Entropy

En·tro·py

/ˈentrəpē/

1. a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
2. 2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.

You would think the worst part of dying is the nothingness. Or - if you're religious at least - the unknown beyond, for good or bad... but it's not. The worst part is the fear; dread of the known, and coming back knowing that there IS something after we perish. I say this because what's on the other side, is worse… far worse than anything we've ever feared to conceive…

Like most people my age, I grew up never really being happy. Sure, I've had good days… a handful of truly great ones; not figuratively but bonafide grandiose moments. But even in them, I felt that tinge. That splinter in the mind that won't let go. Even as you try to be in the moment, regardless of people or substances encouraging you, that feeling of whatever is inside reaches into you and wrenches you loose. Sometimes a voice of doubt, sometimes an ever present foreboding blanket of discontent. All the manifestations of my sorrow or rage or paralytic bitterness were an alliance of agonizing antipathy. Sometimes, the wails and whispers in my psyche were louder than the blistering metal I'd use to try and drown out how hopeless my own mind made me think I was.

The internet only mildly distracted. Sometimes nights would be a silent audio visual reminder of why I can't seem to smile, blaring into headsets. Wars, injustice, genocide, corruption, apathy to suffering and poverty… As a child I was certain that the modern society I was raised in would have spawned the Utopia we were all promised we would grow up to inherit. It wasn't until my mid teens wherein I retreated to books, computers, and ironically my own brain that I discovered the irony of the word. Utopia stems from the Greek words which when combined, meant "no place" or "nowhere"... How poignant for our current ideals and state of affairs globally, in so many ways…

Watching things devolve or outright regress in a handful of regards, I found very few reasons to soldier on for a better day. When you run out of reasons, out of ways to find a way to go on… you stop trying to go on. In my case, when you're out of ways to go on, you find ways to check out. My exit strategy was my pistol: 1911, golden burnt yellow. When I cared about things, it was one of my prized possessions. Now, it would be my deliverance from the hamster wheel of being let down by the dawn… the cycle of senseless suffering. How fitting; falling like a shamed, defeated samurai. It would be messy, but if done right, quick and painless. Despite my stringent Roman Catholic upbringing, I was an advocate of science and decided this was best. Pills might get uncomfortable, and I couldn't guarantee using other means would be fast enough to make it not torturous.

Loaded.

Chambered.

Aim.

Deep breath.

DEEPER BREATH.

Trigger finger…

…

Hesitation. Fear. Survival instinct. The resentment builds as I hear the laughing inside my own ears from something that isn't even there… I feel anger as it mocks my cowardice!

And I shot.

Black.

Did I get it wrong? I must have… I was still alive. But there was nothing to see… great… I must have done so poorly that I ended up nothing but a vegetable: blind and incapable of living, yet alive. Then the blinding flash of white… not blinding bright, though brightly shining white it was. The blinding was intensity, the radiating hue of what was waving into my pupils felt inescapable to my nerves. It was the searing ache you get from not listening to adults as a child when they warn not to gaze at the sun, except the sun itself was penetrating my sockets.

I opened my mouth to react, but it wouldn't budge. Except I felt the reaction of every fabric of my flesh - from my tongue to lips to the throat itself - burning as if grazed by flames. Nerves squealed, saliva dried up by the drop, my vocal chords thrummed erratically and yet didn't move at all. I made no noise but could sense the paralytic, chaotic vibration.

My skull was a veritable fissure. It was every scrape and injury and illness. All the long nights, overly early mornings, and stream of bad decisions ever made… all rolled into one. Every neurological and physical sensation of discomfort in the history of my life rolled itself into one ballista, and devastated my mind with unrelenting fury.

The misery of the uncertainty and endless barrage of it all lasted for what felt incalculable hours… Then, color. Clarity. I was still in my room. Still standing. Still it looked…falling. I hadn't died yet… I was still. Fucking. Dying.

No. no. no no… Nononononono….

This isn't what I thought it was supposed to be.

Time passed in what I could only describe were ages, as my body was collapsing under the weight of my own still continuing suicide.

The electrical firestorm of my nerves going into overdrive kept me focused on the pain and nothing else. I couldn't shut it out as it realized what happened to itself and sounded the emergency alarm in a torrent of jolts. The body tends to scream orders at the mind and the mind to the person in times of stress or trouble, entreating at us all to cease what is happening. This safety siren tends to subside over time, if it is heeded to. In death, the horn and body-wide tazer was left permanently on. I couldn't find a way to escape the only reality left to me…

Minutes… Hours… Days…

By the time I felt what I realized was finally my blood escaping me, something new and altogether horrifying manifested. It started like a tug… a gentle cold piercing pull. Metallic… unsympathetic. It spread… from my brain first then out, my face… chest…. every nerve… every…. atom. The tearing mercilessly and caustically eroded my sanity and flesh, as I felt my skin wither and dry. My blood leaked and clotted in my veins, the moisture from my eyes and mouth escaped me. My throat became a desert, even as I felt the wails of torment acoustically resonate and die in me and yet continue. An eternal chorus of mute maniacal melancholic madness, buried in the coffin of my body. My organs ceased… I felt that which functioned release at once and my heartbeat began to wane…. and then came the true extent of my fate.

That feeling of pincers peeling pieces of me away immensely grew…not from without, but within. My… cells… atoms…. they fell apart.. My body collapsed and ripped at the seams, as every microscopic piece that made me myself was exploding in opposing directions. Is this death? Feeling the essence of a person fall away into nothing… as we feel it happen slow enough to last another lifetime? They say your life flashes before you when you go; is this the flash, feeling the laws of physics and thermodynamics abrade my entire being from inside?

It took what felt like days before this all became too much. My eyes shut on it. Trying to push away the last moments, the last eons that would come… until I realized it wouldn't come. How long had I been here? Weeks? What if it… what if it never….

I don't know when the doctors revived me, I just know I woke up in the emergency room. I apparently grazed my brain and the recoil of the weapon in hand caused an impact angle that while traumatic, was not fatal. I was lucky to be alive nonetheless, I was told. They have no idea how right they were…

I can't die... I don't want to die... I just… can't.

I CAN'T go back there… I'm not strong enough to endure the incomprehensible agony... not again... I'm not strong enough…

I'm not.. I'm not... I'm not.......

Some people say death is sweeter than suffering.... Those people never died.