The Hammer Lane

It was the headline of the last email I sent to someone I knew for 18 years. She may have read something sexual in that (which isn’t why she stopped talking to me), but I meant it as it was my final attempt to contact her. We’d been friends, partners, and a lot of things in between. For the last 2 years or so we’ve been intermittent with the communication.

I hit a rough patch a couple months ago though. She said she would be there if I needed to talk. She wasn’t. So I went a little off the rails as my meds continued to fail. Got weird. Did anything I could think of to try to prompt some kind of response so I could have her talk me down.Given her husband is uncomfortable with me being friends with her (it’s a whole thing) I probably should have expected things to end as they did.

She was right about something though. My “apologies” were a bit insincere. They were an attempt to, as she said, “guilt” her into talking to me. Initially, at least. I wasn’t medicated for several of them. The last one I was thinking more clearly for. She didn’t seem to recall her offer to be there to talk with me about such dark thoughts.

I got low. Lower than I had ever been. I looped the electrical cord several times around a beam in the garage. I tied a noose and placed my head through it. Stepping off the chair it held my weight. Panic set in. I tried again another day with a similar result. Another failure in a life full of them. I needed someone to talk to, someone that would understand, who said I could always talk to her. I tried to get her attention, hoped for the smallest sliver, got desperate, and then exiled.