"If it's yellow, let it mellow.  If it's brown, flush it down."  Embroidered in big red letters and surrounded bu jagged edged black eyed susans.  I hated that sign.  I hated its tacky faux metallic frame.  I hated the spotted glass covering it that never seemed to wipe clean.  If you grow up in a house in which that sign is proudly displayed for all who pee to stare at, you're just a goner.  It's as simple as that.

It's the middle of March and I'm on the steps of my parents suburban '70's nightmare house downing an entire bottle of Kosher for Passover wine and sealing a dark envelope in my mind.  The effort it would take to make my life have meaning was highly unlikely to yield an impact substantial enough to be worthwhile.  After all, effort has always been a catalyst for bullshit and heartbreak.  I remember when I was in the seventh grade and I scrimped and saved to buy Christmas presents for the kids who teased me.  I spent hours selecting scented soaps in the shape of birds and tropical fish and flowers.  I wrapped them meticulously, taping curled ribbon, ensuring perfect 90 degree corners.  I presented them with great pride, thinking that this would be the end of all the teasing over the color of my socks or the length of my pants.  Had I known that those same soaps would be pelted at me as I walked home each day that week, I would have saved my money.  Such lovely welts in the shape of birds and tropical fish and flowers.

Then there are my many failed romances.  My innocence lost to the son of a mortician in the company car (yes, the hearse).  Never spoke to me after.  My marriage.  Ten years of tugging on his sleeve for attention, trying to transform all the fundamental elements of my personality because they offended him, having my heart broken every day, only to rip it apart piece by piece as soon as things started getting better.  My kids.  The way they do not feel at home with me anymore.  I used to be the hub, the launch pad, the center of all things stable to them.  I don't want to stick around to see where the path I have set them on leads.

One last drink.  I will write down the shards of my broken heart and it will be up to you to piece them back together.  I'll leave out just enough to keep you guessing at whether or not you could have prevented this.  I'll write sloppy because I am hammered and because I don't even want you to step into the foyer of what really goes on in this head of mine.  I don't know who I am addressing right now.  Whoever finds me, I suppose.  I hope for your sake that you find me quick.  I will sign it "With Hope" just to be ironic.  I'll leave it on my dresser with the pen laying dramatically across the paper to grant you the notion that, for once, I didn't procrastinate.  Imagine my headstone.  "Here she lies.  She wasted no time in ending this shit."  Damn, I am trashed.  If I tried to do this tonight, I'd fuck it up for sure.  I'd shoot the cat or try to hang myself with a ten foot rope from a six foot ceiling.  But I've had some good ideas.  After all, no need to be hasty.  I've got to do this right.  I've got to do THIS right.  This Kosher wine has gone straight to my head.  Right now I just want to get the spinnies and vomit.  One more taste of life's finest pleasures.  Like all great ideas, timing is crucial.  And before I pass out, let me just say how impressed I am at my ability to detach.  But when you're hanging bu a thread, a snip is the most practical solution.  No matter how drunk I am, that stays in focus.  Now...to stare at that atrocious sign.  Fantastic emetic, that thing.