The Burn Journals
Caroline Riley, Emma Ginnell, Madi McShan, Mackenzie Kirksey
Theme
Illumined Text
The Lady or the Tiger?
In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places.
Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become semified was that of the public arena, in which, by exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were refined and cultured.
But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. The arena of the king was built, not to give the people an opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the people. This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.
When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's arena, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although its form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.
When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the enclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty and the privilege of the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and open one of them. He could open either door he pleased; he was subject to no guidance or influence but that of the aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that the case of the criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired mourners posted on the outer rim of the arena, and the vast audience, with bowed heads and downcast hearts, wended slowly their homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and respected, should have merited so dire a fate.
But, if the accused person opened the other door, there came forth from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects, and to this lady he was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered not that he might already possess a wife and family, or that his affections might be engaged upon an object of his own selection; the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of retribution and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took place immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the king, and a priest, followed by a band of choristers, and dancing maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an epithalamic measure, advanced to where the pair stood, side by side, and the wedding was promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells rang forth their merry peals, the people shouted glad hurrahs, and the innocent man, preceded by children strewing flowers on his path, led his bride to his home.
This was the king's semi-barbaric method of administering justice. Its perfect fairness is obvious. The criminal could not know out of which door would come the lady; he opened either he pleased, without having the slightest idea whether, in the next instant, he was to be devoured or married. On some occasions the tiger came out of one door, and on some out of the other. The decisions of this tribunal were not only fair, they were positively determinate: the accused person was instantly punished if he found himself guilty, and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot, whether he liked it or not. There was no escape from the judgments of the king's arena.
The institution was a very popular one. When the people gathered together on one of the great trial days, they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious wedding. This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise have attained. Thus, the masses were entertained and pleased, and the thinking part of the community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan, for did not the accused person have the whole matter in his own hands?
This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom, and she loved him with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. This love affair moved on happily for many months, until one day the king happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor waver in regard to his duty in the premises. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the king's arena. This, of course, was an especially important occasion, and his majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the workings and development of this trial. Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject dared to love the daughter of the king. In after years such things became commonplace enough, but then they were in no slight degree novel and startling.
The tiger-cages of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, from which the fiercest monster might be selected for the arena; and the ranks of maiden youth and beauty throughout the land were carefully surveyed by competent judges in order that the young man might have a fitting bride in case fate did not determine for him a different destiny. Of course, everybody knew that the deed with which the accused was charged had been done. He had loved the princess, and neither he, she, nor any one else, thought of denying the fact; but the king would not think of allowing any fact of this kind to interfere with the workings of the tribunal, in which he took such great delight and satisfaction. No matter how the affair turned out, the youth would be disposed of, and the king would take an aesthetic pleasure in watching the course of events, which would determine whether or not the young man had done wrong in allowing himself to love the princess.
The appointed day arrived. From far and near the people gathered, and thronged the great galleries of the arena, and crowds, unable to gain admittance, massed themselves against its outside walls. The king and his court were in their places, opposite the twin doors, those fateful portals, so terrible in their similarity.
All was ready. The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. Tall, beautiful, fair, his appearance was greeted with a low hum of admiration and anxiety. Half the audience had not known so grand a youth had lived among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!
As the youth advanced into the arena he turned, as the custom was, to bow to the king, but he did not think at all of that royal personage. His eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the right of her father. Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature it is probable that lady would not have been there, but her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested. From the moment that the decree had gone forth that her lover should decide his fate in the king's arena, she had thought of nothing, night or day, but this great event and the various subjects connected with it. Possessed of more power, influence, and force of character than any one who had ever before been interested in such a case, she had done what no other person had done - she had possessed herself of the secret of the doors. She knew in which of the two rooms, that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited the lady. Through these thick doors, heavily curtained with skins on the inside, it was impossible that any noise or suggestion should come from within to the person who should approach to raise the latch of one of them. But gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess.
And not only did she know in which room stood the lady ready to emerge, all blushing and radiant, should her door be opened, but she knew who the lady was. It was one of the fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court who had been selected as the reward of the accused youth, should he be proved innocent of the crime of aspiring to one so far above him; and the princess hated her. Often had she seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived, and even returned. Now and then she had seen them talking together; it was but for a moment or two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most unimportant topics, but how could she know that? The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door.
When her lover turned and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she sat there, paler and whiter than any one in the vast ocean of anxious faces about her, he saw, by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady. He had expected her to know it. He understood her nature, and his soul was assured that she would never rest until she had made plain to herself this thing, hidden to all other lookers-on, even to the king. The only hope for the youth in which there was any element of certainty was based upon the success of the princess in discovering this mystery; and the moment he looked upon her, he saw she had succeeded, as in his soul he knew she would succeed.
Then it was that his quick and anxious glance asked the question: "Which?" It was as plain to her as if he shouted it from where he stood. There was not an instant to be lost. The question was asked in a flash; it must be answered in another.
Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on the man in the arena.
He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it.
Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady ?
The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way. Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself, but upon that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?
How often, in her waking hours and in her dreams, had she started in wild horror, and covered her face with her hands as she thought of her lover opening the door on the other side of which waited the cruel fangs of the tiger!
But how much oftener had she seen him at the other door! How in her grievous reveries had she gnashed her teeth, and torn her hair, when she saw his start of rapturous delight as he opened the door of the lady! How her soul had burned in agony when she had seen him rush to meet that woman, with her flushing cheek and sparkling eye of triumph; when she had seen him lead her forth, his whole frame kindled with the joy of recovered life; when she had heard the glad shouts from the multitude, and the wild ringing of the happy bells; when she had seen the priest, with his joyous followers, advance to the couple, and make them man and wife before her very eyes; and when she had seen them walk away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the tremendous shouts of the hilarious multitude, in which her one despairing shriek was lost and drowned
Would it not be better for him to die at once, and go to wait for her in the blessed regions of semi-barbaric futurity?
And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood!
Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had been made after days and nights of anguished deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and, without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.
The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door - the lady, or the tiger?
"Girl Interrupted" Scenes
"It's Kind of a Funny Story" Scene
"I Regret: My Suicide Attempt" by Amanda Chatel
I do not regret much. I can count my regrets on one hand. I regret losing two close friends because of Swede, I regret reading his email and killing our trust in that one moment, I regret not having been on good terms with Christine when she died, and lastly, probably most of all, I regret my suicide attempt.
I have suffered from depression for most of my life. I do not deny this. I do not hide it (any longer), and if you were to come to my apartment and notice the bottles of anti-depressants in my bathroom, I’ll tell you why I’m on them without missing a beat. It’s as though I have it all rehearsed: “I have major depressive disorder and I realize I technically have nothing to be majorly depressed about, but try telling my brain that.” And it’s painfully true; I have nothing in my life to be depressed about, if we’re to break it down and do a bit of comparing and contrasting to others who are far worse off than I’ll ever be. Honestly, I’m very lucky.
I was raised in an upper-middle class family in southern New Hampshire. I have never been abused, nor do I have any dark skeletons in my past that might have produced any of this depression. My parents are still together and have been in love since they were 16 years old. Both them and my younger sister, Jennifer, have loved me and supported me in everything that has befallen me without questions or hesitation. My sister is my best friend. We are closer than most siblings and when we’re together, it’s she and I against the world. I am loved unconditionally.
My first thoughts of suicide crept into my brain somewhere around 12 or 13 years old. Of course, this isn’t surprising for that age, as my therapist-at-the-time pointed out. By then, I had been in and out of therapy since I was in second grade. Second graders aren’t supposed to be sad, or concern themselves with the end of the world, the earth being sucked into the sun and devoured at a million degrees, or cry without reason or provocation. I, however, did. It was decided back then that I was the emotional child, my sister the strong one. I was the one who was prone to breakdowns when I accidentally stepped on a caterpillar; I was prone to weeks of utter despair for which there seemed to be no reason. I was the sad one.
I struggled through high school with some days being worse than others. I kept my feelings mostly to myself and only rarely shared them with my parents when forced. I remember “ruining” a Thanksgiving my junior year in high school because I couldn’t get out of bed. I physically could not remove myself from my bed because an unknown fear was gripping me and holding me in place. I couldn’t find the words to explain this to my parents, so they dismissed it as me being a rebellious pain in the ass teenager. It was only when my father pulled me from under the sheets and noticed that I was literally shaking in fear–completely petrified without a single thing on which to blame it–did he let me stay in bed, at home, alone. They went to dinner without me. What it came down to (and what still is the issue with those who love me) is that lack of understanding. No matter how hard you try, if you’ve never struggled with depression, you can’t comprehend the level of sadness that comes out of nowhere. You can’t fathom how one might not want to wake up again.
By the time I reached college, I was managing my depression as best I could. It was just a staple of my day-to-day life; there was no point in trying to fight it or suppress it. All I could do was drift in it as though it were the ocean; when a storm started to approach, the waves started to get intense, I’d push my head upward just enough to breathe and stay afloat. It’s really difficult to do that when you can’t reach the bottom to help you back up.
It was also about this time that I was put on Paxil, which I stayed on for a few years, before it stopped working. I was then put on Effexor and eventually other anti-depressants, combinations of them, and different doses. When I moved to New York City in 2004, I was feeling steady and as at peace as I had felt in a long time–then the bottom fell out, because it has to every once in awhile.
I will not get into the details of it all, because it’s still pretty much a blur. I remember it in pieces like a night where you’ve had too much vodka–those flashes of memories like someone else is in charge of the photos of your life. It was a Sunday morning, I do remember that. It was my sister who called 911 after I had told her what I had done. This, according to Dr. E., was my “cry for help” moment: I had swallowed the pills, I had slit my wrists and then I realized that maybe this was not what I wanted. When the doctor told me that after being dragged out of my apartment, kicking and screaming, swearing that I was just having a bad day, I told him he could go fuck himself. He was wrong; I knew what I wanted–and that was just to sleep. Have I mentioned my issues with authority?
Hospitals will not let you go when you tell them you want to sleep forever. You can make it childish and easy to comprehend, even bring Sleeping Beauty into your explanation as an ill attempt as reasoning, but you can’t win. You are given an option to “voluntarily” check yourself in, or let them do the volunteering for you. My roommate at the time, Thal, who was there with me, did the talking for me: “She’s confused. She’s going to voluntarily check herself in so she can check herself out and not be stuck here forever.” That was the day I was committed to Beth Israel–an experience I wrote about a couple years ago. But this isn’t about what I did that morning, or the time in the hospital, the other patients I witnessed, or the fact that I dared to think myself better than them. This particular piece is about how I regret that suicide attempt.
I am of the notion that everything that happens in your life is completely essential in making you the completely original individual that you are. I strongly feel that regrets are part of this process of not only becoming you, but being you. I was originally conflicted about writing as to whether or not I regretted my suicide attempt. Even when I spoke to my mother about it earlier she asked me point-blank: “But do you regret it?” I told her that I wasn’t completely sure. I also told her that maybe I regretted it so much that I was unable to be completely aware of my feelings on the matter. My mother, always the saint, helped me make sense of it all. Here we go:
I regret my suicide attempt.
I regret it because of what it did to my parents, the devastation it caused them, and that they had to feel for even one second of their lives that they were going to lose me. I regret that my mother went out and spent hundreds of dollars on books about loving those with depression in an attempt to understand, but she just couldn’t wrap her brain around it. I regret that my father, a man who had worked his entire life, spoiled my sister and I rotten, and made us never want for anything–especially love and support–sat across from me one afternoon in a psychiatric ward in New York City crying, and begging the doctors to release me to their custody. I regret that my attempt, and the less serious few that would follow, put my sister in therapy because she couldn’t emotionally, mentally or even physically deal with the concept that she could lose me to a demon that none of us could see. I regret the scars on my wrist that you can still notice in certain lighting, although my F. Scott Fitzgerald tattoo is there to hide the truth and remind me of my struggle. I regret the anguish I caused my closest friends, the relationships I jeopardized or lost because it was too “difficult” or “painful” or “scary” to be part of my life if there was a chance that they could lose me.
I regret that I could be so fucking selfish to try to take myself away from these people, this life and this world. And although I know, and even in that moment when I did what I did, in that darkest of spaces, I knew deep down that it was selfish, but the fucked up part is that when you feel like that, selfishness loses its meaning. You are so enraptured in your own misery, pain, despair, whatever fucking adjective you want to attach to it, that you are absolutely incapable of comprehending exactly what you’re doing. I know that. But I also know now, years later, that to have offed myself would have been the greatest mistake of my life. Sure, I’d be dead and in the ground and unable to feel regret, but since I’m still alive, so painfully alive that I have the tears in my eyes and the goosebumps along my spine from the open window to prove it, I can say now without a doubt that my suicide attempt is my biggest regret.
Look at me! Look at my life and all its gorgeous flaws! Look at the places I’ve been, the people I’ve loved and even those I’ve pissed off! Look at those who think I’m shit, those who love me with everything they have and those who couldn’t give a fuck one way or another! Look at my scars, these battle wounds of a war that isn’t yet over, but one that I’ve beat in the last few rounds! Look!
I can’t promise I won’t be there again, in that place that might push me to another attempt, but I can say at this very second, that to have left the party so early would have been a loss. Let’s be honest, I wouldn’t be writing for The Gloss… and that in itself would be a tragedy, right?
To quote one of my favorite French writers, Colette: “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
It’s so true… and I’m not even close to being done with it all just yet.
Ester's Story
My husband of only 8 months took his life in front of me all while I was pregnant with our daughter. Early in our marriage I noticed he had changed. He had once attempted suicide with his gun in front of me. That time, I’m not exactly sure how I was able to diffuse the situation but we got through it. I didn’t know how to take it because I was not educated on signs of suicide or depression. My husband had each time also been extremely intoxicated.
I wish I would have known that he was suffering from some type of depression. My husband never asked for help. The day he committed suicide was the saddest day of my life. I keep asking myself why. I wonder why he made me a witness to his suicide. I wonder if he even loved me and the children. I will never know why. I now realize how important it is to get the ones we love the help they need when they show signs. I deeply regret not being aware. My husband will never get to hold our little daughter. He will never protect her like he promised he would. Please help the ones that are still here by getting educated. It's a choice you won't regret.