Disclaimers: This story contains human sexual situations. If you're looking for the necrophilia of vampire love and other such variants, I invite you to look elsewhere. If you were looking for tales of the sexual exploits of Amoebas or Paramecium then try a level one biology text book.
There is a lot of offense language, not nice epitaphs, characters who are morally ambiguous with no respect for any faith but no graphic violence nor graphic sex scenes. You've been duly warned so don't complain if this isn't your proverbial “cup of tea”. I prefer passion fruit mango red tea myself.
The characters in the following story are of my own creation. But these are the experiences and observations, the ideas and thoughts of these characters. So if you take offense at any of the stuff that is expressed herein, you need to take it up with them not me. And no I don't have their e-mail addresses.
Any similarities to anyone living or dead are purely coincidental. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from me. Any other comments can be sent to me at bironel@gmail.com
Synopsis: A novella about the an insanely wealthy white woman's search for her soul mate and the debt ridden black woman writer, with a vivid imagination, who tries to keep out of her way.
Nailah's Narrative: Epiphany
The whistle of the tea kettle floated over the rumble of the trains speeding under my Aunt Camilla's house. The paintings on the living room wall jiggle into offset positions.
My slender brown hand rights their positions as my left presents a cup of hot ambrosia to my winter dry lips. After a pleasant inhale of the infusion of leaves floating at the bottom of my cup and a sensuously slow swallow, I sigh.
How could all my carefully constructed plans go so wrong? Here I am at thirty-nine, single, unemployed and apparently unemployable, living with my Aunt in her pre-war family house in a forgotten part of a major metropolis. I get up off the couch and walk over to the cordless phone affixed to the wall. I stare at it. I have to make a call that I have been hesitating to make for two weeks.
I dread this necessary task because it's completion will make my inadequacies more real and so far I have been able to avoid my numerous limitations with the help of my close friends: avoidance and denial. However these fickle companions have left me to deal with harsh reality as my final due notice came yesterday in the mail.
Might as well get this over with: I dial the number and navigate through the maze of disembodied voice options until I finally reach a human being.
Male Voice: Good Morning, Becky Sue Services. My name is Adam. Please be advised that this call may be recorded for quality purposes.
Nailah: Good Morning. My account number is 0111222346-Z. I'm calling about my account. I received a past due notice after I had requested forbearance.
I hear the muffled sound of plastic keystrokes.
Adam: Yes Ms. Brown. Your account is currently past due. I can assist you if you like to arrange a payment now.
Nailah: Yes that's why I'm calling. I had submitted a form for forbearance.
Adam: Yes that's is on record. However, you've exceeded the number of times this account can be placed in forbearance.
Nailah: I didn't know there was a limit on forbearance requests due to unemployment.
Adam: Yes if you wish to bring your account up-to-date I can assist you.
Nailah: That will be difficult as I am still unemployed and currently looking for work.
Adam: Hmm. I see... well I can assist you to submit a three month continuance on your student loans.
Nailah: I suppose so.
Adam: Okay once we arrange the $175 processing fee I can fast track the continuance.
Nailah: My loan payment is $72 and I can't pay that! How can I pay $175?
Adam: Hmm...Your loans have been on forbearance for over 24 months and we'd like to assist you to start repayments again. I can suggest a select payment plan which you pay a lower amount but you'll be locked in for ten years. The amount would be half the current monthly payment.
Nailah: Ten years?
Adam: Yes. Would you like me to mail or fax you the form to get this process started?
Nailah: Sure why not. Can you email the form to me?
Adam: Yes I can. Do we have your e-mail address on file?
Nailah: Sure. It's nubianAtman108@fakemail.com .
Adam: I'll send that out right away. Is there anything else I can assist you with?
Nailah: No Adam I think that covers it.
Adam: Have a nice day. Goodbye.
Click, a hum then the dial tone. I sat there letting my worry and annoyance dance to the dial tone. Then I hung up mostly annoyed at myself for not asking if there were any other options. Oh well.
I walk back into the kitchen with my cup in hand. I look out the kitchen window to the street outside. I watch cars drive by and people walking all bundled up against the cold winds swaying the dark barren trees which lined the street.
I go into the pantry and take the clothes out the dryer. Fold them up and put them away in various drawers and closet shelves. Of course, I didn't immediately power up the computer and the DSL modem to retrieve that little form. I am the goddess of procrastination.
I may be having a financially unlucky patch right now but I wasn't stupid. Those lower payments for six years would be interest only with no dent in the principal at all. I'd be paying almost 300% over the cost of those stupid student loans when I original took them out.
As I drained my lukewarm tea cup, I constructed a daydream of empowerment, an action packed inner movie with dialogue:
Night. A camera surveys the Becky Sue industrial campus. Security guards slowly make their rounds. None of them notice a dark shadow silently sailing across the night sky along a zip line.
A sexier, cooler version of myself, dressed head to toe in black, lands on a shallow stone sill approximately ten stories above ground level. I press the entire length of my lanky body against the wall and shuffle along the sill until reaching a vent. With adroit application of spy-like tech toys, the vent covering is breached and I enter the building undetected.
I skip to a house music sound track as I busily plant incendiary devices throughout the complex.
There is a comedy of errors as the security guards chase a phantom their electronic devices detect but they can't physically see nor hear: entrapping each other in the process.
Cut to me, still looking incredible, sans the secret agent disguise, sitting at a bar sipping a Brandy Alexander. It's a disgustingly sweet concoction but I love asking for it, feeling sophisticated! I watch the news on the TV monitor above the bar about the recent terrorist act on the nation's student largest loan agency.
The news reporter with flaxen hair, the necessary blue eyes and the corporate Ralph Lauren American smile details the evenings events stressing the billions in cost as all national loan debt records (digital and paper backup) are lost in the massive fire overtaking the enormous financial campus.
Activists on the scene are cheering in the background as the reporter reports on location.
He credits the unknown “Robin Hood” figure behind the current attacks on banks and lending agencies virtually erasing all records of loans nationwide. I take in the comments of nearby bar customers:
Man #1: Serves ‘em right! Now people can now start off with a clean break.
Man #2: Yeah only to get back in debt again.
I grumble inaudibly to myself over my drink: At least they could have mentioned no lives were lost. That took a lot of skill with those yokels running around all over the place. Not one bodily injury and not one mention of it. Bastards. Even in my daydreams I feel the finger tap on my shoulder of being unappreciated.
I look at the clock on the dresser and note I have just enough time to meet with the writing group at the local community college library.
-----
As I put on my scarf, hat, coat and gloves I recall reading online on Meetup.com about a free film and writing group staring up.
I am tired of hiding away from life in my Auntie's home and I considered myself a writer even though I had not written anything down significant since I worked at a small law firm as a copy editor of legal contracts and that was over five years ago. Honestly, I wrote to hold off the abyss of boredom into which my job was constantly threatening to propel me.
So I e-mailed the organizer of the group AKlerk and made arrangements to meet and join this group. Perhaps through networking with these people a job might be forthcoming. I had exhausted the research company/send out customized resumes/volunteer my precious time (a peculiar form of slavery called interning) route without any success.
I closed the front door locks to the house in sequence from top to bottom, three in all. I turn into the wind and began my walk toward the nearby community college. I wonder what sort of people I will meet.
I arrived twenty minutes early. Which allows me some time to indulge in my favorite past time for a few minutes. Day dreaming:
Tick tock. Tick tock. My Amazing Self races against time as she death defyingly drives her car (a Mini Cooper) at 120 mph along five lane wide highway avoiding those evil doers out to catch her.
-----
I have been standing here in front of the entrance to the college library for exactly forty minutes. In that time, I have struck up various conversations about the current threat of yet another citywide transit strike with smokers from all walks of life seeking to calm themselves before going back inside.
I have given direction to numerous people who have stopped their travels to ask me and have volunteered directions to those who have looked lost.
I have purchased, drained dry and properly discarded a bottle of water. I have blown my nose six times and I have decided to go inside to see if this so called group has impossibly shown up before I arrived and are presently meeting inside.
What a waste. I could have done anything else besides waiting here to meet these slackers!
I walk past the security guard, exchanging pleasantries with him. I then walk up to the main reserve desk and inquire about any groups scheduled to meet here today. The elderly lady manning the desk confirms not only that the group is scheduled to meet but no one other than myself has shown up so far. So much for the popularity of meeting people other than serial killers and thieves online. A bit disappointed, I walk back outside.
I stand outside the library building and no one is out here waiting. I have to decide how to spend the rest of my afternoon since it is still early.
In the distance, a short, dark mass wearing a gray fluffy hat rushes towards me. The figure quickly moving closer is clearly a white woman, wearing expensive looking sunglasses and a long black wool coat with blue jeans and gray sneakers peeking out below the bottom hem of the coat, walking towards me from the train station exit. She's also wearing matching gray gloves and scarf. It's a nice shade of gray and I'd like a sweater in that color for myself. Her head is down braced against the wind as she quickly walks into my direction. I wonder if she can see me standing here-
Damn she nearly knocked me over!
It suddenly dawns on me that this piece of work could be a member of the group. I hesitate. If she is part of the group do I really want to add her chaos to the spice of my day so far? But, then she may be one of many others and why should I allow this person, whom I don't know, dictate the possibilities of my future?
I enter the library building and greet the security guard again who has a funny look on his face.
Security Guard: Some people weren't raised with any manners.
I guessed that he was talking about that female linebacker that almost clocked me to get inside.
Nailah : She probably has a life and death mission to borrow a book.
The Security Guard smirks at my weak attempt at humor.
Security Guard: Yeah she probably does at that.
When I enter the library, the woman gestures about with her expensive sunglasses in hand, while speaking with the elderly woman at the main reserve desk.
The rude woman raises her voice at the elderly lady who responds by pointing in my direction. A few library students and possibly some professors look over to the main desk in response of the noise. I turn around to see what is behind me that she is pointing at.
I don't see anything other than the main doors and the large student cork tack board with numerous flyers and ads tacked all over it. There isn't a blank space up there in that cacophony of color.
When I turn back toward the main desk, the rude woman is standing directly in front of me. Our noses could touch that's how in front of me she is. First, she almost blasts right through me and now she invades my zone of comfort!
I step back away from her. I notice she's a couple of inches shorter than my five foot eleven inches and three quarters frame and a bit chunkier than me, I gloat inwardly, which gives her that linebacker edge.
She: Sorry to have startled you.
Nailah: You haven't.
She (a bit confused): You stepped away.
Nailah (I clarify): You were standing too close.
She narrowed her green? blue? (who the hell knows in this fluorescent light) colored eyes at me. I turn away to leave when she calls out to me.
She: Aren't you here for the film and writing group?
Nailah (groaning inwardly): Yeah. Don't tell me you're in that group?
She: I created the group.
Nailah (turning to face her): You're late. Forty-two minutes to be exact. I've decided not to participate in your group.
She: Oh come on the group isn't dependent on when it starts, only that it does start.
I am not convinced to change my mind.
She: You are the first one with promise who has answered this time around.
Nailah: What do you mean, this time around?
She: I attempted to start this group two months ago and all the wrong sort of people showed up. People more interested in meeting at bars to drink and talking about writing and movies rather than actually writing and reviewing movies creatively. That's what I want for this group. I want it to be an incubator for good story telling. It seems to me if you came all this way-
Nailah (I interrupt to move her along her speech faster so I can leave): I live seven blocks away and walked here-
She (continues undaunted): -And waiting all that time, you must be a writer.
Nailah: The latest thing I've written was a food shopping list.
She: There's a story in that somewhere. Perhaps in discussion we can tease the story out.
Nailah: Look you have some worthwhile goals for you group. But I don't think you can meet my expectations.
She: You haven't really voiced anything but resistance to the idea because I was a bit late.
Nailah: You were almost an hour late!
She: Yes we've established that but not what it is you are looking for from this group.
This woman hasn't been put off by my race yet. Staring at me like a color-blind utopian.
Damn! Sometimes when you hope to exploit people's prejudices for your own needs they fail to rise to the occasion.
She blinks rapidly looking at me as I hesitate to respond. Perhaps she will shun me if I reveal my current lack of employment. I quickly realize that this would be an excellent way to create my graceful exit as she judges me unworthy for her group. Even the most liberal minded experience feelings of being ill at ease in the presence of nameless others in economic distress as though poverty is contagious.
I smile as I recall we haven't exchanged names.
Nailah: I expected more people.
She: A good group can begin with just two people.
Nailah: Secondly, I expected to meet a few people who may actually be working writers so that I could learn what is currently in demand - since I am currently looking for work.
I expected her to look at me with derision and take my leave but her eyes seem to light up ghoulishly as though a monster of an idea had embraced her neurons in a bear hug.
She smiles.
She: I could help you to find a job with your writing.
Nailah: You're a working writer?
She: No.
Nailah: You're an editor?
She: No.
Nailah: You're a publisher?
She: Not really.
She's still smiling and I blink my eyes incredibly.
Nailah (annoyed): How can you help me get a job writing?
She: I love to read and I have resources.
I look over at Amanda as she drones on about her ideas on writing effective stories. We had finally exchanged names so escape has been delayed.
-----
We end up in the cafeteria. Reflecting over my surreal day so far, I sip some lukewarm and rather weak orange pekoe from a paper cup. Tea should never be served in a paper cup and there is not enough honey in existence to give this anemic brew flavor.
I grimace.
Amanda: You don't agree that studying movies can assist in concise story telling?
Nailah: Actually no I don't.
Amanda has a hurt look on her face like I insulted her intelligence. I can't fathom why I explained myself further to erase the look on her face. Insulting people is a time tested tool to get people to leave you alone. I am a bleeding heart wuzz.
Nailah: Movies paint with pictures and a conservative economy of words, while novels, short stories and even poems, paint with words. The more words the better.
Amanda: I hadn't considered it that way.
Nailah: What is it that you do?
Amanda: What do you mean?
Nailah: You know where do you go each week day and spend eight hours of your life? What do you do there?
Amanda: I pretty much go where ever I please and do whatever I want when I get there.
Nailah: Why are you being so vague about your job?
Amanda: I don't have a job.
Nailah: You're unemployed too? If you have contacts to help me find writing work why haven't you used them to find yourself a job?
I look for an explanation from Amanda but she takes her time answering as she eats some of her french fries with her fingers.
Those fried golden sticks of potato are swimming in a red sea of ketchup and hot sauce. She licks her fingers and downs some diet coke.
I can't believe that with all the information we have about the toxicity of artificial sweeteners in diet drinks she chooses that as her beverage. It explains the extra padding she has. I know I'm being a bit judgmental as she really isn't obese just a few pounds overweight in my estimates. If she had a personal trainer and dietitian she could easily lose the weight and be healthier.
Amanda (with less animation than she has exhibited thus far while talking): I don't need one.
I am startled. Has she overheard my private thoughts? I don't think I sub-vocalized them!
Nailah: What?
Amanda: The job. I don't need one.
Nailah (relieved I figured this woman out): Oh your husband works and you enjoy your free time.
Amanda (indignantly): I'm not married! At least not anytime soon.
Nailah: Oh... you're rich.
Amanda: Why did you say it like THAT. I didn't judge you how dare you judge me!
Nailah: I didn't judge you.
Amanda: Please you have been forming erroneous opinions about me the entire time. I can see your mind working behind those pretty brown eyes.
Now I am confused. Did she just flirt with me? I'm not into women nor do I project any interest in that area. This woman must be a rich mindless flirt. She has misled me into thinking she can assist me to find work. This is just play time for her, a mild diversion to while away time.
I began to get salty. This rich woman is yanking my chain about being prejudice. Well I admit it. I don't trust rich people. They are out to manipulate, defraud, misuse, and screw without lube all the non rich people.
Nailah: This isn't a hobby for me this is my life.
Amanda: I said I could help. I do have contacts.
Nailah: I'm curious why would you want to help me. You've just met me today. You don't know anything about me.
Amanda: You are in a great position to write compelling stories about being homeless and unemployed. You could get a great writing deal once you finish a story about your experiences.
Nailah: Who is making false assumptions now? I am not homeless just unemployed.
Amanda: If your unemployed how can you afford rent? Do you own a house?
Nailah: Not that it's any of your business, I live with generous family.
Amanda: Do you pay your family rent?
Nailah: No.
Amanda (smugly): So you just happen to live with relatives but technically you don't assist financially in maintaining it. You're homeless.
You know I totally understand how people can snap and become violent because I wanted to break this rich woman's neck. I really didn't want to acknowledge that little morsel of truth about my situation. Homeless. Joy and salutations another uplifting adjective to add to my self description. I look up from my disgusting paper cup of tea to her face. My eyes narrow and I can really relate to the immediacy of violence. I'm too much of a coward to use it though but I understand its potency.
I get up to leave.
Nailah: I need work but I refuse to accept being belittled to get one.
Amanda: Don't be so overly sensitive about what is basically the truth.
Nailah: You're a fanatic about truth? Try this on for size, if you don't stop swilling diet sodas and fried foods you'll gain an additional twenty pounds on top of the extra weight your carrying.
Amanda: You're being mean when all I was trying to do is help.
Nailah: Help how? Exactly what is your plan? Within what time frame did you expect to assist me in being gainfully employed?
She hesitates.
Nailah: You really hadn't thought it out had you? Trust me, I know I'd have to have a completely written work to shop around if I wanted to get a book deal. But maybe I just wanna write articles and reports for magazines. You know how I can break into that field even though I don't have a journalism degree from college? You don't even know anything about my background besides the fact the I'm unemployed.
Amanda: I'm not a complete airhead. I can see you have some level of college education by how you speak. You are particular and neat about your person in how you dress. You are a recent convert to healthy living by your elitist attitude about what I'm eating and you're a tea snob by how you grimace over your tea. I mean what did you expect to find in a community college cafeteria? Republic of Tea ?
Nailah (letting those digs slide for now): I really don't want to write about my experiences, I intend to write fiction.
Amanda: Really? What did you have in mind?
Nailah: If I told you I wouldn't need to write it would I?
Amanda: Okay write the first chapter and when you're finished e-mail it to me. I know someone looking for new work. I'll help you polish it up before we send it off for consideration.
I was dumbfounded she still wanted to assist me. Not to look down at an opportunity I halfheartedly committed to this enterprise with her.
Nailah: When do you need the first chapter?
Amanda: Have you started it yet?
Nailah: I began the story five years ago but I stopped. I had planned to use this group to help me complete it.
Amanda: How much have you written?
Nailah: Forty seven pages of written text plus fifty-seven pages of chapters with chapter opening quotes which define the tone of each chapter. The first chapter is completed. I want it to be a novella.
Amanda (licking her ketchup and hot sauce fried potato fingers): What is the title of your tome?
Nailah: It's untitled.
Amanda: Ok. Send me the first chapter.
Nailah: I am not comfortable with that arrangement.
Amanda (laughs): You think I am going to steal your story.
Nailah: That's basically how rich people get richer.
Amanda: You're something else. I don't know what that is but if it could be defined your picture would be next to the description.
Nailah: It's called being cautious.
Amanda: More like paranoid. Okay Ms. Non trusting Author. I'll have my lawyer draw up an agreement of trust between us. You will allow me to read your story, copyright pending until it's completion and I'll promise not to steal your work for my own purposes. We'll have it notarized and send you a copy then you can send me chapter one. Are we good now?
Nailah: Your lawyer? Man you are rich. Agreed.
We exchanged addresses before going our separate ways. I walked home somewhat optimistic about my future.
Week 5: Monday
It's been five weeks since I met with Amanda at the college cafeteria. I haven't received the “contract of trust” from her lawyer yet. I am filled with dread that this is a phantom opportunity--that I'm wasting my time cleaning up my novella. But at least it gives me something to do. It gives me the purpose I sorely need.
I just reread my fifth rewrite of first chapter of my novella for the fifth time. I'm not certain that it is complete. I intentionally leave information dangling which might alienate the reader. I was about to write more but I know the tone I was working towards would be lost if I worked on it some more so I decide to leave it as is for now until I get some feed back from Amanda and her contact. I wonder who she plans to show my work to. It was not smart of me not to press for more details. But maybe it's better I don't know who will see my work because I may be intimidated into not sharing it and that will get me no where with my writing.
I let my Auntie read chapter one and her only comment was that is was nice. She didn't understand that I needed more feed back than that so I won't let her read much of what I write anymore. It saddens me because I'm very fond of her and would like to share everything about myself with her. Perhaps this is just a sign that I need to grow up. People we care for may not take the same journey with us as we navigate through life no matter how much we may wish to have their company along the trip.
Week 10: Thursday
Everyday I get up and write more of my story. The journey of my characters crystallize for me as I weave chapter after chapter. Chapter one is waiting to be read while I've moved on to Chapter three. I spend eight hours a day writing.
I know my Auntie is pleased to see my burst of creative productivity. When she is home she hums along to the tap tap tap of my typing on a ten year old computer keyboard. When she comes home from a day of shopping or socializing I stop to help her with packages then resume writing into the quiet of the night.
She is happy I have found purpose. What she doesn't know is that I write to live. There is no purpose to being awake if I don't write. This is strange for me--a previous procrastination goddess. I hadn't begun writing fiction until six years ago when I started this story.
Within a year, I abruptly stopped and was never motivated to continue until I read about that group on Meetup. I am trying hard not to be melodramatic but this empty act of writing a book no one may read is my only life-line to the world. I secretly think this novella is becoming a novel because I know it's denouement means my own demise.
In the Event of a Water Landing...
It's been one month since I spoke with that rude, strange rich woman in a community college cafeteria. I now realize that the disaster called my life was her entertainment. I sold my soul and forgot to get the money up straight like a proper whore.
I walk along the subterranean concourse of a grand subway station. The people mill about in flashes of colors. In the midst of travelers, I have an epiphany.
I had taken a day away from writing as I grew wary of the interrupting calls from my school loan providers. It seems that I've run a foul of being in default. I explained numerous times that I was still seeking work and that my inability to pay was beyond my capabilities at this moment. I owned no property which could be seized nor any benefits with could be garnished. In effect, they would get theirs after I get mine. Their response was a resoundingly violent: your credit is screwed, you won't be able to obtain a loan to buy a house, buy a car or get further financial ad to go to school. My response was okay. They didn't understand why this turn of events didn't upset me.
I figured it out when I was sixteen years old that if I couldn't buy a house or property outright without aid of a bank, I didn't deserve to have it. Can they be serious? I should get upset that I can't get into further debt? I'm ecstatic about it!
Getting loans to pay for something I can't pay out right for has put me in this dumb situation. I definitely don't want to get further in the hole of more debt. As for a car, I had one that I fully paid for when I was in graduate school and my only financial concerns for it were to keep it filled with gas, low cost liability insurance and minor maintenance.
It was fun zipping along in my car. It gave me a sense of unfettered freedom. After four years of car ownership, I donated it to a neighborhood church. On many occasions I see the deacons driving it to their “various errands” - supposedly on God's work- but that's another story.
Now I don't need a car anymore since I have a bicycle to commute on warmer days and the underground iron horse when it is cold.
As for more schooling what the hell is more schooling gonna do for me at the ripe old age of 39? And even if I was stupid enough to think further higher education could solve my employment issue, which discipline do I focus on when most of the white collar jobs (computer science, engineering, etc) are going to lower cost workers overseas?
Even though I subversively don't want a one way ticket onto the SS US Middle Class, I feel responsible to pay my debts to my Auntie. But I am clueless as to how to do it without a job. I could work at any Mcfast food joint for minimum wage. But it wouldn't put a dent in the $60,000 I owe in student loans and credit card charges and I'd have nothing left over to repay her. I'd be in the same default status working there as I am now not working at all. I'd be working without any benefit of putting something away for retirement. I'd basically have to work until I die. This revelation disturbingly parallels my darkest thoughts as they pertain to the completion of my novella.
All of a sudden I recall having recently retrieved the mail at home and discovered that my Auntie had a life insurance policy on me to the tune of $50,000. Standing still in the midst of the crowds of people underground I had an epiphany: I was worth more dead than alive.
With six months to go until I'm forty, I realized that the indignities of living in this youth obsessed society would get worse not better for me. I don't have health insurance. A necessity as I grow older. I've begun exercising more. But a healthy lifestyle can't prevent unforeseen accidents and mishaps. Health care is a luxury I can no longer afford.
The fact that health care primarily consists of medicinals to mask unpleasant symptoms is the only thing that consoles me as I am excluded from that service. I'd rather my symptoms be listened to and the maladies that cause them cured not become addicted to dulling their sensations--effectively giving me a false sense of health and well being.
Obtaining clean food and necessary toiletries have costs rising so high that I soon won't be able to afford such necessities to take care of myself. And to ask for help beyond my Auntie's generosity would be an exercise in futility. As for my inherent value, I really hadn't produced much in my life beyond a few chapters of an unfinished book.
I have a large family but I'm closest to my Auntie. I have friends who have needed me time and time again but they have become too busy to reconnect with me when my life took its recent turns. I hold no grudges for I am an intensely private person and would not have volunteered any of the gruesome details of my troubles to them anyway.
With these few thoughts, I take stock in my life, reviewed it's balance ledger and I have a sense of peace that I choose to take my leave on my terms. I am not depressed nor angry. I don't feel any shame, just a calm peace.
It doesn't matter anymore if I finish the book. In one masterful step I can kill two birds with one stone, pun intended. I just have to figure out how to make it look like an accident so that the insurance company would pay out to my Auntie for her generosity.