Trigger Warning: For those that want to remain ignorant in death, who is satisfied with life and never once thought about the beyond. This is something you do not have to read, the rawest of thoughts coalesced into a character driven story about the hopeless and the damned.

[… My assets will go to my family. Upon discovery of death, the body would be disposed as cheaply and preferably freely as possible in an eco-friendly way, whether it is from cremation or dumping the body to sea, for I do not want any money wasted on an extragavant funeral. Should I find myself on the brink of death, I want it stated no care or life support be given in close proximity to death and-]

“What do you think you are doing?!”

I was writing my own will, that much I said when the question was presented to me in the middle of yes, will writing.

I liked writing up my own wills, yes in plural and no in legally binding. I just write them in my own time, without any witnesses. I had to search up what makes a legitimate will, and I was apalled by the process. There was also a link that stated I had to pay up to make it legally binding, but I didn’t check further so paranoia says it’s more than that. First impressions concluded the foregone result that nothing is free, or to the sentence ‘It just pays less to… than…’

It pays less to pull in the plug than keep on the life support.

I saw it, that motivated in making yet more ammendments to my will. I saw built up pressure, a happy party and yet nagging parents. I saw effort and no reward. I hear that I could do better or else. I hear about wishes and what is robbed because it will never be easy and that there was no understanding. I felt the panic, the way the hand clutches and phone in air because I have seen it before, and when panic goes straight to the heart, and when the attack comes, only ‘finally’ reaches out of my lips. And I know. That I didn’t want to be brought back. Because there’s only thank you, to understand that I can finally rest from futility.

The very idea about what I thought paid less is why I’m writing up wills in the first place legally binding or not, much to the horror of my parents that had caught me writing it up, as if I would die before them with signature and date and everything. The fact that it wasn’t legally binding because it’s a cry against rights to my sound mind to just have my wishes honoured without ceremony didn’t horrify my parents less. The discovery of precedent wills over the years further horrified them, but the fact I’m not trapped in some mental hospital meant it didn’t horrify them enough.

It pays less to believe everything is normal than get a psychologist to fix up what’s broken.

I see the masks in the masquerade ball, how tightly glued they are to faces. Never knowing the ‘sincerity’ and ‘authenticity’ that people think they can see, but would never in the full scope because of who we are and our own perceptions and true understanding is naught but a fairy tale. But people believe, because if they cannot see the broken, then it must be normal. And everything is fine, and they can be fine too. And those that proclaim they are not, when had that become a business opportunity?

I didn’t offer any explanations, not after ‘Why can’t you be happy?’ or ‘Why are you so sensitive?’ or ‘Why are you like that?’ It just proved they would have been deaf to them, wouldn’t understand. Did you know that it’s those that ask all those things are the ones that just have more willpower and optimism to them to face the similar challenges that I did, or just faced them a long time ago when the world is less cruel, when they only looked at how so many people loudly succeed rather than the quiet failures eyes avert everytime one goes out and sees a living body out in the streets, homeless, still clinging on and yet ignored to their plights. Because people, and I am no exception, can only focus on themselves and maybe even help the hopeful ones, but not the hopeless ones.

It pays less to invest on people with a future than those that have lost their futures.

There are people that can see further off, that have visions, and didn’t feel their life stop at the point that everything once made sense. In the shadows, I simply see more darkness, and ignore other shadows because what can I truly offer? Maybe people see that, when I tried to mimic life. Promises and offers, and then a catch. And that’s when everything stops, because the truth is bare to see. Those without futures cannot overcome catches, or maybe just tired of it. Wondering when it will end

Would there be any salvation, those that believe in God would ask? The world has flip-flopped on that regard, filled with the faithful but also the faithless. Filled with those that sparked life but have also snuffed it out. It was a bleak perspective, but people would only give sympathy, offer a way and then… ask for your devotion. Because there is no quick fix, a problem-free world is nigh impossible and it is through some mindset that not everyone could afford that offers not necessarily a solution, but the grit and endurance to face every problem until the day you die. The only reward I see is the eternity only promised after death.

It pays less to spare the effort than continue devotion that drains effort for an end we all will reach regardless.

‘There is no cynical-‘ whatever religion you want to stamp in there, for their devotion to the God they believe in and shunning idols that tempt. Karma, forgiveness, cleansed sins whatever. Faith still requires a level of devotion, ‘to turn away from evil’ is to ‘pray everyday’, to read the holy scriptures, to never falter but we are human and we slip up and they say to keep cleansing, to keep devoting. Feeling like a routine, like an effort without really knowing whether it works. Yes, it’s because I’m cynical. And maybe that means I cannot be saved, no matter what religion says. Because I ask whether being saved means to carry on consistent effort without an end in sight, for some promise that only shows wayward progress overshadowed by popping problems that decline the state of mind than advancing. Tell me, why does saving feel like suffering? People pay once for the food they eat for immediate rewards. Devotion feels like continuous payment that saps away, because there is no immediate reward. Only a coin flip whether any reward can be gained before or after death. So why not give up, forgoing that disappointment with an effort that does not pay or the cruelty of exception attached to effort?

I could hear the disagreements. I could understand the hope. There is no use looking into things that your own power cannot fix, like the homeless, the broken and the damned. But then, doesn’t that mean when I become homeless, broken and damned then I cannot fix myself? That it is easier to give up? That hope is fleeting, does not promise nor guarantee like everything else… except for one thing alone.

Death.

That’s why I write wills, because one way or another I am going to die. And throughout life, that is the only thing calming me down better than anything else. Through my fits, through my panic, through the wrongness people easily dismiss and through the world that never accepts everyone, when the cruelty and ignorance can be seen simmering beneath.

It pays less to kill than to save.

I can see it sometimes, that a stab, choke and poison only cost everyday items at the very base level but at the very base level to save someone on the brink should their be a chance, comes the problem solving, the precision, the special tools that cost skills paid from effort when money makes the world go round. And I feel a knife where I use my hands to feel my wrists or neck or stomach wondering, my own hands brushing to my neck or anything unfit for consumption stared and wondered is always within reach to end my own life but I cannot save my own life after that decision, because only other people have the means and the consciousness to bring me back.

It pays less to break than to fix.

I can see a glass jar carelessly swung around and shattering into a million pieces. I can see the futile attempts to collect each glass shard, sharp enough to hurt and piecing it back together with glue careful and delicate to restore it back once. Can people not see the difference of effort between the two?

I had kept on writing wills since then, a paradoxical way for calm. I keep on writing what would be counted as triggered, that no one wants to read or remember because I have seen too much success without failures that had become the stepping stones to reach there. I want to know what it’s like to fail, to disappoint, to be given up on. It would certainly pay you less to watch me self-destruct or crash and burn, because no matter what attachment you have for me, you certainly didn’t stop me either from reaching to this point, did you?

It pays less to receive disappointment than to reach out hope.

Keep clinging onto hope, they say. To what end I wonder. Don’t you know Pandora’s Box? Hope didn’t even exist until everything else negative had been released, stemming from all the hurt people would soon receive. It meant that hope stems from the same vein, of hurt just like everything else we experience? We feel it when we are broken, we want things to be better and that’s where hope comes from, but then we keep hoping as we keep hurting. We still cling to it, and it still hurts awaiting for something ahead that we don’t even know exists. We forgot where hope originates from. And we are too scared to give it up, to become hopeless. To stop preserving. But I call that rest, a break, a release of expectations and the hurt is gone because that was disappointment instead, that nothing went right, that nothing happens as expected, that it’s just the way of the world. In accepting that hopelessness, the pain is gone. And not many people even realized.

It pays less to follow the hopeful than contemplate the hopeless.

There are only very few set paths, and many people will disdain those that veer off-course. The ones that are lazy, lost, drifted, numb, apathetic, carrying nihility and absolutely hopeless. The judgement can hurt, it sucks but when the set paths hurt all the same, then why not embrace what hurts less? What will pay less, in effort after it had all be done? Within the cruelty disguised as hope with every ‘You’ll be fine’. If there’s no reward seen at all, if the delay seems more like a denial in death, why not just surrender because when we are born with nothing and will leave with nothing and the world offers very little, why strive for more that the world cannot give, when you are tired, when you don’t have the gumption like your peers? Why not look deep in yourself and know whether you are a person who pays more or pays less?

And it’s because I have so little, because I keep giving until I’m in debt in soul and expectations that I pay less. That I can only still mimic life, keep writing my wills, will smile when the end has come, because it just means I can finally… stop…

Does that sound like victim blamming, arrogance or is it just exhaustion, numb acceptance, just giving up the ghost? You tell me, while I keep going to write wills. The scolding and horror my parents choose to inflict only ignited the seeds of rebellion that only the parent-child dynamic can possibly rouse.

It’s better than crying, than clinging onto hurtful hope, than to fight for sleep when I’m thinking I could do more and fighting to wake when I’m thinking there’s nothing to look forward for the day. I can only look for those betters, knowing that anything otherwise might be out of reach.

At least I can cling onto this one guarantee.

It pays less to end than to keep on giving.

It pays less to die than to keep on living.

Writer’s note

It was yesterday when I had those thoughts, so vivid. I just want to look failure in the eyes, with all my numb acceptance and grim satisfaction that no one bothers to show, that suffering alone seems all the more real. This is still a story, weaved through thoughts. A character narrative, maybe a little too raw. Maybe preserved for the pages of a diary / journal than blogged out into the open. But I wonder… in this perverse call for help, how many of you would just be ‘Everything will be fine’? How many would just dismiss, who would think the world is not that cruel, to wonder about the dramatics and enjoy it as a story. Wondering, making your own assumptions. To that, every story written is one’s interpretation and this is no exception, for that is your own freedom and right to it. And I don’t expect any answers regardless. Just a preservation of memory, something incredibly real beyond shiny covers that ignore the broken, the damned and the hopeless.