This is the story of a man who had given up on life. His very existence had pushed him to the edge. There was no meaning or purpose in getting out of bed. Alone and abandoned in a strange far away city, despair was his constant companion. He had hit rock bottom. There was nothing left to lose. Consequences were a thing of the past. His options had dwindled to just two. Suicide or push the reset button. To hell with the outcome. There was no courage or conviction in his motivation. He simply had had enough and wanted out. Suicide seemed the easy way but why not try a radical plunge into the known first? He sat in silence and pondered the options in catatonic numbness. The silence held him captive while he pondered how it had all come to this.It was a dreary cold Sunday evening in Melbourne when the phone rang. Startled by the ring Michael flinched. It was the upbeat voice of a man he scarcely knew. They had worked together several years back. "Gooday mate. Want to catch up for a beer". Michael had not noticed the sun going down. His wife of 29 years, now living in Perth with his two adult children, had hang up on him some 30 minutes earlier. Laura would never allow reference to a previous telephone hang-ups. Michael had been living in a surreal relationship with his wife Laura. No manner of action on his part would ever alter the outcome of their interactions. Any sense of mutual regard was as distant now as it had been from the beginning. His marriage had been a living nightmare for longer than he could remember. He felt weak, na ve, alone and exhausted.The voice on the phone was Luke. Luke, while a qualified psychologist, was also a long-term drug user and self-ascribed societal drop out from a comfortable middle class background. During the 70's Luke had chosen a life of government handouts rather than work. He considered himself a guru having evaded military service by hiding in India for 7 years after leaving university. Luke seemed keen to befriend Michael, something Michael did not fully comprehend given their differences in life choices. Luke surrounded himself with unemployed drug users and those with similar views on deviant societal norms. In any event, Michael, now caught in a vacuum of social isolation, reluctantly accepted Luke's attempts at building a friendship. "My voice broke as I held the phone to my ear. I burst into tears without saying a word. 'What's up mate' Unable to answer Michael struggled to gain his breath. I choked on a few mumbled words and Luke said, 'I'll be there in a few minutes, ' then hung up."Luke, accompanied by a bottle of red wine, appeared at Michael's front door 10 minutes later. Fortunately Michael had a back-up bottle. They spoke for a couple of hours as Michael recounted the hang up event and all those that had preceded it. Luke listened attentively. "I felt my hypocrisy rise to the surface as he listened and seemed fully in tune with my pain. No one had listened to me so intently before. Those who judge can be ruthless in their self-idealisation."Luke was not known for his subtlety. Michael was aware of his aggressive style of dishing out feedback He was not about to spare Michael his thoughts. Dramatically, Luke jumped out of his chair and lashed out, spit spurting from his mouth. "No one should stand for that. No one hangs up on anyone, especially a wife to a husband. If you allow this into your life then you are nothing more than a cockroach and I don't want to be friends with a cockroach." With that he stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. It was 2.00am. This was the event that had unwittingly ushered a new direction for Michael. He needed to understand why his life had to this extent and what could be done to fix things. The other alternative was to turn to the sleeping tables waiting for him in his bedside table. He had researched their effect of the human body some month before. 30 tablets would prove lethal. He had 60.
