The Long of the Day

This is a writing piece reflecting on my memory of my first attempt on taking my life at 11. I hope you are able to pick into my brain and see what I was thinking moments close to death. 

I found myself sprawled upon a cold linoleum floor, my trembling body seized by convulsions. My limbs twitched, erratic and unmoored, like those of a novice insect ensnared in some indifferent tempest. The pills—too many, ingested in a mechanical act of desperation—gnawed at my innards, drawing me toward an abyss. My vision splintered, the room dissolving into a gray haze, as though the world itself had grown weary of its own contours. I was slipping, yet my mind, sharp and unyielding, clung to existence, as if tasked with some futile duty to comprehend the monstrous weight of being.

I had taken the pills to flee the world’s decree, a ceaseless clamor that I should mature, forsake dreams, and submit to a reality that lacerated like broken glass. The world’s verdict was a cage: to grow up was to suffer. I observed it in the vacant gazes of passersby, in the relentless parade of calamities on screens, in the way hope shriveled beneath the bureaucracy of time. I had no place in this world—a misfit, a shadow in a mechanism that pulverized innocence. I was growing up, and I loathed it. Though young, I knew enough of the world—its treacheries, its losses, its glacial indifference—to reject it.

I would rather perish young, my heart still aglow with wonder, than endure the world’s suffering until it extinguished me. I would rather die a child than bear its yoke. Yet it was more than that. I took the pills because I foresaw a life of unremitting suffering, an endless chain of torment without reprieve.

I felt what I termed the long of the day—that moment when one is confined, physically or mentally, staring at walls, realizing the sentence stretches interminably, with no escape and no savior. Life was such a sentence, one I could not serve. The only release was to permit my consciousness to detach from my body, through what others, in their orderly terminology, called death.

The room vanished, and I was elsewhere—a realm of blinding white light, boundless and implacable. No walls, no floor, no horizon. Only light, pressing upon me with the weight of an official edict. I attempted to advance—nothing. To retreat—nothing. I could neither sit nor turn. I was fixed in this nowhere, compelled to confront myself. And I was alone—utterly alone, as I had been at my entry into the world, with no one to cradle me, no one to render the vastness bearable. No mother, no father, only me, and the solitude was a verdict in itself. All I could do was think, and thoughts assailed me, a deluge of memories and despair.

I recalled my childhood backyard, where grass, untamed, brushed my ankles as I darted beneath a purple-pinkish sky, pursuing fireflies. Their frail glows were enchantments, stars I could clasp in my palms. I would cup them, my breath halting at their ephemeral light, convinced the world could remain so radiant. From the kitchen window, my mother’s silhouette stood, framed against the glass, preparing dinner. I waved, called out, but she neither saw nor heeded me. I did not know then that she had no desire to shield or nurture me, that the world had already claimed her allegiance.

Then I saw my father, his red truck settling into the driveway, its familiar rumble an assurance of joy. He would emerge, smiling, and I would run to him, my feet striking the earth. He would lift me, call me beautiful, spin me until the world blurred into laughter and love. His arms were my refuge, his voice a bulwark against the dark.

In those days, I could disregard the world’s shadows—the reports of loss, the murmurs of pain—for my mind, cloaked in rose-tinted glasses, knew only joy. My childhood brain concealed the suffering, stowing it beneath fireflies and bedtime tales. But that shield was torn away by time, or fate, or the world’s insatiable hunger. Without it, I was forced to dwell in the suffering, to let it etch itself into my bones, my soul. And in that pain, I understood: I did not wish to grow up. I did not wish to inhabit a world that consumed until nothing remained but the long of the day, that suffocating expanse of knowing one is imprisoned in pain, with no exit.

The white room confined me, and I wept, tears scalding my cheeks, my chest laboring under the burden of it all. The memories whirled, dizzying as my father’s arms, but this vertigo was grief, a spiral of loss. I thought of the girl I had been, chasing light, believing in eternity. I thought of how the world had shattered her, stolen her wonder, her place. I was alone here, as at my birth, with no one to hold me, no one to affirm my belonging or love. I cried out, a silent, raw plea for rescue—for my mother to turn from the window, for my father to lift me once more. But no one came.

The light remained vacant, and I was left with only myself, a frail, quivering entity in an infinite void. I had sought death to preserve that girl, to shield her from the world’s cruelty, to spare her this merciless sentence. In this unyielding light, I was left with nothing but the truth of my isolation.

It was as it was.

The thought settled, cold and ponderous, like a stone in my chest. I closed my eyes, permitting the white light to dissolve, accepting the void that awaited.

When I opened my eyes, a shrill beep intruded upon the haze. I lay in a hospital bed, tubes coiling from my arms, monitors droning their relentless oversight. My wrists were bound, soft straps anchoring me to this dismal reality. The air was dense with antiseptic, a sterile admonition that I persisted. I was alive, and the fact oppressed me—tears flowed again, silent and searing. I thought of fireflies. I thought of the girl I had been, of the woman I would become. I thought of the world beyond, teeming with suffering and faint glimmers of light too distant to reach. I did not know if I belonged there, nor if I ever would. All I knew was that I was utterly alone in this world, as I had been in that white room, as I had been at my birth. Alone, with only myself, forever, a firefly flickering out in the dark.