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Did agony fuel determination, or did determination strengthen the despair one felt when there was no clear objective to focus it on? Determination coiled up in your very being as you hurl yourself down the sidewalk at far too brisk a pace for the ache in your body.
You can visualize the long stretch of railroad you know lay just around that corner, marred by an ugly, old mechanical gate. You walked along the overgrown, gravelly path with friends, no more than a couple years ago but feeling like decades in the past. "When did I get old enough to reminisce?" You'll wonder, but it's in vain as always, your brain never responds to its own questions.
Your closer now, the bottoms of your feet blistered in once crisp, black shoes. They're sandy and bent by this point, only a few months in your possession before they got crooked and odd and wrong. It feels like with every step you get more tense, in fear, in anticipation. Trains had always been a fear, loud and squealing past, massive hunks of metal humanity had somehow turned into high-speed vehicles.
But trains were heavy, and so, so fast. They were inevitable, unable to halt quickly even if the conductor wanted them to. You count on this, on the force at which they could hit. Images flash by your mind from years ago, still a child and browsing a now-closed site full of death, and blood, and murder. You'd seen the results of trains moving full speed colliding with something organic and human, seen the mangled forms of the victims.
But you weren't a victim, not this time. Because victims don't seek out their own demise, you chose this for yourself.
In reality, maybe a train wouldn't even come. You could dawdle and edge along the track all you wanted, crappy headphones swinging past your chest all you wanted, and maybe there just wouldn't be any deliveries needed or locomotives traveled.
You're at the corner now, body rejecting the entire idea as you pause, no cars around to watch your hesitation. You stare down the endless tunnel of tracks, curving almost beautifully around a corner. On either sides were a couple meters of grass and wees, and then fences separating the dangerous area from surrounding buildings. One of them was a factory, you knew, memories coming once again of 15 year olds climbing over a rock and sneaking through large, cement tubes. It was stupid, and pointless, and definitely trespassing, but you'd been young and bored. Running from the security car, the fear you felt at that time was like a pinch compared to the ache you felt now, everyday.
As you take your first few steps down the dark red, rested mettle, you look back at the road and wonder if anybody had driven by and wondered what the odd person was doing walking through that particular area. If they had, nobody had stopped, and you lecture yourself. Of course a random stranger wasn't going to go out of their way to stop going wherever they had to be, just to question a random kid.
Not a kid, an adult now, and that made it even worse somehow.
The sunset is far too delicate, contrasting painfully with the music in your ears. You knew the recent change in taste wasn't a great one, it was one repeated almost annually, whenever things got bad again. Didn't matter much now you figure, but a part of you also wonders whether anyone with your Spotify will bother looking through everything. It wonders whether they'll see messages even you didn't catch onto, themes in lyrics you sing without thinking, in song names and tones and all the intricate little details you paid attention to when you lost someone.
Snapchat has a filter that looks great with the scenery, grass a vibrant green against dull red rocks and sturdy tracks. The sky has been set ablaze now with pinks and oranges you seldom got to see these days, always inside with few windows facing the sun's path.
You don't post the photos though, part of you is selfish, whispers that if you post them people will think it was an accident. You were just a young person taking photos and you didn't notice the train approaching from behind, a tragic victim of loud music and risky photography.
You want them to know, you want the friends you'd left just a few hours ago to ponder the entire time they'd spent with you that day. Your first time seeing them in months, your last time ever, a courteous goodbye. You want your Mother to regret going to bed early, just wishing to cherish that last hour you'd stayed over to hang out with your sister. You want your siblings, so full of potential and hope and joy, to think of you when they're 18 and be thankful they aren't like you. Tainted, cracked, a total failure of all the adults' efforts in your youth.
You want to cause pain, and anger, and make them see everything you've tried to scream at them for 6 goddamn years now. The scars, the posts, the playlists, the understanding when everyone else started struggling too. You'd been suffering and even tried to say it out loud, clearly, but either nobody noticed or you were too obvious and obviously fishing for pity.
You feel the rumble begin under your feet, but that wasn't supposed to be part of the plan?
You would be listening to music so loud it made your headphones literally crackle, taking long looks at the gentle mix of colors across the landscape, and then it would be gone in the instant your body was hit by unimaginable force.
But now you were ripping your headphones out, listening to the dinging on either side of the stretch of track as the gates on both roads came down out of view, and there was a long, loud horn sounding in the distance.
And now you were heaving, feet hitting hard on the gravel beneath you as you tried you absolute hardest to make it to the road before you were trapped a meter away from a train moving full speed.
And now you could feel your knees going weak and you give up, you're plastering yourself to one of the fences and watching as the light comes around the corner, and suddenly everything is invading your mind as it gets scrambled.
There is a violent creaking as the cars lurch around the corner, the wheels absolutely grating against the rails, you can feel wind in your hair that in any other situation would have felt incredible but all you can see is rocks.
Stories of rocks being flung from tracks through a human are flashing through your mind, every time a car comes by with the slightest lean there is the image of slow, agonizing dragging when the entire train gets derailed right into your body, you can hear the high-pitched white noise escaping you but thats not your mouth anymore because this is your worst nightmare come to life.
It drags on forever, you feel sick, every moment is an hour and every noise is thunder, but you were never a fan of storms and all you want is to live.
When the train is gone you're running before you can collapse, you're sprinting harder than you have since 6th grade when you quit track, and you're tripping a couple times but thats okay as soon as you're back on a sidewalk. There are cars moving by and you don't care, your backpack is constricting you but you don't even feel it yet.
And the entire hour walk home you're numb, for the rest of the night until the moment you go to sleep you're positively vibrating on the inside. You want comfort, but you know you can't have it, not without explaining why your very being is shaken. The last time you admitted to a suicide attempt there was a lecture and anger, the last time you sought out support on your own there were hours of delay, and really everyone had their own lives going on too.
In the morning you edit the few messages you did send in a daze to someone, and they pretend not to have seen the originals, and life goes on with no evidence left except the rusted nail in your windowsill you'd picked up along the way.
Nobody had to know about the picture taken minutes before you failed.