034 x 430 // text // plan your own...

[dignity_misery]

[She trashed the apartment this morning. The anxiety mounted above and beyond what could she could handle, that knot of glass and tar inside of her chest unbearable, the crying inside of her head pulsating too heavily. It's been building there, behind her eyes and deep in her stomach and lungs, for weeks now. She's been counting down to this day, or maybe it's been creeping up to her. Climbing over her, choking her.

The wreckage is inevitable, furniture overturned and porcelain shards scattered across the floor. Her dog is clawing at the bathroom door now, and for some reason that she doesn't understand, she has this to share with the network,]

CAROLENA MARÍANNA MORIR
09/08/1986 — 03/26/2011
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR .

[[ooc; This post is a catchall for Carla's suicide. This is a blanket trigger warning for the entirety of this post and any comments that may follow. She will answer any network comments, but it will be timelined to before her final episode. Action from folks involved in this fiasco are welcome, as well as any initial visitors on Sunday (it takes 24 hours for the dead to wake up.)

By the way, it's her birthday. She's 30 today.]]

Comments

[intheblanks]

[For once he's not taking part in her anger or her pity. He doesn't say anything. Comfort is impossible (he's here, though, whatever that offers), anger unhelpful and pity would cloy in his throat.

Across the room, he sits back down to wait.]

[dignity_misery]

[She curls in around herself then, face tucked down into the dark of the mattress, fingertips pressing ruthless into skin; trying to make it feel like her own. Tense, muscles flexed, if she could just reach far enough, she could press her skeleton out through her skin and break free. It doesn't work that way, but she indulges the idea of it and the clench of disgust and panic until until something finally gives way and she can relax again. The warm bed helps--(It had been hot showers and electric blankets in the Winter, with Barbet. More for his comfort than for hers.)

She can still hear Robert there, his breathing, and there is nothing that appeals more to her than the idea of putting her ear to his chest. She won't.]

What are you waiting for.

[An accusation, but still an impotent one, her eyes never making it all the way to him and just skirting along the tiled floors instead.]

[intheblanks]

I should be waiting until you're stable enough to hear what happened, but in this instance I figure you've got it worked out already.

[He won't address the wall today. There's nothing about her that is offensive to his sight - just disappointing. Disappointing and wearying to a degree that works heavy coils between his ribs and tugs at his centre of gravity until he's leaning, elbows on knees, holding himself up. He addresses her. The bed. What he can see of her in it.]

Maybe I should say congratulations instead.

[dignity_misery]

[She swallows roughly, fingers curling against the stiff white sheets, already trying to pick holes in them.]

Get on with it then.

{She doesn't want to sound as pleading as she does.]

[intheblanks]

If you want. Congratulations. [And he sits back, just a different pitch of his balance, before his elbows dig through his thighs.] You've managed to prove that you didn't need Barbet's help to bring yourself back as a living corpse. It must be a big day for you.

[dignity_misery]

[And then there's a snarl. If there were something in her reach, it would be crashing in his direction. What has she proved? She's proved that she can't control this, in any sense. It's a small day for her, crushed under the weight of her own shame.]

Are you through?

[intheblanks]

I shouldn't be talking at all. [It's not as if he's listened to, and christ isn't that the theme his life has run on.] I'd like to know why.

[dignity_misery]

Why what.

[Her voice rises, starting to tread towards hysteric. It's not that she doesn't know what he's asking. It's that there isn't an answer, and that's what's most upsetting. She hadn't intended this. She hadn't.]

[intheblanks]

A colleague [He won't use the word friend, hasn't since it happened. There were people far closer, more affected. He just asked the one person he couldn't bear to lose to marry him, to keep her close.

And he lost her anyway.

So he doesn't use the word friend. It's not his by right.]

Shot himself in the head last year. I couldn't ask him. So I thought I'd take the chance.

[dignity_misery]

[It feels disconnected, thinking about it. She's familiar with the sensation. It's what the Reanimation Virus does to a mind, making a delineation between what was living and what was dead. It was like there was a glass wall between past and present. Maybe that was why it was so hard to let go. Her old life was enshrined on the other side of that barrier, kept pristine under glass housing. She remembered, spotty in some places there was no doubt, but it didn't feel like it belonged to her.

She remembers yesterday. She remembers the anxiety--(another year, still the same, no different, she's had all this time, all these chances, and she still wants to tell Barbet that she loves him, still wants to go home and be forgiven, still feels like she never left, will never leave. Another year. All these chances, things taken out of her hands, still pining over people that she can't have, they're not coming back, or she's not good enough. She's not good enough. It's another year, and she's still not good enough. She's stuck here, frozen here, forever, right on the cusp of ruin. She can't move. She can't change anything. She can't change.) She remembers it cresting up over her head, and she remembers starting to tear into the apartment, just to do something. She remembers her hands bleeding from the little shards embedding into her knuckles. She remembers Lou trying to talk to her, and that she hadn't wanted to hear his voice because he didn't remember her--(She doesn't matter. She is immaterial, she influences nothing. She is a corpse in this world, her purpose is decay.)

She remembers the box of jewelry. The brief moment of silence it had brought her. (The question: the gift from an angel or a devil. Wasn't the choice just so clear?) She'd gone into the bathroom to pick the glass shards out of her knuckles, not to kill herself.]

I don't know. [It wasn't death she'd wanted. She knew she couldn't have that here. He'd told her, she'd listened. She had.] I didn't... I just wondered. Who deserved it most.

[Who deserved to writhe for a few hours while their organs shut down. She'd picked herself.]

It seemed obvious.

[intheblanks]

Deserved what, death?

[He knows it was poison, the toxicology reports are confused by the nature of it, clashing with the peculiarities of her blood, but the basics are there. Quick acting, not instantaneous. He doesn't know if there would have been time to run her blood through filters, catch the poison on charcoal, set up dialysis. But he knows she didn't give anyone the choice to try.]

You've had more goes at it than most. Surely someone else is due a turn.

[dignity_misery]

I don't know.

[It's not an excuse from her, it's the answer she has. She doesn't know, it had all slipped away from her, and now it's gone too far.]

Suffer for a few hours, maybe.

[Come out stronger on the other side? It never works that way with her.]

[intheblanks]

We both know you've got other ways of achieving that.

[It's unsatisfactory, as an answer and as a suitable summary for this whole affair.]

Most suicides are pretty rational decisions, even when they're decisions made by crazy people. They want to get away from something - their shitty life, their abusive boyfriend, the voices in their head - so they take an escape route. You're doing the reverse. You're dead. You're stuck here. If you'd held out, eventually this place would have thrown you back and you could have jumped out of a window somewhere it would have had a lasting effect. Here? Your core body temperature is going to be lower than it was, but it doesn't get much worse than that.

[Know him well enough and the hope in all this isn't hard to see. He hesitates, kicking a foot out to scuff the wall before leaning onto it, tumbling towards upright, and walking over to crouch beside the bed.]

If there was anything rational in this, it almost looks like you've chosen to live.

[dignity_misery]

I don't know.

[She repeats that with a sob, hiding beneath her hair, because she doesn't see it that way, that there's anything hopeful in it. All she sees is her own fear, her own disappointment and shame and disgust. His analysis just makes it worse, makes it more obvious that she can't fix this on her own. She's going to fall, even where there's 'hope.']

I don't feel like I chose anything.

[intheblanks]

You swallowed poison. Like it or not, there was a decision inherent in that.

[For a moment it's almost like he's explaining to a child. And he stands again.]

Maybe eventually you'll figure out what.

[dignity_misery]

[Maybe. Eventually. Right now she just curls an arm in around herself, twining into her hair. She doesn't bother to bite down on the tears this time. There's no point.]

[intheblanks]

[It's damn near impossible not to respond to the tears. He looks up, as if there's strength in the whitewashed ceiling. If she asked him to stay, he would. If she's an idiot, so is he.

But he's exhausted, more than he has been in a long, long time. And he's bruised. It's long past time he went home.]

I'll have a nurse come in.

[That's probably better for both of them.]