[ WP ] The Aokigahara Suicide Forest

It's quiet. It's a trite observation and I know it, but still. The only sounds I've heard since entering are those my own feet make as I travel through the dense undergrowth, and the wind pushing gently through the trees. Pushing gently through, like it's trying to escape. I thought for a moment I heard some poor bird singing, but I know it was probably just the wind. What could sing here? What could be so callous as to sing in what has become the final resting place for so many? Nothing is that crass, that cavalier. 
 
 As I walk, I try to find the right tree. I discard so many for subtle flaws; bark the color of my first love's eyes, branches shaped like my father's hands. Other occupants, lifeless, bloated, hanging like perverse ornaments. Each time I reject a different tree, I say softly to myself, `` you are not the right one''. Over and over, like a mantra. `` You are not the right one.'' I suppose, if I were a more philosophical man, a more aware man, I'd come to the conclusion that I'm not really talking about trees. `` You are not the right one'' - a description of my life as an outsider, a stranger. It's there, in the subtext of my life before I walked through this quiet forest. I was n't the right man when my mother was rotting away in a cold white room. I was n't the right one for my father, not since I was a little child who dreamed of LSATs and GpAs. I was n't the right one for my middle school sweetheart, my high school sweetheart, my wife. Her family. Her children. 
 
 I never had any children. 
 
 But I was n't a deep man, so instead I used the phrase to spur me on, deeper into the forest. I counted the skulls I would trip on, at first. After a while I lost track, but that was ok. Every skull here had made the same walk I had. They had all seen the bodies and bones, and kept walking anyway, instead of turning around and trying again. They knew what they were getting into; they did n't need me to honor or memorialize them. That's not why they came here. This was a place of defeat. This was the place men and women came to be permanently forgotten. No headstones, no grave markers. No mourning families or roses. All that one could become here was just another pile of dust and bones in a forested patchwork of dust and bones. This was the place to be stricken from the memory of humanity forever, so that our failures could never again haunt us in death like they had in life. If you want to hide a tree, right? 
 
 Without realizing it, I found the right one. The Right One. It was tall, yet hunched over like an elderly giant. It's bark was the same gray as the sweatshirt my mother died in. It had three knots at eye level that inexplicably made it look a grotesque face. My grandparents had had a similar tree in their front yard, when I was a child. It's fitting, somehow. Full circle. 
 
 Again, without realizing it, I've climbed to the highest branch that will support my weight. I suppose I could climb higher, as it does n't really matter now, but stop myself. The last thing I want is to fall and survive, to be found by some well-meaning griever and be rushed to the ER. I want to do this right -- no more failures. I had tied the nylon rope beforehand. The lime green material was a little garish, I must admit, but even so. It was fitting. My own little memorial to myself. As I stood there, looking out into the forest, at the other bodies swinging gently in the breeze, I take one final deep breath. It's not the best breath I've ever taken. The wind brings the scent of rotting corpses to my nostrils, and I've tightened the noose already in anticipation. But it's the last one I think I'll need, which makes it the most precious. Right before I let go -- of the branch I'm holding to support myself, of the life I used to lead, of all the pain, and hate, and sadness I've let build up inside me -- I have a brief moment of clarity. About the forest. About all these poor lost souls falling apart in a dark city of deformed trees. 
 
 It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
