yesterday i thought i should kill myself before my daughter gets to know me, so that she won't miss me. i would leave her a letter, like Billy Elliot's mom, telling her that i loved her more than i ever loved anything or anybody, and admitting right away that what i had done had been entirely a selfish act, and my only consideration had been to her, to do it before she would miss me.
it is very difficult, however, to commit suicide at home here. there is no gas, there are no sleeping or other such pills, there is no bathtub. i would not use a gun, and i have no access to one, obviously. i could not jump off a tall building--there are none in town--or crash the car--i don't know how to drive stick shift--. so i ended up looking on the internet for "infallible suicide at home". there are no such entries. there were for painless suicides, but those were not useful. i finally succumbed to looking it up in wikipedia, and there i found the only one that i could readily use that is, indeed, infallible. usually. hanging.
so as i lie in bed with my daughter in my arms i thought of all the ceilings in the house and realized that there was nowhere to hang from... alas! but surely outside, in the little terrace? i looked at the window and saw the iron bars there and knew that indeed, they would do. so i had the most difficult part. now to the second part: what to tie around my neck and around the iron bar. there is no rope here, unlike my home in PR where my father kept long coils of rope for spelunking... a belt? but how do you get a belt that's long enough to tie both to your neck and to an iron bar? i didn't trust that method... i was growing restless... nothing at all? i went to the bathroom to pee and i saw the little electric heater and its long white cable. a cable! an electric cord thingy that is long enough and strong enough... surely that would do... i just had to practice knots...
so i had it--ig's old computer cable thing, the iron bar, and knotting. my daughter is only 5 weeks old, so i have time to figure all this out before she in fact gets to know and miss and remember me... what kills me (no pun intended!) is that once i'm dead, and all that stupid debt is cancelled, i'm dead, you know? i cannot enjoy not being weighed down by all of this crap because i'm dead.
this morning i figured out the solution, or at least, one of them: i will go to madison in january, alone.
