animal doctors, each of whom explained to her that parrots were intelligent animals and needed stimulation.
This, she knew. She had lived with it for five years and when it was angry with her, it took her car keys and hid them, so please. Nobody needed to tell her that parrots were intelligent animals.
She was doing what she could to keep him entertained. It wasn’t like she could walk over to San Francisco Community College with her bird on her shoulder and enroll him in a semiotics class.
So she did something some people might find quite terrible but that thrilled me.
She opened her window.
That’s all she did. She opened her living-room window.
It took that bird like one-tenth of one second to realize the window was open and then he was sitting there on the ledge looking at the huge trees and all the other birds flying around loose.
He flew away.
She knew he would. She had known others who had done the same thing. This was why there are parrots in the trees in San Francisco.
But after several days, the crazy lady woke up and saw her parrot sitting atop its cage, just like always.
She liked to tell the story by adding, “And each day, he would go outside and have his adventures and then return at night. And that bird never hid my car keys from me again.”
It’s kind of a cool story. Especially if you think life sucks.
Because it doesn’t.
It can.
But it doesn’t.
THIS IS THE CHOICE YOU don’t see when you decide to kill yourself. This is the choice that never even crosses your mind. This is the choice that is so obvious, it never even occurs to you.
You can leave. You can open the front door, step outside, and make a right or a left. And keep going.
Yeah, but what about school? What about your wife? What about your kids? What about money? What about all your furniture? What about picking the car up at the shop tomorrow? What about your sister? What about the cows that need to be milked?
Well, yes. It’s destructive. But it is a choice. And it’s a better choice than suicide.
In a way, suicide is a disease of the eyes. It destroys peripheral vision.
Leaving your life is like getting an intramuscular injection of options.
Maybe this new life will be worse.
Maybe this new life will be better.
Maybe this new life will make you lonely for your old, broken life that suddenly won’t seem so broken.
You are allowed to be alive. You are allowed to be somebodydifferent. And you are allowed to not say good-bye to anybody or explain a single thing to anyone, ever.
The life you have is a life you were given. There were people there already. And a town that had a name. When you went to school for the first time, you did not choose which school.
Some people, though, they’d rather be dead.
Some people can only live if they start over and make a brand-new life, one they make themselves, entirely from scratch.
THERE IS ALWAYS DISHONESTY at the heart of unhappiness. The dishonesty that resides inside suicide is that there are no other options.
So, what about the twelve-year-old girl who is being sexually abused by her stepfather every night and her mother is too drunk to notice or care and there is not another house for miles and miles and nothing of value to steal or sell and she’s only twelve, what the hell can she do? All she wants is out and she really does have no options other than the very simple and clean exit offered by the bottle of pills in her mother’s top dresser drawer. This girl’s life is one endless, awful stinking man’s cock and nothing else, not even one tolerable meal a day.
She has options?
She does.
If she strips away all the rules and all she knows and all she sees, she will see the truth: she doesn’t have to kill herself. If the highway is thirty miles away and she has no shoes, she can wrap her feet in garbage bags and towels and leave in the very middle of the night by foot.
She can hide in trees if he comes looking, crawl back down when he’s gone.
Though she
This, she knew. She had lived with it for five years and when it was angry with her, it took her car keys and hid them, so please. Nobody needed to tell her that parrots were intelligent animals.
She was doing what she could to keep him entertained. It wasn’t like she could walk over to San Francisco Community College with her bird on her shoulder and enroll him in a semiotics class.
So she did something some people might find quite terrible but that thrilled me.
She opened her window.
That’s all she did. She opened her living-room window.
It took that bird like one-tenth of one second to realize the window was open and then he was sitting there on the ledge looking at the huge trees and all the other birds flying around loose.
He flew away.
She knew he would. She had known others who had done the same thing. This was why there are parrots in the trees in San Francisco.
But after several days, the crazy lady woke up and saw her parrot sitting atop its cage, just like always.
She liked to tell the story by adding, “And each day, he would go outside and have his adventures and then return at night. And that bird never hid my car keys from me again.”
It’s kind of a cool story. Especially if you think life sucks.
Because it doesn’t.
It can.
But it doesn’t.
THIS IS THE CHOICE YOU don’t see when you decide to kill yourself. This is the choice that never even crosses your mind. This is the choice that is so obvious, it never even occurs to you.
You can leave. You can open the front door, step outside, and make a right or a left. And keep going.
Yeah, but what about school? What about your wife? What about your kids? What about money? What about all your furniture? What about picking the car up at the shop tomorrow? What about your sister? What about the cows that need to be milked?
Well, yes. It’s destructive. But it is a choice. And it’s a better choice than suicide.
In a way, suicide is a disease of the eyes. It destroys peripheral vision.
Leaving your life is like getting an intramuscular injection of options.
Maybe this new life will be worse.
Maybe this new life will be better.
Maybe this new life will make you lonely for your old, broken life that suddenly won’t seem so broken.
You are allowed to be alive. You are allowed to be somebodydifferent. And you are allowed to not say good-bye to anybody or explain a single thing to anyone, ever.
The life you have is a life you were given. There were people there already. And a town that had a name. When you went to school for the first time, you did not choose which school.
Some people, though, they’d rather be dead.
Some people can only live if they start over and make a brand-new life, one they make themselves, entirely from scratch.
THERE IS ALWAYS DISHONESTY at the heart of unhappiness. The dishonesty that resides inside suicide is that there are no other options.
So, what about the twelve-year-old girl who is being sexually abused by her stepfather every night and her mother is too drunk to notice or care and there is not another house for miles and miles and nothing of value to steal or sell and she’s only twelve, what the hell can she do? All she wants is out and she really does have no options other than the very simple and clean exit offered by the bottle of pills in her mother’s top dresser drawer. This girl’s life is one endless, awful stinking man’s cock and nothing else, not even one tolerable meal a day.
She has options?
She does.
If she strips away all the rules and all she knows and all she sees, she will see the truth: she doesn’t have to kill herself. If the highway is thirty miles away and she has no shoes, she can wrap her feet in garbage bags and towels and leave in the very middle of the night by foot.
She can hide in trees if he comes looking, crawl back down when he’s gone.
Though she
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