by Liz Levine
Sorry. Complicated family. Sometimes you’ve gotta ask.
SUICIDE
The act of taking one’s own life. Synonyms: self-destruction, self-murder, self-slaughter.
If you receive this, I am likely dead or about to jump off my balcony with a silent prayer that I die quickly. This is my suicide note and an explanation of my delusional disorder from my perspective. Finding words that mean anything at this stage is difficult so the note below rambles at moments. I apologize for the long boring read.
Tamara sends that email at almost 3:50 a.m. Toronto time, 12:50 a.m. Vancouver, and I am already in bed. My sister-in-law, Dawn, sees the email first. She doesn’t, as I understand it, read all eleven thousand words before she calls Lex.
I wonder where her instincts came from in that moment. I don’t think mine would have been so quick. I wouldn’t have believed it at first. I would have had to read all of it, or at least most of it, before reacting.
So Dawn wakes Lex up in a hotel room in Ottawa, and he, I believe, calls Mom. Mom reads the opening paragraph and won’t get around to reading the rest of it for over six months. She hands her Blackberry to my stepfather after reading the first line and runs for her car. My stepfather calls me from the house. My ringer is off, so it logs silently onto my home screen.
I almost never turn the phone off, just the ringer. That way, when I wake up in the morning all the messages that have landed overnight accumulate on my home lock screen. Upon waking, I can then assess the day in a single glance, and then, without opening email or checking voicemail, I can hop into the shower with a good sense of what awaits me when I step out. We all have our way. This is mine.
My brother sends me a text that says, I love you. I’m getting on a flight. I won’t see the message for a couple of hours yet. Dawn sits down at the table and reads the rest of the letter.
My mother pulls her car up to Tamara’s apartment building just behind the police. She throws the car into park and makes a run for the body. She calls me an hour later. My phone silently acknowledges the call, leaving me in peaceful oblivion.
So I am sound asleep in Vancouver when the crisis starts—innocent to all of this in a way, but also not. It’s like I knew it in my sleep, I knew it in my bones, I’d known it forever…
I miss two more calls from home over the next couple of hours and one from my father. The silent buzzing of the messages accumulating is bringing me to the surface of my sleep, so when the phone rings again I look over at it. I see the email from Tamara, the text from Lex, and six missed calls. It’s my mother’s home line calling this time.
The phone call between Mom and me is less than two minutes long. I can’t remember anything that was said. I only remember the feeling: like she was telling me something I already knew.
Lex is on a plane. I can’t call Dad yet. I send a text to my three closest humans and get in my car, just to drive and to think and to be alone. I don’t want to answer questions about this yet. I park five minutes away from my front door, and I open the email from Tamara.
I scroll through, and my first realization is how long it is. Eleven thousand words. Pages of jumbled, disoriented ramblings marked with sharp moments of clarity.
I have gone to my balcony a dozen times. I have gone to send this a hundred times. I do not know if I have the courage to attempt to end my life but I do not have the strength to keep living like this. Note 97% of suicide attempts fail and I am nervous this will fail and leave me paralyzed for life but I am miserable enough in my current life and fearful enough of becoming a life-long burden that I have to try. A huge part of me thinks I am crazy to try. I have chosen the most frightening method with the highest chance of success—jumping from my balcony railing. The majority of falls from more that 10 stories end in death. I have also chosen a time when there is no traffic so I do not fall on others but I fear falling on a balcony below and disturbing a neighbour rather than making it to the road. I hope and pray this succeeds. Yep! I’ve been debating this for over a month and I realize no one quite knows the horror of someone else’s suicide contemplation. It was just a word to me and now I’ve spent weeks imagining all possible scenarios. Will I fall and just break my heels and legs or spine and be paralyzed? Who scrapes me off the sidewalk or the balcony below? Will I miss and somehow just hang on the balcony railing? How does Mom find out? Is it selfish to die or selfish to live? How much pain will I have to endure? What is it like to fall such a distance? How much pain do I register for how long on impact?
She rambles on like this for a few pages and then…
I am not sure I ever formed relationships or attachments the way most other people in the world do. It is just something I never learned how to do. I think trapped in a web of lies and delusions that I never learned how to build trust. Therefore I suspect my passing will be a little life footnote for most.
My phone rings in my hand. It’s France. I’ve been awake for 20 minutes, and I already know that the things burned into my brain will be more than a footnote.
T
TENSES
I struggle with them.
is/was
TRUMP
From: Tamara
Date: November 10, 2016
Family,
With my delusional disorder I am supposed to double check anything that seems irrational or outside normal probabilities. Did the US really elect Trump to be the next President of the United States or am I imagining things again?
T
TRUTH
I don’t know who Judson is anymore. He has become an idea.
I wrote him a letter after he died, and I tucked it into the dirt against his headstone a day or two after the unveiling. His mother brought it home from the cemetery in tears a week later. She told me to keep it. That it was important.
I’ve never opened that letter again. I don’t want to know that I wrote it to the idea of him. I want to believe I wrote it to him, and that he read it, and that he understood.
TURTLE
It’s been seven months, and my mother has enlisted my help on the continued cleaning out of Tamara’s bedroom. I learned today that Tamara had adopted a sea turtle. His name is Shelby.
TRAJECTORY
She jumped on Thursday night or Friday morning, depending on which family member you talk to. But Monday night, when Paul drove me by her building, there was still police tape sectioning off a piece of the sidewalk and circular driveway.
I tried not to log it. Not to focus on the where, the trajectory, the wind speed, and how a body could be that far from the building.
At 3:40 a.m. on November 18, 2016, the weather was 7 or 8 degrees Celsius.
It was clear outside.
The humidity was 91 percent, and the wind was southwesterly at seven kilometers an hour.
I’m sure it felt much windier than that on the edge of a railing on the 29th floor.
I didn’t go to her apartment until Wednesday. I went with my mother. Just her and me. By then I knew that Mom had gotten into the car and arrived just after the police. I knew that she had been there on that morning, in the dark. But when we visited, the police tape was gone, and I didn’t look too hard at the sidewalk because I didn’t want to see the stained cement. We didn’t have to walk over that area to get to the door.
Mom really wanted me to see her place and touch her things. She wanted to talk me through the new furniture she had bought for her and what I might want to take with me. She wanted me to open the balcony door; she encouraged it. I kept it as light as possible in the situation with her eyes on me, curious. I have a way of taking things in to be processed later. So I kept my moments on that balcony brief. But I had my iPhone in my hand, and I took pictures that I still keep. The gaze directly forward and the leap straight down.
I don’t think Mom noticed me doing that.
Later, I couldn’t correlate the balcony with the place the police tape had been. I couldn’t understand the distance between here and there. It wasn’t possible. And I
wondered about the time in between.
I never went back to that apartment. I know Lex did a few times. I’m sure Mom did more than that. The apartment was emptied in a matter of weeks, and Tamara was buried in a beautiful cemetery that you’d think would appeal to my love of a long walk. But I don’t visit Tamara there. She lived for years in the building that hosts the Toronto International Film Festival, Bell Lightbox, but I have taken back that space so I don’t connect with her there either. And my family home can feel like a crypt sometimes with photos of her still all over the walls, but I don’t feel her there either.
Instead, I go back to that cold piece of cement where the police tape was, and I sit on the ground with her. It’s the only way I know how.
TAMARA
KIND
To: Michael, Carol, Allan, Liz, Alexis, Peter
Date: October 11, 2016
Family,
A simple note to say in the spirit of Yom Kippur I have been reflecting on my life and I simply wanted to apologize for lies and health exaggerations which I know impacted all of you.
I also want to apologize for what a burden the current delusional disorder is and to thank in particular Mom for all her support. I am really struggling with akathisia and life meaning. I do love and admire each of you.
CRUEL
To: BCC List
Date: October 4, 2012
Friends,
…You are the family I have always dreamed of having. One day I know I will achieve the same closeness and understanding from my own all too busy relatives. In the meantime I return all the love even if I can not return all the messages individually before we climb.
With Love (Another word for what it is all about)
Tamara
When I asked Mom who this had been sent to she told me, “Everyone under the sun.”
CONFUSED
To: Carol, Michael, Allan, Alexis, Peter, Liz
Date: April 1, 2015
Some facts about me:
I am a triplet not a quadruplet. Always have been and always will be.
I have never been and never will be an intelligence (or intelligent) asset of any kind.
I do naturally make frequent spelling errors despite a sophisticated analysis and writing capacity. I think this is often rushing, sometimes a lack of focus and sometimes simply laziness. I do need to work on this.
I have told lies and exaggerated my health. I have no idea why.
I must be crazy.
You are correct all of the “plays” I have been referring to must only have been in my head. I must really be crazy! I spent last night throwing pillows at my windows and crying and this morning curled up in the corner of my pool crying so any claim to sanity is long past!
For any inaccuracies in this email I equally apologize. I no longer know what is true or not. I feel like I live in a society that labels truth or unpleasant opinions even if not classified as insanity and that rewards lies and deceit. I believe in Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. I would like to survive as I have real dreams and aspirations that go beyond being committed to a mental ward. So while I would like to see major changes in global systems in the interim survival dictates that I conform to the norms of our society. I think this email is my attempt to do that.
It is a confused email.
I am confused.
Tamara
TOMBSTONE
Mom has decided to buy a tombstone for the family plot. She wants to engrave something for Tamara and asks me to work out some ideas.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Well, she didn’t hit anyone on the way down.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Yup, she jumped.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Caring, compassionate, committed.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Finally, the screaming has stopped.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Impressive liar, challenging human.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Wearer of tinfoil hats.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Adopter of African children and sea turtles.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Psychotic with paranoid delusions.
TAMARA ASHLEY LEVINE
Oct. 6, 1979–Nov. 18, 2016
Quadruplet
Treasured daughter, loving sister, intrepid explorer, and caretaker of the world.
I sent Mom the last one. And now she wants to know if she should put her own name and Allan’s on the headstone. I suggest that under the date of death she could just put, coming soon!
TEXTS
JUDSON
What’s up buttercup?
LIZ
not much shithead. You?
JUDSON
grappling with my hangover.
LIZ
self-inflicted punishment. Well played.
JUDSON
haha
LIZ
Miss you!
JUDSON
ditto!
JUDSON
When you coming home?
LIZ
Christmas. Soon! I’m booking my flights this week.
JUDSON
you’d best be setting aside some time for me.
LIZ
I know! Are you at the condo yet or…?
JUDSON
Condo isn’t ready until the spring.
Going to move back in with the rents until then.
LIZ
Awesome!! You’ll be around the corner for the holidays.
Late-night. Game-on.
JUDSON
GAME ON BITCHES!!!!!!
* * *
LIZ
hey—so I land next Friday and leave on the 28th. Just 10 days or so.
JUDSON
cool. I’m up north until the eve of, but lets keep our xmas date and jewbouree!
LIZ
Jewbouree!!!!!!
* * *
LIZ
the eagle has landed.
LIZ
hey. Never heard back from you once I landed. Guess you’re up north. See you on xmas if we don’t talk before!!!!!!
LIZ
where r u? I’m dying!!!
Please rescue me from family time (and my mom wants to give you a kiss)—oy.
LIZ
weird? I thought we had xmas date and jewbouree… should I be worried? Have I done something wrong?
LIZ
Flying home tmo. Sorry we didn’t connect. Feeling more than a bit worried now to be honest. Please call.
JUDSON
sorry. Was out of commission. Call now if you can.
* * *
LIZ
wow. Sad for you. The C word is scary. know it will all be good but just want you to know my thoughts are with you. (and I’m gonna book a flight tmo so soon my annoying self will actually BE with you too!!!)
JUDSON
No worries. Sure u can fly back?
LIZ
nothing to do here anyways.
Might as well get in for the chemo party.
JUDSON
haha. Sick.
JUDSON
feels good to laugh tho. Thx.
LIZ
I land Monday. How r u feeling?
JUDSON
like shit.
LIZ
hugs. Strength. I’m bringing you a gift.
JUDSON
?
LIZ
it’s green and smells like we
ed.
Your mom said it would help.
JUDSON
omg. You rock—for that
and for dealing w my mother.
LIZ
yeah. Xmas next year –
you owe my momma a visit!!!
JUDSON
done and done.
* * *
JUDSON
here yet?
LIZ
just landed! Going to go home, dump bags, say hi to mom and then walk over.
JUDSON
fyi—I’m looking a little tired/skinny.
Don’t be freaked. Also, crazy fucking cold here right now.
LIZ
hmmm… won’t be and don’t care
—can’t wait to see you!!!!!!!!!!
* * *
LIZ
how is you today?
JUDSON
feel great actually. The superdose takes a couple days to recover from. But feel much better now.
LIZ
awesome. even super!
up for a walk?
JUDSON
again, sick.
Totally up for something.
LIZ
how about a movie.
JUDSON
perfect.
* * *
LIZ
last night was good. Think you ate and slept?
JUDSON
moved from the chair to the couch sometime after you were gone. Slept there all night. Feel good today.
JUDSON
thanks for being around so much these past couple weeks.
LIZ
duh. Of course. How could I let you have all this fun without me? appt today?
JUDSON
y. heading there now.
LIZ
not even a little giggle?
Sorry you have to get chemicals pumped through you.
JUDSON
remember the days when we paid for that?