Prologue
Pacing back and forth, continuously, in his dimly lit living room, he tried to fight the ideas. Regardless they had now become too strong. The sound of the thunderstorm raging outside almost seemed to mirror his chaotic pacing. He hadn't cleaned his living room for about a week so he was stepping through the dirty clothes and trash littered on the floor.
Finally, after about 20 minutes of pacing and going through all of the things that people had told him about not letting go of it all, versus what he had been shown, he finally sat back down to write that letter. He looked at the gun sitting to the left of his laptop. The box sat to the right of the laptop, unassuming, but still just as uncanny as the day it showed up at his doorstep.
For this box wasn't made out of leather or plastic or even some type of ancient looking material, it was just cardboard... As if it came from Amazon or something. But there were no logos on the box anywhere, there were no dents, no scuffs, no indentations where a finger might have mishandled it, not even signs of someone handling it in the slightest. What also made it uncanny was how perfect it seemed to appear in it's symmetry and the fact that it looked untouched although someone had to have brought it to his doorstep.
The box was no longer than about 12 inches in length and 6 inch in width. In the center of the box was a perfectly crafted door approximately 8 inches in length and 4 inches in width. Where a normal door handle would be in a door, there was a hole just large enough for a finger to open the door.
This wasn't the only strange thing about this box, when he picked it up, it felt weightless. Something deep down in his subconscious told him not to open that box. But there was just something alluring about it that he couldn't deny. What could possibly be inside? It couldn't be that impressive giving it appears to be just a simple cardboard box. But who gave it to him? Why did it look like it it had never been touched? Who crafted that handle to open it, why were the incisions crafted so perfectly? Why was the craftsmanship so immaculate on something that seems so meaningless? Why did it feel weightless? His immediate assumption was that it was empty. But what if it wasn't?
He told himself that he wasn't afraid. As a matter of fact he welcomed death frequently so what can possibly be so scary about a damn box? In his mind he shamed himself for even having some type of feeling of dread because after all, it was everyone else trying to stop him from taking himself out of the equation so why in the hell would a stupid box that showed up on his doorstep give him any reason to fear for his life?
After all, this was a life that he had spent years convincing himself was meaningless, although he fought the feeling off at times for the sake of others, he just couldn't completely shake off the feelings he had of not wanting to live. I mean he understood that all of the good things in life is supposed to bring value to it and that's what's supposed to make life worth living. However, there was something inside of him that always understood something else he felt about the world, about the universe in general, but couldn't quite put his finger on it, and this was something that made the good things feel quite irrelevant upon speculation.
So when he opened the door of that box that he found sitting on his doorstep, just to see a single note, word side down, sitting inside the box, he was quite surprised. There was only one note that appeared to be written on a piece of normal notebook paper. Standing there still on his doorstep with the box in his hand looking down at that note inside, he was perplexed at the simplicity of such a thing. He couldn't help himself, he grabbed the note, which also felt like nothing, not the weight of a small piece of paper, but nothing. When he turned the note over to read it, he read it and just froze. Feelings of both dread and confusion rushed over him all at once.
Was this a prank? The person that wrote this had to have known him personally. This wasn't just something a random person would ask him. In fact, upon thinking about it, he realized no one in his life that he knew would ever play a joke like this on him.
What this note said was "why shouldn't you just be able to leave?" And it was written in what seemed like his own handwriting.
This was something he constantly asked himself when struggling to implement what his therapists had told him over the years, what his sister had told him over the years, what his parents had told him over the years, all the "you can do it" jargon that exists. Why does he have to deal with his life just because the people that love him want him to stay?
He felt selfish for feeling like this, he always did. That was part of what kept him from committing suicide, not even the fact that he actually wanted to live, but because the people that loved him did.
But over time he had grown so exhausted of wanting to try to keep it together for their sake, the agony of sticking around for them. They had their own lives to live, not his, and he craved his autonomy more than anything. Even if it meant over the decision to end it.
So as jarring as it was for him to see the words "why shouldn't you just be able to leave?" Written on this note, personally for him, in this box, somehow delivered to his doorstep, there was something deep within him that saw this as a great source of confirmation bias.
He also had an even deeper feeling that this box would be able to show him what was missing from the equation he was unable to figure out his whole life, the equation of what gave him a rational reason to end things, the one that trumped the desire to stick around for conventional reasons and for the sake of those who cared for him.
He put the note back inside the box and brought the box with him inside the house. 4 days later, there he was at his laptop trying to write some type of explanation that would hopefully help the people that were emotionally invested in him understand why he no longer could stick around for them. He simply didn't have to anymore because he had finally found his answer.
The box knew, the box knew he wanted to know, so the box gave him the knowledge.
