didn’t even really have a word for. On paper things were good. He sold RVs. You know, campervans and trailers and all that. He made a good commission. They had a house with a yard and he could mow his own grass. They had a dog. A swing set. On the kitchen counter there was a Breville Dynamic Duo Dual Boiler Espresso Machine ***with*** smart grinder pro package. In stainless steel no less. So, yeah… On the outside they seemed to be doing okay.
But what was the point of it?
Nobody could answer that question.
To Corey it seemed like he was born for no other reason than to talk old people into purchasing vehicles to sit in their driveway until they died. That was his purpose. That was his function. Baby boomers around the country had way too much money and nothing to spend it on and his job was to relieve them of some of that burden by selling them a dream that would never happen. “You can see the whole country in his baby!” He would say, slapping the side of a Coachman. “Imagine the fun you’ll have with your grandchildren! I’ll give you a 10% discount. Today only!” They almost always bought. The grandchildren who lived far away in another state, you could always sell an RV if you threw them into the equation. The fact that most of the people on the lot were estranged from their kids by more than physical distance didn’t matter.
Corey was selling a dream.
A dream of happiness maybe. Contentment? Finding love in your old age before death? What was it he was selling exactly? Why did people want it? Was that what he wanted? Was he so good at selling it because he wanted the same thing?
Maybe.
You can sell what you don’t have. All the best businessmen do it. He learned that watching Tony Robbins videos. Corey didn’t have happiness. In no way did this prevent him from selling it.
So that’s what his life was. He existed to scam the elderly. Why? So his wife could be happy. So his kids could go to the good school. So they could afford that 2020 Subaru Forester with 1.9% APR. That’s what life was. That’s what it was about. Life was about slapping the sides of Coachman RVs and telling people that weren’t happy that they could be if they purchased. ***That*** was the American Dream. That happiness could be bought. That meaning was only one more zero in your bank account away.
After all. They had the Breville Dynamic Duo Dual Boiler Espresso Machine ***with*** smart grinder pro package. In stainless steel no less.
What more could you want? What more is there?
Corey went down to the basement and sat on the old punching bag.
Yeah… he thought as his hand raised.
What more is there?
A slow pleasurable suicide, or a quick painful suicide. What is worse?
I have only found 2 cohesive worldviews nihilism and Christianity. In nihilism life begins and ends with you. You live your own life and become an isolated ouroboros. There can be no meaning because your life does not move outward but is self contained and self sustaining. In Christianity, you must give your life it has to move outward and upward tward God and for all. In the parable of the talents the only one who is damned is the one who keeps his life who takes it and is buried with it. There are really only 2 ways to take ones life or to give it