Effects

I did it because I wanted to commit suicide. Not real physical suicide. I wanted to commit what I termed in my own head as personal suicide. I wanted to kill my personality. Unfortunately, when the personality is killed what remains is emptiness…and filling the cold depths of that hole was a hard thing to do. No one would love me. I couldn’t do anything right. I lost jobs and quit even more. I was an alcoholic and a womanizer. I forced anyone that cared about me away. All I could do was distribute the pain inside me to those around me.

Dusty men in cumbersome body armor sacrificed their lives. Many that didn’t sacrifice their lives lost everything they cared about anyway, but I didn’t know that yet. I watched them run through the streets of a hot and filthy place, eyes burning with fear and hatred. They survived and destroyed on a TV screen. This was what I had decided my body would do after the soul had been ripped out of it. After the personal suicide I would commit, I would save the world from the murderous cowardice of the enemies of all mankind. I couldn’t waste my soul in real suicide, when there was such a purpose waiting for the still useful remains of it’s demise. 

My suicide was not my only reason. Who would refuse this calling? Who says they are too imbedded in their own comfortable (or uncomfortable) world not to do this? I was strong and there was resolve in me yet. These men would not face the Coward without me. They would not survive and destroy without my remains. I had given up but I was not wasteful. What if 10 more like me made the decision that it was somebody else’s problem? What if 100 or 10,000 more said that? Already there was thunder in the distance of my being.

I told my friends I was wading into a forest. I told them that I would see them on the other side. I have found that there is no other side…I have found that I may be turning a corner that never ends. As we all will do, I slipped off to face my death, silent and alone. I have forgotten those friends…their faces and voices are as dark and distorted as my own mind was when I saw them last.

I spent time at the gates of hell. I spent time flying with the wings of a demon, asking myself if I was still an angel. I swung death's scythe and realized that it's arc is a circle. It visits those that bring it to bear just as much as those it has been dealt upon.