I’m tired.

Its 5:16am on Tuesday 5^th September 2006 and I look at the clock and realise that the night has just whizzed by. I have been sitting here since 9pm last night holding a pack of valium and feeling depressed. I have decided to write this, I don’t know why.

I have actually been weighing the option of taking all the valium in the pack, going to bed and sleeping the BIG SLEEP. I honestly feel like doing it. even now that morning is creeping in and the cock’s are crowing and the first of the early birds are (hopefully) catching the worms. I just want to end things.

Yesterday, I found out that my childhood friend, a girl that I grew up with is dead. I found out that she killed herself two months ago in her house – that she had left her office late as usual, cheerful as always, passed by her mother’s house and checked up on her family and then she had gone home. There was no indication that she was stressed or depressed.

As the story was later put together, Shiro got home, made dinner and opened a bottle of wine and had dinner. She then took a whole lot of valium, got into bed and slept. That’s it.

What’s worse is perhaps the way I found out. I met with her mother as I was walking home from the Panafric – a distance that is not far from my house. I could have taken a matatu as usual but I decided to walk. Her mother works in the community area, for the ministry of lands and I had not seen her for at least a decade and a half.

I was so happy to see her. She was quite happy to see me and we embraced and she kept saying, “How are you, my son.” Eventually I got around to asking her how Shiro is and her smile faded from her lips fast. A sob came in its place and she started to weep right there on the side of the road – “You don’t know.”

It was after she had calmed down that she told me the story.

The shock that I met with is indescribable. Shiro was the last person in the world anyone would expect to commit suicide. She was the strong one in her family, the one who kept her friends afloat emotionally, the one to whom people ran for leadership. She was always so cheerful, so vivacious, so very ambitious.

No one knew. No one had ever noticed that she was stressed. Her last note, found on her dining table simply said. “I am very tired. I cannot go on like this.” As it turned out, her business was struggling; she had been looking for an equity investor for it for a long time. Her family and several of her friends could have bailed her out but they didn’t take her seriously enough – she was too young, too ambitious.

When we parted ways her mother kept repeating, “If you have problems don’t keep quiet. Tell someone. Don’t allow yourself to tire alone. Tell someone.”

I have been sitting in my kitchen all of the past night and I have been almost absent mindedly looking at a packet of valium that I’ve had since the days I was suffering from a painful tumor a couple of years ago. I completely identify with Shiro.

The feeling that I have right this minute is to take the valium one by one and to go to bed. The GREAT SLEEP would envelope me and a lot of what I am going through will be over. Its really just packing my bags and moving to The Other City. I hear its hot where I’d be going but I can’t imagine it will be worse than where I am. I’m thinking about the fact that I am a moderate person to all intents and purposes. Don’t drink much, Don’t rave much, I try to live responsibly and to take responsibility for me and mine. I try to work hard and with purpose, continually aiming towards my vision. I read as hard as I can and I handle myself as well as I can.

I don’t complain to anyone about much and I take care of myself as best as I can. I live day by day juggling payments and trying to get paid and working and juggling between work and my hospital regimen and my extra-official activities.

I write my poetry and update my blog and work and do all that I can. I try to do things right.

Yet it is interesting. I know so many people and I have never been so alone in my life. I thought hard about mama shiro’s admonition: tell someone. And the interesting thing is that I have no one I can tell. There is no one that I feel confident enough that they are available to listen and to bail me out. I see no light at the end of the tunnel. Other times when I feel down, I perk myself up.

But today is a unique day. I am tired. I am so alone in a crowd of people. I am so tired of holding my head up and trying harder to be self sufficient. I am so tired of trying to smile and keep things afloat. I am so tired of living everyday.

I see no reason to continue to trudge carrying the weight of my unsupported ambitions and my fears and my hopes and dreams. I see no reason to keep up trying to make myself live another day in the hope that things will be better, that I will achieve what my heart desires so badly. I am at the point of my life when, I feel like letting go. I want to let go. It’s no ones fault, it’s just my weakness.

I am tired.

Why write this and send it to you? Just so that it is on record. Just so you know and you can tell someone what you know if you ever need to. You may look at this as a cry for help. For me, it’s just resignation, an acceptance of my grim reality. I am alone. And I’m tired.

I haven’t slept in days. I get into bed, toss and turn and wake up. I am tired in every way.

That’s the thing. Life has made me tired.

Disclaimer: if you are reading this on my blog as opposed to my dinning room table, it is recommended that you treat it as simply a work of art – role play writing. This may not be as serious as it sounds.