JESSIE: I’m going to kill myself, Mama.
MAMA (returning to the sofa): Very funny. Very funny.
JESSIE: I am.
MAMA: You are not! Don’t even say such a thing, Jessie.
JESSIE: How would you know if I didn’t say it? You want it to be a surprise? You’re lying in your bed or maybe you’re just brushing your teeth and you hear this… noise down the hall?
MAMA: Kill yourself.
JESSIE: Shoot myself.
MAMA: It must be time for your medicine.
JESSIE: Took it already.
MAMA: What’s the matter with you?
JESSIE: Not a thing. Feel fine.
MAMA: You feel fine. You're just going to kill yourself.
JESSIE: Waited until I felt good enough, in fact.
MAMA: Don't make jokes, Jessie. I'm too old for jokes.
JESSIE: It's not a joke, Mama. Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it's hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than anything in the world you want to get off and the only reason in the world you don't get off is it's still fifty blocks from where you're going? Well, I can get off right now if I want to, because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it's the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. As soon as I've had enough, it's my stop. I've had enough.
"You've read the books?"
"I've seen the movies." Cath rolled her eyes so hard, it hurt. (Actually.) (Maybe because she was still on the edge of tears. On the edge, period.) "So you haven't read the books."
"I'm not really a book person."
"That might be the most idiotic thing you've ever said to me."
"No," Cath said, "Seriously. Look at you. You've got your shit together, you're not scared of anything. I'm scared of everything. And I'm crazy. Like maybe you think I'm a little crazy, but I only ever let people see the tip of my crazy iceberg. Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and socially inept, I'm a complete disaster."
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I see a red door and I want it painted black
(Kırmızı bir kapı gördüğüm zaman siyaha boyalı olmasını isterim)
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
(Siyaha dönüşmesini istediğim başka bir renk yok)
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
(Yazlık giysileriyle yürüyen kızlar gördüm)
I have to turn my head until my
What reason could there be for this awful thing happening? My dad, whose fault this whole thing is, says, “You can’t always see God’s plan.” I want to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t leave everything up to God and that hoping against hope is not a life strategy, but that would mean I would have to talk to him, and I don’t want to talk to him.
People say these things to make sense of the world. Secretly, in their heart of hearts, almost everyone believes that there’s some meaning, some willfulness to life. Fairness. Basic decency. Good things happen to good people. Bad things only happen to bad people.
No one wants to believe that life is random. My dad says he doesn’t know where my cynicism comes from, but I’m not a cynic. I am a realist. It’s better to see life as it is, not as you wish it to be. Things don’t happen for a reason. They just happen.
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