TRIGGER WARNING: This essay duet discusses suicide and depression.
I’ve taken the title of this blog from a Bukowski poem. He titled that one well. September is not only Suicide Prevention & Awareness month, it is a month that my ghosts walk with me. Lucky for me I guess, my ghosts like to make jokes and remind me of the very vivacious people they were when they walked this plane – people that were full of life, larger than life, with sense of humors and fierce passions that make life worthwhile.
It’s hard for us to talk about suicide. But it’s such an important conversation to have, to start. Suicide touches most all of our lives in many excruciating and tragic ways. Before I talk about it, I mean get deep into it, I must say that people who take their own lives are not selfish for doing so. They are in pain. Pain that is hard to translate if you haven’t lived with it yourself. Unimaginable unless you’ve been through it. One of the most on the nose descriptions this writer knows of goes like this:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness‘ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom their invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e., the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’ can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
David Foster Wallace
Unfortunately for the rest of us, the trenchant novelist David Foster Wallace did understand that terror beyond the fall. If you want to read more about his remarkable life and battle with major despressive disorder, this article from Rolling Stone is illuminating. It’s hard to translate the polar pull of suicide for those that are not personally touched by it. Another metaphor I like is from Therese Borchard, whose archived article [What Suicidal Depression Feels Like] is one of my favorite articles against “selfish suicide”. Written shortly after Robin Williams took his own life, Borchard does a damn good job of underscoring my point and the imagery of Wallace’s words; she compares suicidal people’s feelings to the impulse to sneeze.
My journey through life has included MDD (major depressive disorder) since I was very young. In fact, in youth, I had insomnia to add to my racing thoughts and painful self concept. I often felt that I was “the only one” who felt the things I felt. These feelings of being alone can be rationalized better as an adult, but I don’t know if they go away completely. I think it’s a common thread between many humans . . . wondering “Am I crazy?” or believing “I’m a monster,” or saying to yourself, “I thought I was over this.” Just don’t hold it in. If you need to cry, do it. Open the dams and let the river flow through, let your feelings pass through. It’s how we process and heal.
It’s okay to have these thoughts. You are not your thoughts. Have that thought, and let it go. It doesn’t have to belong to you. You have thousands of thoughts every day. Don’t cling to the ones that don’t serve you. Cling to the good ones. Read that book. Pet that dog. Get a spoon, and dig in to that ice cream. Little things don’t have to be little. Please remember: There is nothing wrong with you. It’s not your fault. It is your responsibility to help yourself stop reliving patterns that no longer serve you.
With no further rambling, may I present the real reason for this post, a loving archived post dedicated to two of my friends who were claimed by this harshest of tragedies.
In Memoriam . 1 February 2015
originally posted February 1, 2015 on my prior blog but written November 2014 and dedicated to Jess Autumn Bannon and Alexis “Leki” Gotts:
She died not two weeks after you. I was beside myself again, and you were back, weighing on my mind. I wanted to write sonnets to my dead. Instead, I worried about whether my gum disease was aging my arteries, while picking at my skin in a mirror.
I could hear you mocking me from behind the bar. But you really grabbed life by the horns and even at the end, you made me wish I had the balls to choose as quickly.
She didn’t choose to die like you did. But she chose the drug that did the dying and I was still here with my mirror and my fear.
You and she–I gravitated to in much the same way, or was it you both that gravitated to me? How do you talk about being bummed that realistically the planet seems to have taken a turn in the wrong direction and you don’t see a way that things will ever be remedied, and you’re not even sure flossing will fix your gum situation, and I wish I could live my life or die my death like you much less be stuck in my own mind-Limbo.
Well, I won’t be stuck anymore. I’m gaining momentum. Your memoriam is my motivation. Remembering what my real dreams are. Don’t be nostalgic, just find your daimon, your true self, and then–Simplify. Don’t get caught up with worry or the details, just speak clearly and confidently. Focus on the present achievable task and then move on without judgment. Find fulfillment with little victories. Be content in this moment, which is all there is.
You both have left us here on earth. Perhaps Jupiter with her storms and rage is
where you reside now, just bumping into her for the first time. I bet you guys throw a raucous party.
I’ll let you both rest now, as an earth-walker I’m gonna stick to confiding in my cat and admiring children and learning to let go and have faith. It suits me better.
If you are experiencing depression and find you are considering suicide or don’t know how to continue living your life, please reach out to a friend or one of these resources. You are somebody. Don’t lose hope. “Your story isn’t over yet.” Your life is worthwhile, not only to you, but to the rest of us.
Friend or stranger – I am glad you stumbled upon this blog, and I want you to know that I wrote this post from seven years ago and this new post on suicide as much for myself as for anyone who happens to read these words. You are not alone. I may not have planned a way out because my damn ethical code ties me morally to my higher power, the universe, the Great Spirit, my friends, and my family, which all outweighs the fear of the flames and the terror of falling for me. But I do understand what it’s like to fantasize about death. To long for the darkness and quiet and stillness and nothing. I know that it seems more peaceful by far than the painful way my brain works at times. But I also know what goes up must come down, and vice versa. I feel this is the same for my depression. I have to wait it out, treading water, trying not to panic so I don’t sink and drown.
I choose to find my escape in books and streaming shows and films or planning an adventure or getting lost in nature or distracting myself with crafts or connecting with my family playing games or talking about the spiritual in us and all around us. I have to make that escape more valuable than the ultimate.
Trust that mysteriously everything is a cycle and the wheel of fortune always swings around, just as the waves of depression will throughout your life. Perhaps the cold pain of the darkness allows us to experience some more radiant warmth when we are in the light than the average neurotypical person. I have to believe that I have a purpose and life is worth living. I have to believe my purpose is to leave this world a little better. I must pen words so that others know without doubt that they are not the only one feeling this human. This flawed. This imperfect.
The same is true for you. You are irreplaceable. You are significant. You have value. Your crack is where the light shines in to paraphrase Rumi. Support your escape – any escape that brings you closer to yourself and to other humans. To the divine. And if it’s just hurting too much, and you can barely exist in your skin, reach out to me, or a friend, or one of these resources:
Call 988 – the new Mental Health Hotline number
Your Story Isn’t over Yet – Project Semicolon
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
US National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI)
What suicidal depression feels like by Therese Borchard
“Requiem for a Dream” Aaron Swartz’s story in the New Yorker
They don’t make it the beautiful die in flame— suicide pills, rat poison, rope what— ever... they rip their arms off, throw themselves out of windows, they pull their eyes out of the sockets, reject love reject hate reject, reject. they don’t make it the beautiful can’t endure, they are butterflies they are doves they are sparrows, they don’t make it. one tall shot of flame while the old men play checkers in the park one flame, one good flame while the old men play checkers in the park in the sun. the beautiful are found in the edge of a room crumpled into spiders and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left, they were so beautiful. they don’t make it, the beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives. lovely and brilliant: life and suicide and death as the old men play checkers in the sun in the park. "What's the use of a title?" a poem by Charles Bukowski (title reference)
wax poetic exquisite corpse 