The Math of Love (In Light of the Recent Violence In Boston)

These are the cojones it took for me to write this post.

In light of the world being what it is today, which is what it's always been — beautiful, immense, and overwhelming in both good and crushing ways — I feel moved to tell you all that I love you.

Stop rolling your eyes over there, you. I see that.

I really do mean it, though. It is so easy to wrap my judgement around myself, protect myself from fear of the things I cannot control, both real and imagined, and congratulate myself on not being a conspiracy theorist or a bigot or a media outlet using this to further a self-serving agenda.

That's my fear talking, though, and deeper than that, when I really dig into the meat of me, the birthplace of my compassion, the place from which our connection to each other springs, that's my grief talking. To really grieve the hard things that happen on the larger human scale means that I have to acknowledge our pain and our fear, the grief that lies not only in the people I can easily label Good, but that also lies in the people I can easily label Bad. Our human connection does not end with my subjective valuation of your life and actions.

While I sat with this grief this morning and thought about what that grief means, how it comes out of the bones-deep compassion we often, and quite naturally, bury under layers of self-protection, I realized that what was really down there was love, and I realized that maybe someone out there needs to hear that this love exists out there for them, no matter who it is that is doing the loving.

The brilliant part of this is that if someone as faulty as I am can love you today — and, seriously, I can be a fairly terrible individual given the right circumstances — it only stands to reason that at least one other person on this giant planet loves you, too.

If you know the math of love, and I know deep down in the meat of you that you do, and if we are all loved by at least two people, which we have already established is almost certainly true, you know that our capacity for committing love-based acts of goodness is and always has been boundless.

So, I love you, and I want you to walk with that today.

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:

Thank You, Nellie

My maternal grandmother died this morning at 8:00 a.m. My mother sat with her through the night, and when she stepped out to grab a cup of coffee, my grandma made her exit.

She had been telling people that grandpa, who passed away just over a year ago, has been coming to visit her, and that she is ready to go join him. Even with increasing confusion due to dementia and other health issues, she knew when it was her time and let us know.

And now she's with grandpa again, at least as we understand these things, and I'm happy that she doesn't have to hang onto a life anymore that she was ready to leave.

My urge is to curse this whole life/death/rebirth business while, at the same time, I am grateful to it for letting us exit when we're done. This grief thing is a funny business.

Thank you for your life, Nellie Bartel. It was a good one.

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PS. I also wrote this poem: "We All Straddle the Line (on the loss of my maternal grandmother)".