I saw a hanged man once.
Once by a busy road.
With a broken neck in his office suit.
Freshly hanged in the morning.
Some walked by unseen
Some could not look
Some did not bother
Some hanged around
To investigate
But I felt, I felt him a good half an hour
What he felt before he hanged
And I cried his tears
Because I could not be there
To cry with him
I could not share his guilt
He wasn't there anymore
So, I hanged with him, a stranger.
True account of a hanged man.
It is not a common scene, once you see it you would not be unsee it. It is something to see a hanged man from a movie scene, but it is entirely different to see it in real. I saw a hanged man once and it had carved an image in my memory. Like in Anna Karenina, obsessed with the image of an oncoming train, it had created an image in me.
I saw the hanged man about fifteen years ago, in one morning when I was walking to the university. Just adjacent to the faculty wall there was a tree, and he has hanged himself. He was in an office suite. Lifeless body hanged on a rope, arms by the side, and I did not see his face. The neck clearly broken, just hanging. What a life?
I am 100% sure, everyone walked by who was curious have long forgotten the hanged man. I can assume the coroners forgot that there was a hanged man. I am so sure that all the men and women who walked by the road had forgotten him. I am sure not every day his loved ones did think about him. Maybe he did not have loved ones at all. Maybe he was all alone and bankrupt. Maybe he could not face the guild of facing the society about a crime that he had done. Maybe it was love, maybe it was depression. I am sure he could not bear the pain anymore.
How often do we forget our real problems and decorate our pretty faces at work with a fake smile. Just like a fake plant. Just like a fake plant I gifted. You could water it, you could not water it, you could ignore it you could hug it. But the fake plant will not feel anything. That is the reality of some of us. Maybe the hanged man was a fake plant, and he could not feel anything anymore.
Just like everyone else, I forgot him. I've got on with my life like everyone else. We cannot live others' lives; we cannot help others. I have even played "Hang a man" with my friends years after that. I have learnt "hangman's fracture" and knew how to identify a suicide from a murder. I have seen broken neck bones and never thought of the hanged man by the road. Yet, after all these years, I have to write about the stranger who hanged himself by the road. Insignificant it may seem; we own a world inside our heads. So, only us know how heavy it is.
In a previous article I wrote about the worst kind of mental pain and how to overcome it, With an analogy of carrying a heavy ball in the hand and diving into see. So, if you ever feel like a fake plant. Please feel free to share your thoughts.
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