Would write

I remember her telling me about how she was feeling depressed and out of hope for life and tomorrow. When I suggested that perhaps writing could help to make her feel better, she said to me, "how can I bring myself to write about anything when all I want to do is to end my life?"

"Don't you have things to do? Things that you want to do and have not yet have the chance to do? Start a family? Go to Europe? Write a play?" I asked.

"Sure, I'll want to do them if I were alive, but if I die, I won't have to do any of them. Don't you get it?"

Even though I pretended not to get it, I did. I saw how her logic worked. I empathised with her and it scared me.

She told everyone that she was going to Europe, but she actually sealed herself into her cupboard, that she sealed inside her room - so that the smell of her rotting flesh wouldn't easily escape. In the cupboard, there were drawers, which was modified by her handiwork to become a planter which contained soil. In the soil, there were seeds of different kinds buried, the most absurd of which was a lotus seed. And she must have sat on top of the soil. She killed herself by blood letting. When they had discovered that she was gone, she was gone, there were traces of blood and other liquids and bits of her bones, but most of it had disintegrated into the earth. There was a little ikea light fixed in the cupboard, perhaps to help the seeds germinate, perhaps to let her write. The ikea lamp was kept on for quite some time because she had made giro arrangements for her utility bill payment and left enough money in the bank for that. Amongst the things she wrote, in a little blue notebook, as she was dying in the cupboard, she wrote this,

"...my greatest regret is not having brought a watch along. Not because I want to know how many days passed, but only to be even more conscious of how time is passing by slowly. Perhaps, the gold casio watch that somebody gave me - if it were digital and without the ticking - that would drive me crazy - it would be perfect. Or perhaps I could live with - no, die with - the ticking.

She had suggested that I could try writing to make myself feel better.

I remember once I was writing under the blue sky. The sky was so fine and brilliantly blue, that my white paper was blue in colour. The gentle breeze, the sound of the trees swaying... the blue sky was so blue... I remember the yellow curtains I had when I was very young. The curtains were very thin, and the blue sky would come through. On Sunday mornings when I woke myself up to watch cartoons, I would spend some lazy time to watch how the blueness of the sky shone through and complemented the pale yellow curtains so well.

Writing does make me feel better. If nothing else I'm leaving behind finds her, please let at least this find her - that she was right, and I was wrong. Writing does make me feel better.

I can't imagine if I didn't have paper and pen to write with now - how else could I make myself sit still here and wait for myself to die?..."

She was wearing shorts and tee-shirt, and bra and panties, and her specs. She was 32.

(sneak.)