David, Suicide, and We Are Still Here

An old friend of mine committed suicide last week.



I can't even properly tell you about that grief yet. I have lost family and friends before to age, infirmity, and addiction, but losing David to suicide has opened up a new kind of grief for me, a grief that piggybacks on older griefs, and grief that digs down into my own history with suicide and its place in my life.

My grief for David is also a grief for me, and while it feels selfish, and I am embarrassed to state it here, it is true, and it is necessary to this story. I have a long history with depression and suicidal thoughts, and, at 40 years old, my history with it is now 32 years long. I am so enormously glad that I am here to tell you that.

The first time that I nearly attempted it, I was eight years old. I sat on my parents' kitchen floor in the middle of the night with a knife, turning it over and over. I've been told that I could not have seriously meant such a thing at eight years old, but I did. Life was already too painful for me to bear, and I had no faith in happiness. Thankfully, my knee-jerk fear of failure and parental disappointment saved me that night.

That night in 1981 was followed by a hundred others, dotted over the last more than three decades. I've been medicated with psychiatric drugs, I've been offered electroshock therapy, I became an alcoholic. I saw psychiatrists and therapists and religious leaders. A deeply Christian woman once laid hands on my head to pull out my demons. I didn't have her faith, but I thought anything was worth trying once. I have foundered, I have fallen, I have gotten back up. Sometimes I find my way back to equilibrium, sometimes I grip the edge of it and hang on.

At no time over the last 32 years have I considered suicide out of weakness. Not once. I have considered it because the weight I bore was simply too much. My will to survive and my battles to do so, while unseen wars, have been powerful proof to me of what human strength I possess, and when I think of David's suicide and the battle that he must have fought within his heart and mind, I do not see a weak man or a failed man. He and I have both fought hard, and I am proud to have known him.

I do so very much wish, though, that David could still be here, that his war could look like mine does right now. It can't now, though, and my mind refuses to understand that there is no more David to be here. I was sure that I saw him on the street and in shops today. There's David's hat! I would think, and then the man in question would turn, and it was no longer David's hat. I wept in the back of Vietnamese café and wished him well.

I am telling you all of this, because, if you struggle with suicidal thoughts, I want you to know that you are loved. I want you to know that depression lies, that it narrows down and filters your view into a dark space that does not reflect true reality. I want you to talk about it and reach out and seek help until you find the idea/person/therapy that helps you remove the dark filter of hopelessness. I want you to know that I have fought this beast off more times than I can recall to document, and I am still here.

I want you to be able to say I am still here, because it is so very good to be here on the other side of that dark period.

There is a David-shaped hole in the universe, and I cannot take it. I simply cannot, and if I can help just one person find a way through, I've done my job, because I don't want anyone to have to touch this flavour of grief. Please check out the following resources for both prevention and reaching out:

Canada

Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention
Find a Crisis Centre (Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention)
Preventing Suicide (Canadian Mental Health Association)
National Resources

United States

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
United States National Suicide & Crisis Hotlines

International

International World-Wide Suicide & Crisis Hotlines

Please use the above resources if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or you are worried that someone you know is experiencing them, and check in with those you love who might be suffering.

We need all of you to stay with us, all of you, and I want you to be able to stand with me and say We are still here.

We are still here.

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David's brother sang "Nature Boy" for him at the memorial, so this one's for him:

Happy Holidays? Not for All of Us, and That's Okay.

This seasonal foofaraw — feel the peace, joy, and love, goddamnit! — does not lend itself to clear vision. It's easy to think that our inability to make a complete foundational shift during an imposed holiday is our own fault rather than it just being the reality that we are human beings whose existences don't bend around the commercial and religious calendars. It's not our fault, though. It's actually completely unreasonable to demand this of ourselves.

I'm all for reasonableness. I'm all for preserving our full range of emotions. Not a fan of Christmas? Me, either! Does gift giving feel obligatory and excessive to you? Me, too! Do family gatherings have you breaking out the anxiety meds? Of course! Christmas can shine a pretty harsh light into dark corners.

The holidays can be a hard time for some of us, being that it presents us with difficult situations regarding our relationships, finances, and basic constitutions. I'm an introvert who is given to anxiety attacks when buying gifts and who wobbles between peace/love and grief/despair, for instance. I want you to know that it's normal to be who you are, that you're not bad just because you might feel bad, and, if it helps, what's left of this holiday season is brief.

Personally, I'm dreaming of the joy of July to make it through the hard parts, and I'm embracing the love I can when I can. I'm letting myself eat and make merry when it's good, but I'm also letting myself retreat into back rooms to play Scrabble on my iPhone when it's not so good. I am deeply grateful for the love in my life and the peace I've found, but I can't pretend it's all warmth and light, and that's okay.

You and me? We're good. We really are.

From me to all of you who find this season difficult, happier holidays. I got your back.

Sometimes You Have to Weep Under a Sesame Street Grover Hat at the Mall

Jeather. Seriously. I came across it while I was Christmas shopping today.



I thought I was maybe having a moody kind of day, that kind of day where you think bad thoughts but then eat ice cream and feel better until you realize how fat you are and oh shit you have PMS, but then I ran into the reality of jeather, a noncommital hybrid that is neither like jeans nor leather and inspires the phrase stylistically flaccid. My eyes spontaneously spurted tears onto this new material, and I knew that I had veered into a much more serious stretch of the emotional spectrum than I had at first suspected.

I really cried on jeather today at the mall. Jeather was my tipping point.



I didn't want jeather to be my tipping point, though, and, because I was experiencing that particular kind of crazy that lets me think I can dig my way out of sadness by being quirky and a little spontaneous, I compounded jeather tears with public shame by ending up in the back of a Boe's fighting back sobs while wearing a Sesame Street Grover hat.

One minute I was sure that all I needed to do was try on the most googly-eyed hat I could find, and the next minute I was barely through the first line of C Is for Cookie — silently in my head, of course — before I was sniffling and dripping tears on a patch of ugly shopping mall Berber with a big pink nose sticking out of my forehead.

Who knew that ludicrous consumer goods could be so heartbreaking?



In an effort to lead a life less weepy, I went home, put on my favourite comfort sweater, and settled down for a long, distracting evening of Happy Endings and chicken fingers. Life still had some tears in store for me, though, because a train of not one, not two, but three cats tromped across my stomach, bent down to sniff, and came up with Stink Face, that tell-tale, mouth-breathing, dropped-jaw look cats have when they smell something particularly disgusting that they love, because they love nothing more than each other's misplaced biological waste, it seems.

Curious about what on my person could be causing such a rash of Stink Face, I sniffed the bottom of my sweater, and it was cat urine, people. My favourite comfort sweater was rank with the stank of male cat urine.

And then I remembered something so terrible that I continue to shudder when I think about it: earlier in the evening, I actually picked mystery food off that sweater and ATE IT.



Winter is hard enough on me even without the clusterfrack of seasonal whatnot, jeather, crying under a Cookie Monster hat in public, and eating off a cat pee sweater, but now I have to find myself at the end of this blog entry with nothing pithy to say? I'm done. Done!

THIS IS ALL TOO DAMN MUCH.

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PS. The Palinode can attest to my state of mind.