No one wants to talk about suicide. Unfortunately most of us know someone who has been suicidal. Do you know the warning signs?
THE CURTAIN CALL
I don’t really know how long I sat in the car, but I know I sat a while. To anybody driving past I probably appeared like any other commuter parked by the roadside.I remembered a heated phone call. I remembered driving off from the cool shade under some leafy trees beside Okpara Square. I remembered driving to the outskirts of town, and stopping the car here.
I remembered looking at my phone and seeing 25 missed calls in 7 minutes.
I’m a man with problems.
I guess I had parked there for over 15 minutes because – even with the weather cool and the windows down, the car had started heating up. I opened the door and stepped out. A bus roared past me barely 4 feet from my door and I didn’t even flinch. I didn’t even share the look of shock, anger, and gratitude a lady driving right behind the bus had on her face. I just closed my door gently and walked slowly across the road. I knew it wasn’t wise to cross such a busy road so slowly and carelessly. Hell! It wasn’t even wise to park on a flyover, to start with. And as I got to the broken guardrail I knew it wasn’t wise to stand that close to it.
Another bus zoomed past and the disturbed air nearly threw me over the rail. I stood there with my eyes closed and willed my body to allow the air pass through me. I opened my eyes and chuckled. For years I had lied that I was JUST an average martial artist with a poor knowledge of yoga. If only people knew the truth. I am a scary freak of nature. I leaned forward to look over the guardrail at the road below. The drop shouldn’t be more than 30 feet. I chuckled as my mind flashed to music department. I remember leaping high over a rail and taking a 15 feet clear drop from a stage to a basement below. I didn’t tell anyone that I was going to do it, and the shrieks and gasps were exactly as I had hoped for. I chuckled again. They probably thought I’d practiced that jump. Nobody would’ve believed that my last jump before that one was a 22 foot drop from a building in 1999 (over a dare), and before then I had never jumped down from anything higher than 5 feet. Which is just above my vertical leap range.
All that was long ago. But still nothing has changed.
Yes, I am older now. But, what couldn’t I do? I could still somersault. I could still split. I could still kick objects up to 7 feet high. I could still see things far away. I could still hear things a mile away.
I still heard voices.
Lord!
I shook my head.
Not the time for despair.
A tanker zoomed under the flyover, on the road below, and I instinctively looked to catch a glimpse of it appearing on the other side, instead my eyes lit on my car and I smiled in admiration. My Scandinavian Brute. I’m still amazed that a car like that was actually sold to the public. It should be on the battlefield somewhere. Anyway, the keys were in the ignition, and it had enough fuel to get back to town. Unless some unlucky schmuck decides to go too far with it. I turned back to look at the guardrail and felt a vibration on my thigh. Oh my! I was so busy shutting the voices out I didn’t even know my phone was ringing. I checked the caller ID. The wolves are approaching. I chuckled again and returned the phone to my pocket. On second thoughts I pulled the phone out and looked at it again. A Sony Xperia less than a year old. It might just make someone happy. I pulled out the other (smaller) Xperia and laid both of them on the ground, by the guardrail.
As I straightened up the phone rang again. I checked the caller ID. This time a young pretty face was smiling at me. I smiled back sadly. For a second I considered picking the call, but thought better of it. Nah! It’s better like this. Why traumatize the poor girl.I look up at the sky. The weather had been good today. I pulled out my wallet and checked if my ID was there. I remembered dropping my Visa and MasterCard on my bed, with my pin code written on a piece of paper.
I looked over the guardrail again. Yes, about 30 feet. I wasn’t even fazed about the drop. Knowing myself I would probably flip twice and land on my feet, bored stiff. What are the chances of getting hit by a car. I looked at the speeding traffic.
No. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
I looked up. The sky seemed a bit darker. I glanced at some buildings about a mile away and noticed two goats squaring off.
Ah! Brilliant!
I looked at the road below again and smiled. I’d head-butted a nose or two in my younger days. This would probably be the mother of all headbutts.
I looked at the horizon, where the top of distant trees scraped the sky.
I thought about all my unfinished books, and movie scripts.
Attention disorder, insomnia, multiple personality…I chuckled. Some people think ‘Genius’, me, I think ‘Madness’.
Strangely, for a brief moment, I thought about Amaka. I almost wished I could have someone write this final chapter and send it to her.
Well. Too late for that.
I took off my hat and flung it away like a Frisbee. I paid 3k for that hat. Let some poor schmuck enjoy it.
I closed my eyes and blew a kiss in the air, and then I leaped.
I remember making that jump in music department. I could’ve just dropped softly from the stage. But no. Too boring for the Dawg. I had put my hands on the rail and boosted myself another 3 or 4 feet for a loud bone jarring landing on the basement below. The oos and ahhs from the audience was more than enough payment. Today I did the same. I lept like an Olympian and zoomed down like a fighter pilot to the asphalt below.
They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. Nah. It’s not always true. Sometimes death is so instantaneous you don’t even have time for a thought. Just before I lept, all I thought was about my mother, and how disappointed she would’ve been if she were alive.
One second I was in the air, the next I was in the hospital with both arms and a leg amputated, extreme head trauma, two broken ribs, nerve damage, a shattered jaw and badly shattered pelvis.
I noticed a black curtain was covering the right side of my bed, so I knew I must be in very bad shape.
Somehow, I also knew I had bitten off my tongue.
It was there on the hospital bed that I had time to think. I thought about what I did. How I would never drive again. How I would never have women come after me again. How I would never play basketball again.
How I had been such a weakling to take a coward’s way out…and now a world-class failure, who even failed at taking his own life.
I thought about my little sweetheart, and how much I had disappointed her. I thought about Genevieve Nnaji, and how I would never be able to profess my love for her.
I wanted to shed a tear, but I couldn’t feel my face. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t feel anything. I could only control my eyes. Oh my God! My eyes! The black ‘curtain’ I thought I saw, was actually a blank space on my face. It just hit me; I had also lost an eye!
I shut my good eye and listened. I could hear two doctors talking somewhere nearby. I heard a faint squeaky sound. Probably a trolley somewhere.
Wait!
Oh My God!
It’s not about what I heard. It’s about what I didn’t hear. The voices were gone! Oh my God! They are gone! They are gone!
Ahhh! So, this is how it feels to be normal?
I’m not a total failure then. I achieved something. I got rid of the voices.
Maybe I paid too great a price, but eternal peace is just around the corner.
I took a final look at the ceiling, closed my eye and tried holding my breath. I realized I couldn’t control my lungs. I turned my good eye to the left and saw a funny looking glass cylinder, with some weird stuff inside moving slowly and in a timely fashion, up and down, up and down.
Oh, that’s great. Now I’m breathing through a machine. That’s just wonderful.
A picture caught my eye and I strained to look at it. It was a picture of my car. Someone had used a sharp object to draw a long jagged line on the driver’s side.
Noooooo! Not my baby! Noooo!
Who would do that? Who could be so wicked? And, which insensitive baboon decided to torture me with the picture?
My final thought was of how I wished I hadn’t jumped. And how I wished I could jump off the bed and whup the culprit’s behind.
And then, I opened my eyes. It took me a while to realize I was still parked under the leafy trees beside Okpara Square, and my phone was ringing.
It was just a creditor. Not a wolf.
I chuckled.
Yes, I’ve got problems. Everybody has got problems.
And what’s the point in being a company attack-dog if you can’t take a beating or two for the team.
A currently very broke attack-dog, that is. Ha! I laughed a little.
Some traces of laughter was still in my voice when I answered the phone.
“If you suffer, thank God. It’s a sure sign that you are alive.” – Elbert Hubbard.
– Arinze Nduanya
Website: www.arinze.nduanya.com
Favebook: www.facebook.com/arinze.nduanya
Email: arinze@nduanya.com)
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