William Williams stood on the solid timbers of Dunedin’s Steamer Basin wharf, his hands deep in his pockets, and stared across the lightly rippled harbour to the shore beyond.
The sky above was a thin blue, streaked in places with bands of high white cloud that formed in brush strokes to the horizon.
The yachts tethered in the corner of the wharf rocked gently, their rigging occasionally slapping and scraping their masts.
William watched as a tug boat captain, dressed in overalls of blue and high-vis orange, checked the equipment in his cabin.
Closer by, the rollers on a ramp from the wharf to a pontoon rumbled back and forth as the pontoon rose and fell with the swell.
William recognised the quiet beauty of the scene, the low glare of the autumn sun and the contorted reflections of the surrounding hills as they flickered off the gentle sea.
He recognised these things, but he did not feel them.
He was not caught up in the scene, he merely was of it.He felt no joy and no pain; he was neither happy nor unhappy.
He observed the stainless steel ladder that dropped vertically from the wharf to the water below, and noted the small sign next to it that announced LADDER in red letters on a white background.
He recognised, rather than felt, the humorous aspect of the redundancy before him.
William looked about him at the life that was slowly rousing, as the traffic on the nearby Wharf St raised in rumble and pitch.He gripped the cold rungs of the ladder, swung himself out above the water, and began his descent.
He thought briefly about the people he had worked with and had known during his life to this point, their fears and joys, their sometimes brittle confidence and their private shames.
He thought about the existence of illusion they led, the fragile narratives they built as the scaffolding for their lives, narratives that excluded the harsher realities of their restless souls, the difficult behaviours they chose to deny.
Of course, he was no different.
The way he acted out his life hid a tumult of dark desires, and behaviours he could not justify.
He wondered for a moment at what point he had decided to disengage.
He thought about his home life.
In the past few years he had come to realise he neither loved, liked, disliked or hated his wife, and perhaps never had.
He had slowly, and with intent, stopped caring about other aspects of his life, choosing to switch off an interest in his career, then any interest in recreational pursuits.
Those mental actions had been successful, and he had slowly but surely come to a point where he felt nothing at all about anything much, aside from a mild concern about goings-on that might affect his equanimity.
Even that had diminished to a point he could no longer really remember why he felt it.
William had come, over the years, to realise emotions of any sort were quite, quite pointless. He had slowly discerned they often presaged the worst of human behaviour, be it the pride that goeth before the fall or the love that twists to jealousy and hate.
At funerals he had attended he saw grieving and wailing and pain, which more and more seemed to him a wholly pointless reaction to that most certain of occurrences.
It appeared but a futility.
As a response to these realisations, William had slowly but surely turned from feeling altogether, quieting his heart and opening the tight fissures of his soul that in the past had threatened intermittently to burst, and let what would flow in, flow in, and what would flow out, flow out.
He moved from wading into the sea of emotion and being tossed in its tempest to crouching on its shore and watching as one may watch a distant storm, until one day he calmly concluded his existence as part of society was unnecessary.
This realisation may at one time have come as a relief, or perhaps sparked a desolate misery, but William had moved beyond those emotions; he merely noted the fact he was ready to move from the sphere in which he existed.
He had reached that point about three months before.
At first he chose to continue with his various roles as a husband, an insurance broker and a consumer, while he chose his means of moving to the next sphere of being.
But after about eight weeks he decided continuing those activities served no real purpose.
So as not to be diverted from his plans he left the house each morning as if leaving for work, as there seemed no sense changing his routine and having to explain himself to his wife.
He realised she might be upset when the time came, but this no longer meant anything to him, it merely was.
It was also possible she might not be upset; he knew not.
He spent his time sitting in his car, or on a park bench if it became too hot, merely staring into space.
He watched the sun as it rose in the sky, he saw the clouds as they skudded by, and he watched the wildlife play out its violent game of survival.
He watched as a sea lion ignored its offspring, which starved and died on the beach.
A seagull with a broken wing struggled on the harbour rocks before succumbing.
William refrained from eating, instead sipping occasionally on water he carried with him in a plastic bottle.
Then he chose his day.
And so it was with the skill of calm observation he had nurtured and developed, William perceived the shock of the chilled, soupy green water as it enveloped his legs, his hips, torso, his shoulders and neck and finally his face and head as he climbed down, then let go of the ladder and descended a metre or so beneath the surface of the Steamer Basin.
He noticed with disinterest as water filled his lungs, he felt his body convulse for a while as it searched for breath, and waited patiently for it to surrender to the reality of the situation.
All was quiet, save the strange underwater echoes of stones shifting on the sea floor, waves slapping against the wharf piles and the distant throb of marine engines.
Time passed, William was not sure how long; it didn’t matter.He stood upright with his right foot wedged beneath a large rock, closed his eyes and felt his body gently sway with the turning tide, and considered his next move.
Part Two tomorrow
Where to get help in NZ
Suicide/depression related
Healthline: 0800 611 116
Lifeline Aotearoa: 0800 543 354
Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
Samaritans: 0800 726 666
Alcohol Drug Helpline: 0800 787 797
General mental health inquiries: 0800 44 33 66
The Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757
Youthline: 0800 376 633 txt 234 or talk@youthline.co.nz
