Note from The Furture

I wrote this based on a prompt about finding a suicide note from the future.

            My writer’s block was in full force so sitting at my desk attempting to write was getting me nowhere.  I considered going out taking a walk or maybe hanging with a few friends, but as I looked around, I realized I should clean my room.  There was no nice way to spin it, my room was a pigsty.  I had dirty clothes piled up in a corner and a stack of paper plates on the corner of my desk.  Empty and crushed plastic water bottles littered the floor and a pizza box was peeking out from under the edge of my bed.

             I headed downstairs and grabbed a roll of trash bags and some snacks, this was going to be an all-day project.  My parents had left me a note on the fridge saying they were headed to aunt Judy’s and would be home late.  As I read the note, I considered putting off my cleaning for a while since I had the house to myself which gave me a chance to indulge my fetish.

 I got back to my room with my plunder from the kitchen and flopped into the chair.  The box hidden in the back of my closet called to me, but I knew that if I started, I would never get around to cleaning.  I shook out a trash bag and started collecting the trash.

             I had just finished throwing in a load of laundry when my phone rang.  I sprinted upstairs and snatched it up.

             “Yeah.”

             “Hey Blake.  What you doing?”

             I stifled a groan as I recognized the voice of Caden James.  He was a friend sort of, we hung out sometimes, but I wasn’t in the mood to put up with him today.  “I’m cleaning my room.”

             “Really, your pigsty you mean.  Well drop that and come over I got this new game and it is wicked.”

             “I can’t.  My parents grounded me until it was done,” I lied.

             “Come on dude, you can get out I know you.”

             “Not this time, they are serious.  Talk to you later.”  I hung up without waiting for him to reply.

 

             I had finished the floor and was working on my desk.  It wasn’t covered in that much garbage, mainly it was books.  I started sorting them and putting them on my bookshelves when I saw a notebook hidden behind the books on one of the shelves.  I dug it out not remembering putting it there.

             It was one of those spiral-bound notebooks divided into sections.  I flipped it open and found some poetry, very bad poetry.  I did not remember writing it, but it looked like my writing and I did go through a phase where I wrote a lot of poetry.  I flipped through the poems and the fourth one struck a chord.  I had written it about my first crush, and it was sappy as hell, but it reminded me of him.  Brandon Lawson had been an older boy, tall muscular, and handsome, all the things I wasn’t.  I fell in love with him even though I never spoke to him.  It had taken a year for me to get over that crush, but I had.

             Spinning in my chair I threw the book at the garbage bag and missed.  It hit the floor and fell open to a page near the back.  I considered leaving it for later, but I realized that was how my room had become a mess in the first place, so I walked over and went to pick it up.  That is when I saw it.  It was my writing and there was no doubt as I saw my signature at the bottom.

 

To all those that loved me,

 

 I don’t really know how to write this, I mean how often do you consider the best way to write your own suicide note?  How do you say goodbye to everybody in your life and let them know that it isn’t really their fault?  I spent most of my life hiding who and what I was that I guess nobody could see how it was tearing me apart.  I plan to at least leave this life as myself so by the time you read this you will have known I like to wear women’s clothes, but there is more I’m gay.  I have never been with another man, but I have wanted to.  Becky please I hope now you understand why all those times in your room I was never able to do anything.

 I had suppressed these feelings for so long, but finding this old notebook brought them all back.  Reading my poem about my first real crush brought it all rushing back.  I guess I could say that cleaning my room did kill me in the end.  That is just a joke mom, please don’t cry.

 Anyways I spent a lot of time after reading that poem thinking about the fact that I’ll always have to hide who I want to be.  Part of it is because I don’t want to disappoint my family and part of it is because I feel my friends will not except me for me, the real me.  I could just leave, go someplace where I would be excepted and maybe understood, but I’m scared.

 The fear of being found out and the fear of leaving is like two weights crushing me and it is just getting worse.  I’m being crushed under the expectation of others with no hope of seeing even one of my dreams come true.  In the end even if I didn’t end it today, I will never have somebody love me for who I truly am.

 Mom, dad I really tried to talk to you the other day after I found this notebook, to explain it all, but neither of you would listen, you were too busy.  I’m not blaming you, I should have insisted, but the fear got the best of me.  Remember I love you all.

 

Blake Conway

 

            I couldn’t breathe as I read the note again.  I killed myself or I was going to.  I just couldn’t figure out how the note was here, now.  It was clearly written in the future so how could it end up here and now?  I stumbled backwards and fell into my chair as I tried to think to come up with a logical and sane excuse for what I had just read.

            I flipped through the notebook again being more careful this time looking for a clue, something to explain this away.  There were poems towards the back that were newer, or at least the ink wasn’t smudged like in the rest of the notebook.  They were dark and kind of depressing and mostly bad, but I began to understand how the future me had felt at the end.  This didn’t explain how the notebook had come back from the future or how I could change the future, so I didn’t kill myself.  I thought maybe just knowing I had done it would be enough, but would it?

            I turned to the one thing most people use for answers nowadays, the internet.  I searched for real life time travel, something proven that would at least explain this some.  It was a bust, I found plenty of internet bullshit on the subject, but nothing concrete.  My hands were shaking like leaves in a stiff wind as I shut down my computer and stumbled to my bed.

    

            I woke in darkness and tried to hold on to the dream I had been having as I sat up.  Somebody had covered me up and turned off my light.  I rolled out of bed and staggered to my desk grabbing a piece of paper I began to write my dream down before it evaporated like dew on the grass in the morning sun.

            It was a kernel of an idea, the start of a story, and a good one, but I had to change it.  I couldn’t post a gay love story under my pen name, too many people knew it was me.  I would be outing myself sort of.  Oh, I could play it off and just say I was just messing around like when I tried to write a spy story or a crime drama, but I wasn’t ready to risk that.  I considered the changes I would make as I booted up my computer, but they seem to take away from the story.

            I pulled up my word processing program and began to write, it was the modified story, but it just didn’t feel right.  I needed to think, I needed to come up with the right words.  I sat back and closed my eyes and the note popped into my head.  I had been given a glimpse of what is to come, I had to change, and this was my chance.  If I wrote the story as it first came to me, I could just admit the truth and deal with the fallout, but if I didn’t, would I just be moving closer to that note?

            Sitting there as the screen lit the room I thought about it.  I had to do something, anything, knowing the future was not going to help me if I didn’t change something.  I deleted what I had and began again, it was the original story idea.  I typed all night and was just finishing up editing it when my mom knocked on my door.

            “Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes Blake.”

            “Ok mom, I’m just finishing up.”

            My hands trembled as I moved the pointer over the button and clicked.  The story was posted, and I felt better and more relaxed.  I quickly got up and hurried to my closet.  If I was going to expose my deepest secret, it was time I did it completely.  It didn’t take me long to get dressed and head downstairs.  My steps faltered as I approached the kitchen door, but I had come so far, I could not turn back so I stepped in.