Consider the Ducklings
- Karun Thomas
.jpg/v1/fill/w_320,h_320/file.jpg)
- Jan 12, 2024
- 21 min read
Updated: Jan 12, 2024
Letter 1
To Whomsoever finds this letter,
This is the week I take the leap.
You, who are reading the first of these 6 letters, don’t think I did not devote my time and significant contemplation to my exit strategy and reasons.
I tried living. I did. I am neither brave nor cowardly, but a torn realist in between. I am not unkind either. I have said my goodbyes to the ones I love, slowly and meticulously, without raising alarm bells. I have paid off all my debt, my will has been updated and my life’s achievements will possibly, be recognised posthumously, if not at all.
So don’t think that I did this on an impulse, like a grief-filled widow who leaps off her balcony after the burden of delayed reconciliation with her late husband becomes too much to bear a few days after his funeral. I planned the date, the time, the weapon of choice and the location.
My heart is both at peace and torn by fear of what’s to come, I will admit. Only a fool shields himself from a fear of the unknown.
But now is not the time to ramble. That’s for the other letters.
This is the first letter in a short series of them, written in real-time, thus reflecting my accurate emotional state and intention at the time it was written. Like a short journal that exists to document my journey to the end.
But that’s all I wish to reveal in this letter because as of this point in time, I have come to this inescapable conclusion.
At the end of this week, I am going to end my life.
Regards,
A Man who felt like giving up.
Letter 2
To Whomsoever finds this letter,
As you have probably gathered from my first letter, this is the second letter in a limited series of six, which I plan to write as a short journal of my life before the end.
I used to wonder why people who take their own lives leave letters or a note behind. I thought that it would be less cruel to hide your reasons and leave ambiguity behind for the ones who grieve rather than give them a specific reason or set of them which they would forever hate themselves for not providing you while you were still alive.
I hated the very idea of a suicide note until quite recently when I came to the decision that my own life was no longer worth living. I thought long and hard about a quiet exit, but then I finally realised why these letters must exist. I must leave my remaining friends a trail to follow, as they trace the meditations of my mind in my final days. I must leave them closure.
So, here it is before you wonder any further as to my reasons for taking my own life.
I am tired. More tired than I ever have been before. Tragedy and grief have been my companions for too many years to count now, and I’ve stopped feeling the need to cry anymore. How can mere tears fill up the chasm of hopelessness that emanates from the lowest depth of my soul? You wonder if I could have tried seeking God? That He could have filled my deepest needs? That His Church could have loved me and helped me grow?
Well, I might have an answer to that that may surprise you. I believe Christ is God. Everything I have read and contemplated points in the direction of the Bible holding the truth to our world. I am no fool to laugh at what we cannot know and make a truth claim to the non-existence of God, in view of my own ignorance.
But His Church has failed me. They’ve failed many more like me, as they live lives that bear the fruit of perceived love while they act worse than those who are outside the faith. I’ve sought after God, church after church, and I have neither been comforted by God Himself or His people. If their God isn’t cruel, why are they? If their God doesn’t neglect those who need help, why do they turn a blind eye to suffering? If their God wants mercy not sacrifice, why do they cling to principles of religiosity and abandon mercy with those who are flawed? If their God seeks out lost souls, why do they run after church service back to their homes, when many wander the room, terrified to go home and desperate for a friend to take them for lunch?
I have seen many friends in my lifetime take psychedelic stimulants and most of them look so happy with life under its influence. They say they found purpose while under its influence and can’t wait to apply what they experienced. But no sooner does the high wear off and its effects forgotten with time, than all their empty resolutions fall short without its catalyst. Such is the same with me seeking hope in the church. I get invited by Christians to church and watch them display all the signs of joy and belonging in worship and prayer, and the zealousness to do good during the sermon. And yet, much like my drug-addicted friends, once the routines and trials of the weekdays begin, all their commitments are forgotten as they proceed to gossip, emotionally wound and hurt others as if their righteous high is best experienced in the day before and following Sunday.
So don’t tell me the Church is there to comfort me. Don’t tell me that it is God who is perfect, not people, as if I have placed undue expectations on Christians. Children do what they see their fathers do, and if Christ said that sanctification is a process of making His people more like Him, then if anything, people should represent some of the traits of their Saviour, in whose image they are being moulded into, is it not?
Yet I have neither found hope in God nor His people. So don’t tell me I haven’t tried. I am drowning and if a buoy capable of holding the weight of my burdens presents itself, I will grasp on for dear life. But since I see no buoy in sight, so I stopped swimming. And you can’t tell me I didn’t try.
You might call me a coward and tell me that life is hard for everyone, but the others accept trials and stay stoic and brave. I unfortunately think that you are correct here. I am not a strong man. I never have been. And for the first time, in what is about to be a short life, I am going to be honest with you and confess how weak I truly am. If you knew the length and breadth of my misery and emotional instability, you might wonder if you ever knew me as a man.
And while on the topic of me being a man, wow, I don’t even know where to start with this. Being born as a man has been one of the hardest struggles I have faced. To be raised with the inherent and societal expectation of emotional self-control and resilience has been a crippling juxtaposition against the reality of my true emotional state. To walk on eggshells with my words around women for most of my life, terrified of saying something that borders the line of what is now considered verbal abuse and an infringement of women’s rights have taken away the joy of exercising my own rights as a man. To be expected to be strong, to witness the reality of men not getting access to mental health support from friends and professionals, because we are expected to have it all together has stifled my will to call out for help. To be judged based on my looks, my fitness level, the number of figures in my bank account, my emotional and intellectual resilience and my ability to provide has had me jumping through hoops, without ever consensually signing up to play this game.
To watch as large groups of women on social media and online throw punches and tear down the majority of men because of the actions of a minority of them has diminished my joy in being a man. To witness the damage that the act of gossip initiated by bitter women can inflict has taken away the little dignity I had left to keep. To live in a time where trigger words on the shape of a woman’s body become terrible to utter, while the height, earning capacity, intellect and ambition of men become a norm to mock by many women, has me wondering why I ever wanted to fall in love with a girl. To witness the rape of a woman drive to outrage the citizens of her country, while the sexual and emotional abuse of men becomes a matter of as much value as the day’s horoscope has drilled into us, as men, the need to hold tight to stoicism in the face of suffering.
As the liberal spokespeople of mass public sentiment cry out for more rights and honour of women, embracing the beauty of bold, rude and unkind women as the highest viruses of feminine ambition, while mocking and attempting to drown the values of gentleness, kindness and family-centric ambitions that graced the women of old, I begin to delete my social media accounts and online presence, confident of my plan of exit from a time that I no longer wish to live in.
So, yes, I am a coward because I don’t have the strength to endure without a hope greater than my grief.
I don’t have family left behind to show these letters to, but perhaps you can share these with my friends, whose names I have written down on a torn piece of paper within the envelope containing this letter, as the sole inhabitants of this earth that showed me fragments of what it is like to be loved. Fragments, I confess, however, that were insufficient to patch the wounds within my soul.
I have a few other reasons, which I do not wish to share, for why I have chosen this path, as they are neither relevant to you reading this letter, nor would most care about them unless there is a dead body to show as the proof of its significance, which would ironically, be the first time I would have been taken seriously as a man.
And therefore, it is my choice, and my choice alone, to decide to walk the path to my death choosing to not be taken seriously until the very end.
Regards,
A Man who has been given up.
Letter 3
To Whomsoever finds this letter,
Assuming that you have found and read my previous two letters, I will continue this letter to share how I plan to end my life. I am not sharing this to impress you with my ability to strategise such a morbid thing, but to cast aside any aspersions that may arise after my death suspecting foul play or the involvement of anyone else in my decision to end my suffering.
This was and has been from the start, my decision alone. My friends are innocent and so is anyone else you might suspect. But if you want a scapegoat, look at the society you live in. Witness how the truth gets replaced by emotional counterfeits of the truth, and how many are affected by it. But I finished my rant in my previous letter, so I shall speak no more of it.
Now, I am a man of routine, which is evident from my daily schedule. And I wish to end my life within that routine.
If you must know, this is what my average weekday routine looks like.
I wake up in the morning at around 7 AM. I make myself some tea and have a quick read of the newspaper of the day, and then shred it with the new shredder that I bought to treat the news with the same lack of care that journalists do when writing it. A symbolic act to begin each day. Perhaps it’s foolishness to even buy these papers in the first place, but that should be fixed in a few days.
I then finish breakfast and my morning rituals and put on clothes to go for a morning walk. The first face I see every day is my neighbour, Théama (Greek for ‘sight’), who is blind. She always feels her way out of her house at the same time I’m about to leave, and we then share an elevator together in silence. She always knows I hold the lift door for her and hold her hand as I lead her to the apartment exit, and there we part ways.
After I’ve crossed 3 blocks, I reach the park that is opposite the path I am on. Every day, like clockwork, a policeman named Odigós (Greek for ‘waymaker’) stops traffic for me and helps me cross the busy intersection. We exchange a nod and a smile and there we part, as he assists others like me.
As I walk to the park entrance gate, I reach the ticket counter, where I flash my weekly pass to the young boy at the counter named Thyrorós (Greek for ‘gatekeeper’). He waves at me, checks my pass and tells me a random fact that he learnt from the internet or from an encyclopedia. I smile as I learn from him that which he has learnt, and thank him for expanding my knowledge. We part, me being all the wiser than before I meet Thyrorós.
I enter the park and make my way to a walkway that surrounds a large lake where many beautiful swans and ducks live. I walk for a while and see an oddly dressed old lady sitting at the same bench at the same time, every day. She sits alone, with a small bowler cap on and smiles at people passing by. Her name is Sofía (Greek for ‘wisdom’) and she desires to talk to anyone willing to sit beside her and spare some time to hear a story. I don’t always sit down at her bench but when I feel up to it, I always leave with a tidbit of wisdom from one who has lived.
A short distance away, I see a newly married couple that plays a chess game against each other, every weekend. I do not know their names but after spending some time watching their games in the past, I have noticed that the husband is the better chess strategist, and the wife is a rookie. But occasionally, I see the husband sabotage his winning position with a rookie loss, giving his wife the win for the day. They always leave the park holding hands and happy.
And then, I reach my destination; a small sandbank at one edge of the lake with a single bench, where the ducks come to feed. Here is where I sit, with a bag of bread crumbs, for hours on end as I wait for my favourite duck, Elpízo (Greek for ‘hope’), who eventually waddles its way up to me and sits on the bench beside me. We both watch as the sun rises high above the pine trees in the park and listen to the sounds of the city waking up and starting the grind. We sit together until I’m ready to leave and my bread bag is empty and then we part ways as I begin the journey to work.
It doesn’t matter what comes next in my daily routine. At the end of this week, when I wish to end my life, I would like to end it here, next to Elpízo, so I don’t have to be alone. We will wait for an hour, until 10 am when the park begins to fill and then I will do it. 10 am, this Sunday, next to Elpízo the duck.
Regards,
The Man before he gave up.
Letter 4
To Whomsoever finds this letter,
Assuming that you have read my previous three letters in order, then I would like to introduce you to the 4th letter; my preparation for the end.
My browser search history will betray the extent to which I’ve researched the mode of my death. After extensive thought, I have concluded that I would like to use a gun to end my life. Hanging myself has too high a risk of failure and possible long-term injury, especially at my height and size. Jumping off my balcony feels too terrifying with my phobia of heights, and I fear the long-term trauma I would cause the passersbys who witness my landing. Overdosing on pills feels too painful and has a high risk of failure in case my body rejects the consumed pills and forces me to puke it out. Walking in front of a truck on a busy highway seems far too messy a way to go and seems like another way to terrify an innocent driver. Similarly, jumping in front of a moving train feels too public and risks the long-term trauma of the witnesses who see my demise.
But a gun is quick and easy. Pointed in the right direction and angle before firing, I am 100% certain that survival is impossible.
Picking up a gun in my country has become easier than buying groceries. After one hour of browsing, I walked out of the store carrying my new Glock 19 gen 5, easily concealed within my jacket pocket in the breadcrumb paper bag.
Location, set. Time, set. Weapon, acquired.
Things are flowing smoothly so far.
Regards,
A Man preparing to give up.
Letter 5
To Whomsoever finds this letter,
I trust that you have read the 4 letters I have left before. This letter represents second thoughts.
Days flow so quickly when time is running out. By the time I write this letter, it is already Friday. It’s amazing how much you can hate the weekend if you know that you aren’t going to wake up to see the light of Monday. As I numbly handed in my laptop and ID Card at work, getting a warm goodbye from 2 colleagues who were under the impression that I was merely switching companies, I stood at my desk, realising that this was the last time I would be working the 9 to 5. I am finally free, and yet I’ve never felt more captive to my fear. Its almost as if we spend our whole lives hating the idea of working at a job until we reach death’s door and all of a sudden, we crave the simpler monotony of daily work, compared to facing the inevitable plight of our mortality.
As I walked out of my office, I looked around hoping that anyone would stop me and ask me what my plans were for the weekend. But I am as invisible as the day I joined, if not more. So I opened the door and left, leaving behind me the sounds of printers whirring, phones ringing, Slack notifications incoming, people whispering and the air conditioner humming, for the last time.
As I walked home, I took a longer and newer route. I walked amongst a marketplace filled with college students standing around a coffee shop and filming reels for Instagram. I walked amongst the hustle and bustle, desperate to be seen, and yet the only contact I had with anyone, was a girl telling me to move because I was blocking her camera frame. And so I left, wondering how many of them would hear of my passing and would recall that I once stood amongst them. I wondered if the girl who caught a glimpse of me in the reel she recorded, would ever look at it again and realise that it’s the last time I ever smiled on camera.
When I reached the path to my home, I passed by a closed church that was on my street. Knowing that it would be empty till Sunday, I wandered in through its unlocked doors and made my way to the first pew at the back. So many seats and yet not a soul is seated beyond one time a week. Such a large building is reserved for them, with such endless possibilities for daily meetings and yet most feel like worshipping God and meeting up only one single day.
As I stared at the statue of Christ on a cross, I felt a sense of strong condemnation for what I was about to do. It makes sense though. Christians believe that life is a gift from God. It makes sense in their worldview to look at suicide as the highest possible rejection of this gift, destining my eternal soul for hell. But as I looked upon the cross I pondered this; in all the centuries that God has witnessed the suffering of His people since the beginning of time, having taken on suffering Himself for us, I wonder if His heart grows weary with the task of eternally witnessing His creation struggle. I reasoned therefore that since God has not made Himself known to me personally, He would be the only one who understands me when my soul goes to Him.
And in light of His lack of tangible intercession in my life, I reasoned that God would empathise and understand me if He is truly a kind and just Judge.
Regardless of this dilemma, come Sunday morning, I don’t intend to live a minute past 10 AM.
As just like that, second thoughts became merely a whisper and no longer a palpable fear in my gut, as I left the church and walked to my apartment.
Regards,
A Man who does not regret giving up.
Letter 6
To Whomsoever finds this letter,
Thanks for reading all 5 letters so far.
Today’s the day, which means that this is my last and final letter.
In fact, I finish the final touches on this letter at 9:50 AM, sitting near to Elpízo the duck. Today has been a strange day, although not in the way I anticipated. And although I am shaken by the series of incidents that broke my routine today, I don’t think it has affected my plans to end my life in a few minutes.
I woke up at 7 AM today and made myself some tea. It’s amazing how delicious each drop of it felt, knowing that I shan’t taste the likes of it again. When the paper came, I did something that broke the routine; I put the paper directly into the shredder without reading it. Finally ticked something off my list. Today, I’ll be doing things a little differently.
I started my morning by throwing away all my food and cleaning the entire house. After scrubbing the toilets, I had a long shower and put on my best suit. Looking around the house to make sure all the appliances were switched off, I turned off the power to the entire flat at the mains and left a copy of my Will on the dining table next to a printed copy of my 5 previous letters. I took out my gun which contains one polished new bullet in the chamber, and checked to see if the safety was on, proceeding to conceal it within a pocket of my suit jacket.
Leaving my phone on the dining table and a broken SIM card nearby, I left the apartment and closed the door, taking care not to lock it. All this was done by 8:30 AM, 10 minutes ahead of the usual schedule. As I walked to the lift, I paused, feeling the weight of missing my lift routine with Mrs Théama. So I sat on the floor outside my apartment and waited for her. At exactly 8:40 AM, she came out and held my arm as I took her to the lift. The silence as we made our way down 4 floors was deafening. Perhaps she would be the last person I would be holding before the end. And that meant something to me.
As we walked in silence to the apartment entrance, she did something absolutely of our character. She stops me, feels her way gently up to my face, and whilst holding my cheek, I stare into her still and faded brown eyes as she said, “He sees you, Son. He has always seen you, even if you haven’t seen Him”. Gently smiling at my shocked face, she lets go of me and begins to walk in the opposite direction.
I confess that I stood there, with my mouth gaping at her retreating figure, wondering who exactly she was referring to, although I had a hunch. Shaking my head to clear it, I looked down at my watch and noted that I was now 5 minutes behind schedule.
Picking up the pace, I made my way quickly to the crossing opposite the park and waited for Odigós the traffic cop to signal my crossing. In a few seconds, he raised the walk sign and beckoned me to cross over to him. But around halfway through the crossing, I saw him suddenly look right and run right at me, tackling me to the ground behind me, seconds before a black SUV that cut the red light sped right past where I was standing.
As I got up trembling in fear, he leapt right back up onto his feet and ran over to another cop, possibly to radio ahead for the SUV to be stopped at the next block. Looking at the many onlookers staring at me in concern, I snapped out of my shock, brushed off my suit, and quickly made my way over to the entrance gate of the park, terrified of being anywhere near a road for a bit.
As I flashed my weekly pass at Thyrorós the ticket boy, he looked at me with his uncharacteristically large eyes and told me that he had a whopper of a fact to share with me. “Did you know, that there are anywhere between 60,000-100,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body? If they were taken out and laid end-to-end, they would be long enough to travel around the world more than three times!” He exclaimed with a look of awe. As perturbed as I was with the events that had happened so far, I was in fact, amazed by this fact. To think that within little me lies enough length of blood vessels to travel the earth three times?
“To understand the mind and thoughts of the God that could create that is just impossible” he added thoughtfully, which knocked me out of my state of awe and forced me to hurry along to the walkway, unwilling to confront the topic of God, as I was less than an hour away from committing a grave sin against Him.
As I walked along the walkway by the lake, I passed by the bench where Mrs Sofía used to sit, only to find a young man sitting there instead. Being curious about the reason for her absence (adding another break in routine to what has been a very confusing day so far), I walked over to the man and asked him if he’d seen her around after giving him a brief description of her.
Breaking into a sympathetic smile, as his brow furrowed, he spoke in a kind voice, “I am so sorry but she passed away today morning to be with her Savior. I am her grandson you see”. As this look of shock and unbelief spread across my face, he gave me a compassionate look and said, “Hey, when it’s your time to go, the Lord will take you home too. She died next to her Bible, which is a fitting reminder of her love for God, that had not ceased until her last breath!”
As I walked away from him in a state of shock, I walked slowly towards my bench at the edge of the lake, refusing to look in the direction of where the couple usually plays chess, fearing that they might either be dead, attempt to kill me or tell me about God if I laid eyes on them. Today has offered up far too many twists for my liking.
As I reached my bench on the sandy banks of the lake, I sat down slowly, looking around to check whether anybody else could see me in my spot which was hidden well by shrubbery and some nearby tree cover.
Before I could do anything else, I spotted Elpízo the duck wading towards me, making happy noises, followed by 4 little ducklings, whom I hadn’t seen before. As it dawned on me that Elpízo was not a male, but a proud mother, I stared quietly at her young. How content and safe they must feel, without a care in the world.
I wondered if life would have ended for me differently if I had the simple cares of this little duckling. Putting my hand into my suit jacket and pulling out my Glock with my left hand, I felt the weight of the cold metal of this weapon with my hand. I remembered this moral lesson from an old ethics class. A hunter kills a deer for his family with a rifle and uses it as dinner. A man with the same rifle goes into a school, shoots unarmed children and gets imprisoned as a murderer. Its the same weapon with the same potential for evil, and yet both men are different because of their underlying motives.
As I held the weapon of my demise, I wondered which side of the moral dilemma I would fall under. And as I was lost in this train of thought, that was when I heard Him for the first time; a voice so clear speaking from the depth of my soul, but not a voice I know.
“Look at these little ducklings. See how they rely on Me? If I love and feed each of these little creatures, how much more valuable are you to me, child of grief?” As I sat, paralyzed by shock, the voice continued, “Every hair on your head is numbered and nothing can happen to you without Me knowing, and yet you doubt my Love for you? Test my love for you and I’ll send you a Comforter who will bear your grief until your last day”, finished the voice which stopped as suddenly as it came.
In the minutes that followed, I wrestled with a battle for my life and the truth in a way that I had never done before. But as I emerged from thought, I found myself still unconvinced.
So I write this letter, fully intending to finish what I came for, for comfort and hope arrived too late to stem my grief. You will find my body next to an empty weapon registered to me, and these letters inside my suit pocket. My address is on my license in my wallet. Please bury me next to my mother. I have written the address of her burial plot on a chit of paper enclosed within this envelope, with enough cash to cover my autopsy and burial costs.
I wasn’t alone at the end. I had Elpízo and her babies, and the hope of seeing this God who loved me soon. I’m sorry if seeing my body scared you, but I wanted to die by the lake.
Regards,
A Man who gave up.
Letter 7
To whomsoever finds these letters,
I couldn’t do it ...
The gun jammed when I pulled the trigger.
I wanted to check the chamber, reload the round and attempt to try again, but as I lowered the gun and attempted to remove the bullet chamber from the bottom, without warning, the weapon fired with a loud bang, terrifying all the swans and ducks in the area, as the trees all around me shook as flocks of birds flew from their spots in fear.
As the ringing in my ears became softer and my shock began to fade away, my eyes which had become unfocused, zeroed in on my surroundings for the first time.
And then I saw the victim of my bullet lying in the sand a short distance away, as her ducklings swam as far as they could away from their mother’s body.
Falling to my knees as if in slow motion, I felt grief hit me like never before, like massive tidal waves, my eyes quickly filled with tears and without intending to, I found myself letting out a loud wail of misery and relief, as I buried my face in my hands, sobbing bitterly next to the body of my friend.
I don’t know when I got up off my knees, or when I threw the gun as far as I could into the lake, or when I collapsed again into a heap next to Elpízo. I just remember feeling like a deflating balloon.
It was a blessing that nobody seemed to have noticed the sound of the gunshot, which gave me time and the privacy to cry in solitude
After what felt like an eternity, I picked up the body of Elpízo and buried her nearby. She was very small and needed a shallow pit to be buried. After I was done I stayed on my knees and closed my eyes. And for the first time in my entire life, I asked God to forgive me for trying to take my own life. I wept as I thanked Him for preserving me twice, and asked Him to look after Elpízo for me who died by the bullet that was meant for me.
As I got up slowly to my feet, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the fresh air around me that no longer smelled of gunfire residue. I wondered what lies ahead of me and what learning about this God who saved me would look like in the coming days. I resolved to come to this spot every day and feed Elpízo’s babies in honour of what she suffered for me.
I plan to keep these letters with me. It’s the only proof of my testimony and I plan to use it as a reminder of what the bottom of the barrel feels like.
As I walked away from this spot, I spotted the couple who had just finished a game of chess and were about to leave. As I was passing by, perhaps it was pity they had on my tear-streaked red face, that made them call me over and ask me if I wanted to play a game of chess, clearly having not heard the gunshot nearby.
As the husband set the board with all the pieces, with his wife looking at me with concern, I smiled at my new friends and looked at my watch.
It was 10:30 AM.
Regards,
The Man who has not given up.
Comments