Page 150 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 4 #3

"Enough."

"I'm sorry -"
"Cancel."

Princess' face immediately darkens and for a moment I am concerned that I might ac-
tually have offended her. But she is just a phone, I remind Myself. But I know better. She is
human enough to understand Me and to interpret what I say. She has learned how I speak and
she seems intuitively to know what I am asking her. And yet, there are moments like this one
when she seems singularly out of touch with Me and with all things human. "I wish, Princess," I
said hoping she was still awake enough to hear Me, "that you could be human or simply a phone.
Your being both is so frustrating." Princess' face lit up enough to let Me know she heard Me and
then darkened.
But this wasn't about Princess. I knew that. It was about something else - something I had
long struggled to understand and now, having realized that sadness is the twine that binds My
experience together, I found Myself consumed by a pain so overwhelming that suicide seemed
to be the only way to end the pain. But to take My life I would need to be able to stand and find
whatever I would need to end My life. But I was still too tired to move.

I had been here before - in fact that pain had nearly killed Me four times before. Wrapped
in grief and often invisible, it was the same pain that drove Nietzsche to madness. And if I didn't
understand how it took hold of Me, it would kill Me.
Grief I could understand. There is no sadness without grief and there is no grief without
sadness. If sadness is the twine that binds My experience together, then grief woven together is
the twine.

But there was something else. Something under the grief.

Pain.
Unfiltered. Raw. Like a fire hell bent upon consuming everything in its path. And angry.
And bitter. Vengeful. Possessive. Incessant.

As I had twelve years ago, I longed to understand My suffering and My pain. Creating the
series I called "Tea and Sympathy" failed to bring that understanding. It simply allowed Me to
survive. And here I was again. The pain had left Me exhausted and unable to sleep. I was already
having problems eating and I knew that if I didn't do something soon, I would be unable to stop
the anorexia and it would kill Me this time.
Pain.

Why pain?
Thoth who has fallen asleep in the window stirs. It is rayning and perhaps it is the wind
pushing drops of water through the screen on to his fur that has awakened him. For a moment
it appears as though he will run across the room and curl up next to Me. Perhaps sensing My
restlessness he chooses to curl up on My laptop bag. A deep breath and he is asleep again.

The pain is incessant. Debilitating. I begin to think that it is the pain of sadness. Like
water upon a stone, so is sadness upon the heart until - like the timeless wearing of water upon
stone - the heart is worn. Tired. Unable to stop the pain. Driven to abandon life in order to es-
cape the pain.

150 | Last Breath of Summer