And so with sadness in my heart, I think the best thing I could do, is end it all and leave forever - Komm, süßer Tod.

There wasn't really a reason for it, when you came down to it. There was no great tragedy, no spark to the powder keg. Things had been continuing more or less like they always did. And for some reason, that was enough.

As usual, I woke up feeling like roadkill. My sluggish body ached, and my tired mind struggled to grope for concepts, like every morning. Bleary eyed, I looked around my bedroom, and for the first time, it was like I was really seeing it.

Next to my bed was the heap of dirty laundry I never found the energy to do. Littered across my floor was all the trash that never quite made it to the bin. Shit, even my walls were grimy, their once white facade tainted with swathes of grey (and who even knows how that happens)? My bed stank, unwashed sheets reeking of old sweat, with old bloodstains sprinkled all over because that shit never quite washes out. My desk was covered in bits of broken electronics, projects that never seemed to get off the ground, for all that I was willing to collect debris. Really, the only thing that seemed even vaguely organised was the neat stack of dirty dishes, that I could never be bothered to wash.

My nose crinkled into a sneer, as I thought to myself what a shithole. Because it was, really. Like everything else I'd ever touched, my room was a disgusting, broken down shell of what it could have been.

Moseying to the kitchen for that oh-so-necessary cup of coffee, half falling over and using the wall to prop myself up, it occurred to me: what a waste of a perfectly good house. A family could live here. It could be useful, if only someone cared.

This wasn't exactly a new thought to me. I'd always felt that sense of wasted potential. Really, in a way, that summed up my whole life. As a kid, I was always told that I had so much potential, and I'd wasted my life waiting for that potential to turn into actual. Turns out, that isn't how things work. And I was sick of waiting.

What if I just killed myself? What if, what if, what if. 'What if' is a perfectly reasonable question, which sparks curiosity in most people. But curiosity required a little more mental effort than I was capable of in my groggy state, so I fell back into old patterns and just let my mind wander into the darkest corners it could find.

But today, it seemed more than a stray thought, emerging unbidden from my subconscious. Today it felt like an exam that you hadn't taken the time to study for. Like that age old nightmare, finding yourself sitting the finals for a class after you somehow missed every single lecture. A kind of panicky anxiety clawed its way up my throat, but I squashed it down with the well practiced ease that any paranoid is familiar with.

While the kettle boiled, I took the time to roll a cigarette. Half asleep, the best effort I could put forth was a crumbly, flaccid looking thing. It looked sad to me, like it was disappointed in itself.

The problem with most suicides, when you really think about it, is that it doesn't stop the pain. It just transfers it to the people you leave behind. And I knew that I could never do that. As bitter and resentful as I was at times, I did love the people in my life, and I wouldn't ever want to do something that would hurt them.

The sharp whistle of the kettle on the stovetop shook me out of my reverie. Today felt like a three scoops, no sugar, black coffee affair. Tasted god awful, but for an addict like me it was the only thing with enough kick to get me going.

I set fire to my little disappointment off the stovetop. Legally speaking, I wasn't allowed to smoke in the rental house, but my landlord was a dope fiend who never once dropped by to check on me, so I could give a fuck.

Besides, today I was in one of those nihilistic moods. That no consequences mentality that said that it really didn't matter what I was allowed to do. I was going to do me, and fuck what anyone else thought.

I kind of just slumped to the floor. Going outside seemed like too much effort right now. Still, this was a sharehouse and I didn't want to make someone else clean up my mess, so I resorted to using my coffee mug as an ashtray. Worst it could do was improve the flavour.

It was this instinctual concern for others that really gave me the plan. I didn't want anyone to know if I killed myself. I didn't want my housemates to have to deal with a body, to have to live in a house where someone they knew topped themself. I didn't know if someone would even know how to call my parents, but I didn't want them woken up in the middle of the night to that phone call. No kid wants to disappoint their parents. I didn't want my friends torturing themselves, wondering why they never saw it, whether they could have done anything to prevent it.

Really, I thought to myself as acrid smoke burned my eyes and boiling coffee burned my throat, it would be better for everyone if I just disappeared.

That, I could do. If I was out of the house, out of the state, I could just drop off the map. I'm sure no-one would look to closely at just another drifter taking the cowards way out. As long as their was nothing in my pockets that could identify me, anyone investigating would probably just shrug it off. Just another John Doe.

And really, it wasn't like there was anything stopping me. I hadn't had a girlfriend since my abusive ex, I'd dropped out of university without a word to anyone (and none of my 'friends' had ever checked up on me, the bastards). My housemates knew I was an eremitic recluse, so they probably wouldn't get to wondering before the rent was late.

And wasn't that a bit of a laugh. After twenty five years of trying my best to find someone, anyone please god I had no real connection to the people around me. Shit, I'd been married once and even then we'd never really known each-other.

So, I thought, with just a hint of bitterness, why the fuck not.

Hitchhiking was a trip. It was the middle of fucking summer, and it felt like a million odd degrees outside. The whole way across the country, there wasn't a cloud in the fucking sky. It took two weeks before I felt like I'd gone far enough, and in that time my skin had turned a leathery brown. Although only part of that could be attributed to sunburn. The rest of it was just accumulated grime.

I was devoted to this cover as a drifter. I'd been sleeping rough, I hadn't had a shower in... well, three weeks to be honest. Not that much point in trying to look presentable when you never leave the house anyway. I'm sure I stank to high heaven, if the looks the drivers gave me were anything to go by.

God bless those drivers. There aren't many that will stop at the side of the highway to pick up a filthy hitchhiker. Especially when I got near the end of my journey, and I started to look really bad.

Really, you'd think that two weeks of this bullshit would be enough to convince anyone to turn back. Problem was, I'd left my meds back at the house. The longer I was out here, the more unhinged I got. I didn't really talk, those first few days, because serotonin syndrome is a bitch, and after that I learned not to. People got pretty creeped out by me when I opened my mouth.

Not that I could blame them. My mouth was a thing of nightmares. Chipped teeth stained yellow from years of too much coffee, wrapped in an unkempt beard that grew in patches. That's ignoring the fact I hadn't brushed my teeth in two weeks, and my lips had little black stains on them from unfiltered nicotine.

So I kept my mouth shut for the most part, although whenever I found solitude I had a habit of muttering to myself, singing off key, and generally keeping the silence at bay.

As much as I wanted someone to just drop me off on the Nullabor so I could wander out into the desert and get this thing done, I figured asking someone to abandon me in the middle of the desert would attract too much attention. So I had to tough it out until I found a place with a nice abandoned building.

Abandoned buildings weren't the best place. Usually, there were some locals squatting in them, but those weren't exactly the kind of people who report a body. As long as I found the right one, it shouldn't put a damper on my plans.

In the end, I found an abandoned hospital. That struck a chord in me. A hospital was the last place I wanted to end up as a result of my little plan, but here I was planning to go through with it in one. Then again, I always was a sarcastic little shit. I owed it to myself to go out as ironically as possible.

It was a nice building too. Or at least, it had been once. Thing must have been a hundred years old, with those big stone blocks people used to use before bricks were invented. There were sweeping windows decorating the outside of it, although quite a few of them were empty frames ringed with jagged glass. Oh, and the graffiti that seemed to cover ever inch of it.

Okay, so it was a ramshackle piece of shit. But that was fine.

Inside, it was even worse. The ground was covered in filth, from cans of spray paint, to used needles, cigarette butts, empty bottle of booze... the list goes on. One room I went through even had a burned out mattress, like someone wanted to sit around the worlds most carcinogenic fire.

I stumbled up the stairs, what few of them remained, to eventually come across a relatively intact bathtub. At the very least, it looked like it would hold as much blood as I was going to put in it. I even double checked it was still connected up to the plumbing, although I had no idea where that went. I muttered a little apology, in case I was going to ruin someones day by bleeding all over them from a random frikken hole in the wall, but really, it was their fault for dicking around in an abandoned building in the first place.

Even now, when I was face to face with the end of all my struggles, I couldn't find it in myself to turn back. I was tired. I'd always felt a sort of general fatigue that I couldn't shake, but after two weeks of barely eating and sleeping outside, I was exhausted like I'd never been before. It took some considerable effort on my part to drag my body into the tub.

I'd stripped off all my clothes before I got in (in case some vagrant was desperate enough to wear a dead guys filthy unwashed clothes) and the rusty lip of the tub scraped against my pot belly, drawing blood. I took a second to appreciate that I wouldn't have to get a tetanus shot for that.

So I sat there, for a time, staring at the razors edge. It was all part of the ritual. I had a myriad of scars on my thighs, from all the times in the past where it all got too much and I just had to feel something. It wasn't like I was scared of the pain. Hell, I was eager for it. But there's always a little psyching up you have to do before you make the first cut. Self harm goes against nearly every instinct your body has. No matter how good you know it's going to feel, there's just a little part of you that's screaming not to do it.

I wondered if I should make the effort to have some kind of profound last thought. I hadn't left a note, but this was personal. There was a lot I was leaving unfinished, and I didn't want to die with the regret that I'd spent my last moments ruminating something stupid. Can you imagine a worse fate than dying while struggling to remember the name of that actor, which you could swear was just on the tip of your tongue?

But hey, dead is dead. I wasn't expecting any sort of afterlife. I'd just kind of... stop. So it was with almost a shrug as I made a few practice cuts on my leg. Gotta make sure I'm going deep enough when I head for the main vein.

The wrists were a new experience for me. I'd never done the arms before, determined as I was to keep my shame to myself, so I was unprepared, but not exactly surprised, by the sensation. The blood that immediately welled out was a little shocking. It was too bright, and there was too much of it, and it finally hit me then that I was really going to do this.

You want to know what I felt in those last moments? Relief. I made sure to cut the other arm as well, and then just kind of sank back in bliss. Already, I was starting to feel cold. Which is wonderful, when you're living in an Australian summer. And the burning in my thighs, and my wrists, felt like a big warm hug against the chill seeping into my bones.

So I reveled in the sensation of my life blood dripping away. Sure, it felt kind of sticky and gross against my skin, but I was already starting to fall asleep. A nice, dreamless sleep, and I prayed that I would never be woken up again.

Authors notes: I've tried to make this come across as a story, and not just a rather abstract suicide note. Before anyone asks, no, I'm not planning on killing myself. Thanks for your concern.

Please review. I have absolutely no idea how to write.