Suicide Mirage

They, whoever they are, as my mom would say, as my English teacher would agree with, as my professor would flunk me for, said that I could meet someone and find happiness, as it were. A kind of happiness. A relevant function of happiness in some version of the word loosely defined, stretched out, and let out to dry in blistering heat on a neighbor’s fence filled with splinters, bad dreams, and an unimaginable about of blood from all the dead birds that kept flying into the fence to kill themselves.

I wonder if suicide is a human invention. Can animals commit suicide?

Some animal in the form of a human centipede coming off a meth high while dancing at a discotheque where silicon gets passed out to all the guests like Aspirin came up with the idea for a dating site for depressed people. A dating site for suicidal people. A dating site where dreams went to die, never lived, or gave up before trying.

I met Mark on a site called Suicide Mirage. 

When we met he said that his name was Mark, but lower case. I didn’t know what that meant, so I just decided to call him Mark to be polite.

Mark and I hit it off, or at least as much as two depressed, suicidal people could hit it off. I think we both suffered from a bit of narcissistic pessimism that manifested in the form of low self-esteem and a wide range of personality disorders stemming from talking too much about ourselves.

Mark owned nothing but flannel. He said he grew up watching Home Improvement and he really liked the character Al. He also liked some character named Wilson. But to be honest, he could have been naming off any number of the characters on the show and I would not have known because I never watched the show.

My parents didn’t like me watching television. They sought to deprive me of those sorts of entertainment. They thought it built character. Or maybe that it sustained character.

Maybe they just didn’t want me to have fun. Maybe they knew something I didn’t, but never explained that something all too well. 

Mark and I realized very quickly, as the relationship blossomed, that we didn’t need to put all that much effort into it. We were two depressed people. Seeking love. No. Seeking companionship. Maybe? We were two people that wanted to commit suicide and thought it would be best to get hitched so it didn’t seem too depressing. We didn’t need to have all that much in common. We didn’t need to find each other attractive.

I did, though, you know, find Mark attractive. He had this depressing magnetism about him. Something about his sullen eyes, scars all over his body from cutting himself, and a general sense of nihilism that he carried with him that made him so sexy.

I also liked the fact that I could talk to him hours on end about all the things that made me depressed and he never tried to fix me, never tried to tell me my ideas about suicide were wrong or wanted me to back out.

Though somehow, finding Mark attractive made it a little more difficult to kill myself at the end of the day.

Maybe if I was in an unhappy marriage it would make killing myself all the more easier. 

Though give it time, and somehow I think our romance would have arrived at a depressing destination.

We spent our honeymoon drafting our note. After saying goodbye to one another one last time, we scarfed down as many sleeping pills as we could muster and drifted off to sleep together.