Today I flirted with death. I had enough with life. I was tired of the frustrations. The dejections. The anger. Tired of the horribleness of life....so today, I flirted with death.

I took my pistol out of the attic that I had bought a few weeks ago. And for the first time in my life, I stuck live bullets in the barrel. One. Two. Three. Three live bullets just for me. Whee!

I walked outside behind my shed. I crept low, so as not to attract the neighbors attention. I had hidden my gun underneath some clothes. It was unnecessary. The pistol would have just as easily fit in my pocket. I don't know. I guess people do silly things when they go towards their death.

So I went behind my shed and while I toyed with the gun, my fingers slipped and I locked a bullet in the chamber. I turned this switch and that knob. But I just couldn't unloosen the locked bullet. Now I was in a dillema. I lived in a residential neighborhood where a person couldn't just fire a gun. And yet, I was not going to walk back into the house with a chamber-locked gun. What to do? What to do?

As I sat wondering what to do, I felt frantic. I wondered if a neighbor would show up and smile and ask how I was doing. Worse, I didn't want them to see me with my gun. I didn't mind them seeing my dead bloody body. But I didn't want them to see me with a gun. And for the first time in my life I fired a shot from a pistol. It rang loudly. There was an echo. I became self-conscious. I hid the gun in my pocket and returned back to my house pretending like nothing happened. One of my family members had noticed the shot. I shrugged at them and said, "Not sure what that was." They seemed unsure. But let it go. Good.

I debated whether to go forward and kill myself. I thought of my family. I thought of friends. I thought of the world that I no longer cared to impress. That's why I didn't even bother penning the eloquent suicide note that I had put so much mental energy into conducting. I figured that if I didn't care enough about the world to kill myself. Why do I care who gets impressed with my suicide note?

I kissed my son. I walked aout of the house, I went back behind my shed. I locked and loaded a bullet. My mind spun with intense debate. I decided to silence my mind. In a frenzy I put the pistol in my mouth and I pulled wanting to feel the shattering sensation on my throat. Instead, I'm not sure what I pulled but I unlocked the chambered bullet. That shook me. I figured that maybe my time had not come.

I walked inside the house. I took the two bullets out of the gun. I put the fired shell in my pocket. Then I sat down at my computer to write this note.

Hey NayaJivan,

Few questions:

1. How old were you when your parents dropped you off here in the US and what year was that?


2. What kind of relationship do you have with your family back in Nepal?

randi ko choro bacheko chhahi kina ni ..bhanchhu ma??????????/

Probably the biggest thing that I received was the feedbak that I got in sajha. Perhaps it doesn't make sense to all of you. It's just that my biggest problem is that I have stopped thinking like a Nepali. And yet I need to see my life from a Nepali perspective.

So being able to put my story on sajha and receive the feedback that I received, good or bad, was helpful. Thank you. At least you were honest.