A Penny For Your Books

This writing practice has no prompt. I’ve heard so many people say “write what you know”, so I decided to do that. I am lucky that one of my worst struggles is only with indecision, but this writing aims to dramatize this battle and explore what an extreme plague of indecisiveness could look like. For those who may worry, I do not struggle with this issue anywhere near the intensity of the main character of this story. 

I think this would make a fun short story, so I’m posting a super early draft of the first few paragraphs to get a gauge of how I really feel about it. This draft is so early that I haven’t paid much attention to tense or overall word choice, but instead am focusing on story content and structure. If you have strong positive or negative emotions associated with it or have feedback, let me know! I’m starving for writing feedback. 

Trigger Warnings: This writing displays fictional thoughts of self-harm/discussion of suicide

It is 7:46AM. My alarm clock has been blaring for the last minute, but the effort it takes to roll over is almost enough to drown out the incessant reminder that I am still alive. The alarm only grew louder in the next minute thanks to a decision I made about a month ago. 

A crescendo alarm clock will help me wake up so much better. Slowly, naturally. But what if it doesn’t wake me up? What if I oversleep by ten minutes and miss my morning work meetings? Because it’s new, what if I set it incorrectly and never wake up at all? Do I go through the effort of purchasing it?

This internal debate lasted approximately three months, twice a day–every morning when my phone alarm almost induced a stroke, and every evening when I set it again for the next day. In this case I was lucky, as indecision was a kind of decision itself. I was able to put it off and debate and debate and debate because the alternative already existed, already woke me up reliably each morning. 

At the end of three months, I purchased a crescendo alarm clock while sitting on my couch, drunk, the sound of a lawn mower and muffled human screams filling the living room as the movie Sinister played for the eighth time that month. Decisions like that of my alarm clock were usually solved by an incapacitated version of me, and for her I was grateful. 

By 7:49, the alarm was impossible to ignore. What I didn’t realize when I bought this disappointment was that this specific clock’s alert began at a level that was already too intense for a light sleeper. I was jolted out of sleep by the ironically soft, sedative melody so violently that the transgression could only be described as attempted murder. So instead of a slow, easy ascent into consciousness, every morning I am yanked from the depths of a dream and slowly tortured as the music gets louder and louder and louder and I, locked in the clutches of inevitable indecision, debate whether to kill myself or turn off the alarm.

Today I once again picked the reliable option and turned off the alarm. The effort to take myself away from the mortal plane is one that I am not prepared for. I refuse to slit my own wrists, and death by hanging is too unreliable. What if I don’t die right away? I don’t own a gun and hate the thought of owning one, so that’s also impossible.

This leaves my most reliable option as overdose. However I am cursed with strong genes and apart from the normal, expected dose of depression and anxiety that plague everyone I know, I have no ailments. This means that I had no medication capable of causing a quick and painless death. In order to obtain such a valuable commodity, I would have to go through the effort of deciding on a therapist, if and how I could get to their office, and what lie I would have to tell. Not to mention the fact that I would need to decide on a pharmacy. 

This level of decision making made ending my life impossible. 

It’s a double-edged sword, this affliction of my soul. If I was more capable of making a decision, perhaps I could follow through and end my life. On the other hand if I could make decisions, perhaps I wouldn’t want to kill myself. Not knowing which version of me would be unleashed with proper help makes deciding impossible. Thus, I remain a burden to myself and am damned to never reach a goal or have any achievable desires at all.

My name is Penelope Orceska, and this is my life.