Trigger Warning: Suicide Attempt
Amaryllis' Story
had already been written, and up until today, it seemed that it was heading toward its logical conclusion.
Everything had been going according to plan. She herself was pretty ordinary. She had been born into an average family. She knew her lot in life, and although it wasn't glamorous, she kept up at it. The general suffering she had endured wasn't enough to leave many scars.
She'd seen what real love was, and she even got to experience it for herself. She found the love of her life, got the ring and the wedding, as well as the promise of forever.
The complications started when she got the call from the cops to identify a body, the spouse's copy of the death certificate, and the anonymous notes threatening that her own life would be ended if she said the wrong thing to the wrong people or investigated too much on her own.
She had been sure that she didn't want to die when the threats first started, but now she wasn't so sure. As things settled, her mind circled a thought, one that she hadn't been ready to admit.
The broken promise her husband had vowed to her had shattered her, but she thought that things would get better. Now, as the seasons changed and the anniversary of his death crept up on her, she was finally able to speak the words out loud to herself.
'I don't have anything to live for.'
She closed her eyes and again, took an honest accounting of what her life had become.
Mechanical.
Working to live and living to work.
The Postal Industry, where she had begun her career and planned on ending it, was alive and thriving. While at work, she was always too busy to think like this, or at least she was able to push the gray thoughts from the front of her mind and drown out the misery. The daily rote of sorting never ending mountains of mail was what led her away from her bed every morning.
But that wasn't different, her life was always boring.
She didn't mind before, when she could clock out and spend the rest of her time with her Titus, filling her free time in the company of his laughter, his stories, his love.
Now that she was alone, the sharp objects in the room all around her began to take on a different appeal from their intended purpose.
She had dropped a sheet of glass in her second bedroom, her workshop. In the wreckage was something beautiful, an answer to all of her problems.
It was a shard of glass, bigger than all of the others, sickly sharp on one end and the perfect size of grab on the other, so she picked it up.
Dragging the sharp edge across her wrist lightly created a white line on her skin. If she just pressed a little harder, the empty feeling trapped inside of her hollow chest would go away. She could die there on the floor, slowly bleeding out, and no one would care.
She could quit living this lie and see Titus again. So she did it.
She pressed down just a little bit harder, following the line she had drawn earlier, drawing blood that appeared and slid down her arm. She shrieked in pain and threw her eyes open.
That's when she saw Monique's table.
Monique was 6 years old, and she had recently beaten cancer. Amaryllis and Monique's mother had spent hours on the phone last week designing an art table as her gift for a party she would be throwing for the young girl to celebrate.
That little girl had fought to live, and she now had her whole life ahead of her. The partially finished pink and purple table belonged with its rightful owner. Amaryllis resolved in her heart to make that happen.
'Get your priorities in order.' she thought to herself, sighing and beginning to clean up the blood.
Once she finished the work she was already set to do, she would reevaluate her place in this world.
She was ashamed to admit that she would be looking forward to doing that, to maybe finishing this dark task.
She had already decided against the drastic step she had been contemplating when she got the email.
