988

 

Before I jump into what I want to say here, let me assure certain family members and friends—you know who you are, the three of you who check on me after I talk about this sort of thing—that I am feeling fine and on the bright side of the rainbow today.

Some weeks ago, I called the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. I didn’t call because I was in crisis, so I wasn’t on the phone very long. I just wanted to see how the system worked and how long it took to actually speak with a caring person on the other end. Turns out, not long. In less than a minute, I connected with a gentle-voiced woman who asked, “How are you feeling today?” I told her that I was feeling fine, that I only wanted to try the system so that I could write about it. I thanked her for her time, and we ended the call quickly so that she could help others who were actually in need.

It’s been a long time coming, and I’m glad the number is now available. Three digits. 988. Easy to remember in a crisis.

It was decades ago that I wrote my first article on suicide prevention. At the time, I was living in Rancho Cucamonga, and I wrote occasional columns for the Daily Bulletin newspaper. Days after that first piece was published, a gentleman called my home, apologized for having obtained my number from information, and went on to thank me for writing the article. He’d lost his fifteen-year-old son to suicide the year before. We talked for an hour. The man was broken, and he said what I’ve heard repeated so many times since then: “We just didn’t see it coming.”

This is what I know about those who are serious about ending their lives: They try very, very hard not to let anyone know. So, my “I’m feeling fine” at the top of this post would be something I would definitely say if I were definitely not feeling fine. It’s a conundrum, I know.

What is critical, if we are to help those we love who consider taking their own lives, is paying attention, and paying attention long before plans are made. If someone talks about feeling hopeless, or giving up, or having no purpose, or of experiencing unbearable pain, that’s when we need to listen. To care. To reach out nonjudgmentally.

A trained therapist can help, but unless you are one, please don’t offer advice to someone who is hopelessly sad. Offer a hug. Offer unconditional love. Offer time—to listen or just be with that person.

And, bear with me; it’s not my intention to preach or instruct, but if I could just make a suggestion from personal experience about taking the time to be with a person who is feeling hopeless or sad or depressed. Listening is key, if your sorrowful friend or family member feels like talking. But it’s not necessary to draw them out about what is troubling them. If you ask, “What’s bothering you?” you’re apt to receive a nonspecific answer like “Everything.” Let them talk if they feel like talking. Be silent, if that’s what they prefer. Or talk about the mundane aspects of your life, what you saw when you walked your dog or how you need to get the oil changed in the car. What’s not helpful is trying to “joke” a person out of their sadness. Please, I beg of you, don’t ever say, “Ah, come on. Cheer up!” Understand that it is beyond the realm of possibility for someone in this state to switch on the happiness chandelier.

You may have heard that this time of year, the holiday season, is the most critical time of year for depressed individuals, that the suicide rate increases around Christmas. In fact, it does not. Statistically, the most suicides of the year occur in April. Yep. Right when spring is springing, and everything seems new and fresh. I would speculate, however, that those feelings of loneliness and isolation that often lead to a suicide attempt begin months earlier and simply reach their peak by springtime.

We have this time, however, during the holidays, to check in with our friends and family members who lean toward melancholy. And for my friends—you know who you are—who find your loneliness deepening through these winter months, I’m here for you. Reach out, however you care to, by text or phone or email or whatever. I’ll listen. Or just sit with you. Or tell you what I saw when I walked Thomas or Maya. Or, if you’re willing, call 988. You don’t have to wait until you’re in crisis to call. There are kind people waiting to listen anonymously to anything you have to say. And don’t forget that I love you… just as you are.

 

After After Life

 

This blog post is about a television show, but it is also about suicide, so if you’re triggered in any way by that content, please feel free to click away; you have my blessing and my wish for a stellar day.

Also: If you believe suicide is “the coward’s way out,” or that it is “a long-term solution to a short-term problem,” or that when a person has the extraordinary courage to admit they may be suicidal, they’re just a “drama queen” or “crying out for attention,” you can click away as well. Just bugger off. You’ll get the day you deserve.

Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but these are all things that have been said to me over the years, quite insensitively, I might add. And here’s a few more gems:

From my ex-husband: “It’s part of your life’s script to be sad, so you’re always going to be sad, no matter what.” (What in fecking hell does that even mean?)

From a colleague: “We all feel despair. Life is mostly hard and depressing, with only the rare, occasional bright spot of joy. That’s what we live for. So that someday—maybe—we might feel joy again.” (Just shoot me now, then.)

From a friend: “All that depression stuff is just brain chemistry. These days, fixing it is just a matter of finding the right medication.” (Well then! So good to know!)

If you’re new to the blog, and you’ve never read my memoir, The Dogs Who Saved Me, let me just say briefly that several times in my life, I have been clinically depressed. Twice I have been suicidal, the first time when I was fifteen. That time, I hardly ate or slept, and all I thought about was how to kill myself—without failing, because I was terrified of being shoved off to a psych ward—and if you don’t know me, just trust me; I had reason enough to despair. But time moved me forward (and out of certain situations), and I got better.

I kept a journal during those dark times. I still have it. And it seems as though Ricky Gervais has been reading it. Because he says that he is “fine” and “happy,” so how else could he fully understand what the absolute edge of despair is? And then offer a depiction as vivid as he does with the series he has written and directed, After Life? It’s brilliant. It’s absolutely brilliant. One hundred percent spot on with its dialog about the aching, empty loneliness that brings some of us to the brink and asking “What’s the point?” Or, more precisely and in his words, “What’s the fucking point?”

If you haven’t seen it, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s funny. Like, laugh out loud funny. But also cringeworthy in some scenes. (Season 3, Episode 4, “Kath” goes on a date with a teacher, and I swear to Buddha, I dated that guy. He snaps his fingers to get the server’s attention, tells Kath repeatedly to take her elbows off the table, and makes her feel, in his overbearing, condescending, demanding way, stupid and about two inches tall. I could barely watch it, it hit so close to home for me.) The show is also more than a bit raunchy, yet so heartbreakingly sweet in some scenes that my tears just flow and flow, and I wonder if it’s because I feel a touch of the old sadness or because of my relief at the realization that I’m still here, that I stayed long enough to see my life become good and rewarding and worth all the pain. Or both.

The premise of the show is that “Tony” (the main character, played by Gervais) has lost his wife, Lisa, to cancer, and he is so angry and heartbroken and alone without her that he moves through life inflicting his grief upon everyone around him but simultaneously trying to find a way out of his personal hell. Every time I watch it, I want to go along on one of his long walks with his dog (a gorgeous German Shepherd—and may the Universe bless Gervais for all his work in animal rescue), and I want to tell him, “Hang on, Tony. You’ll find a tiny ray of hope, and it will get brighter as the days go by, and life will look beautiful again. Just trust me.” And as each episode ends, I think, “Thank goodness it’s just a show, and he is “fine” and “happy” in real life (whatever that is).

The truth is, not everyone is fine and happy. I am. Now. But I haven’t always been. So I know what that road to recovery feels like. How heavy each step feels as you trudge forward at an agonizingly slow pace, pressed down by the enormous weight of all the pain you carry. I’m here to tell you, it will get easier. Not tomorrow or the day after. Not this week. It will get easier so gradually that you won’t feel the difference as the weight is lifted. You’ll just be halfway through your day one day and realize you haven’t thought of taking yourself out today. Or you actually smiled at someone. Or you made actual plans to do something you enjoy.

If you are feeling that way, please never hesitate to reach out or get help (from a professional, not some asshole acquaintance or colleague or significant other who just doesn’t get it).

I see you.

I acknowledge your cry for help as absolutely legitimate.

You deserve the same happiness as everyone else on the planet.

I love you.

National Suicide Hotline: 800-273-8255

This is a link to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 

B:P3 Early Departure

 

 

 

In Memoriam: 

Scott, you left way too early, honey. There was still so much good stuff....

 

Some time ago a friend mentioned the book A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, in a way that made me feel as if I'd been missing something without knowing it because I hadn't read it. Instead of buying the book or at least putting it on my to-read list, I started reading about the book instead. I quickly learned of Toole's suicide--prior to the book being published. Sigh....

 

The mythology within the literary community is that Toole was so despondent over his failure to find a publisher for his book, he killed himself, at which point his mother took up the cause, eventually finding a publisher who agreed to take it on--to great success. Toole was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for the book. It was first published in 1980 but today is still an Amazon best seller.

 

The truth about Toole is far more complex, of course.

 

I have yet to read A Confederacy of Dunces. But I did read Butterfly in the Typewriter by Cory MacLauchlin, which details the life and death of Toole. (The title comes from writing by Toole himself, who described himself at one point as a butterfly being smashed to death by a typewriter key, an accurate reference, I suppose, to the fragility of many creative minds.)

 

I'm not here to recommend MacLauchlin's book. (Sorry, fellow author.) It's far too long and rambling for its purpose, a bit repetitious and not well edited. (Sorry again. Truly.) Something happened, though, just as I was getting to the part of the book I'd wanted to read, the part about Toole's suicide, the part that explained what he did and what led up to it.

 

Just about the time I read about Toole's mental collapse and subsequent suicide, a cousin called to tell me that our youngest cousin had killed himself. He had a wife and kids and grandkids, but his mental anguish, his degree of depression, his "psychache," as Edwin Shneidman, founder of the American Association of Suicidology, would put it, had become unbearable, so he took it upon himself to end it.

 

I cried for days. At his loss (at Toole's as well), at the grief his wife and children will bear for the rest of their lives, at the agony he must have endured in the weeks, months, years before he felt he could no longer go on.

 

The "if onlys" come hard and fast during these times. If only we had a one-dose-fits-all pill to cure debilitating sadness. If only he could have waited just a little longer, until that dark depression eased its grip on him a bit. Because it always does. It always gets better eventually. Ask anyone who has contemplated an early departure but decided against it, and they will say the same: "I was in a very dark place then, but I'm glad I lived to see/to hear/to experience...."

 

I'm glad I lived.

 

If I had taken my life at 15, I never would have experienced the ineffable joy of watching my children grow up... then my grandchildren. I would never have known how powerful and heady it can feel to set a difficult and far-off goal--publish a book, earn a degree--and keep slogging forward until it has been reached. I would not have experienced the humbling yet noble and rewarding duty of guiding young people toward their own goals and aspirations.

 

Yes, sadness still haunts me at times. I still struggle to shrug off that heavy coat of my heart-crushing childhood. (Butterfly... typewriter....) But this is what I know: As stormy as the night may be, the morning always comes. The sun will rise, the light will shine, spring emerges after winter and brings warmth, relief, and new growth. I have a thousand things to look forward to, still. I'm glad I lived.

 

If you have come upon this post in a state of deep sadness and you have considered or are considering making an early departure, please, please, I beg of of you, talk to someone first. Just... talk. No, there are no easy answers, there is no magic pill. It's hard. Damn hard. But it will be so worth it if you can just hang on another day. There are people out here who care. I promise.

 

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 

Checking out

Fair warning: This post includes a frank discussion of suicide.

If you're the type of person who believes suicide is a failure or weakness of some sort, or that it's "a long-term solution to a short-term problem," move on, tend to your own business. Nothing to see here. 

If you've clicked on this link because that dark cloud is threatening, let me go no further before I share this information:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Or you can visit the website at suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Or you can click here to chat online instead of on the phone.

Or if you prefer to text, text HOME to 741741.

The TTY number is: 1-800-799-4889.

The veterans' crisis line is 1-800-273-8255.

If you feel awkward or uncomfortable about calling because you're not sure what to say or how it works, click here for a brief summary of exactly what happens when you call. (Thank you, BuzzFeed News. I love y'all for that.)

While you're summoning the courage to do that, go to Netflix and watch the entire first season of After Life with Ricky Gervais. The episodes are only 30 minutes, and there are only six, so you can binge watch it if you like. Trust me on this one; the series is delightfully course and profane, and you'll find yourself laughing at things you feel guilty laughing at--despite your sadness. Just do it.

And one more note before I go any further with my own stuff: I just want to state quite honestly that I am fine today. I know that over the next couple of days, some certain friends who know me well and love me anyway will call or text to check in and see how I'm doing. Because they'll be concerned. For those folks: I'm good right now. I promise. I love you, too.

So....
A doctor killed herself last week. Lorna Breen was a forty-nine-year-old emergency room physician who worked in New York City. She contracted COVID-19. Her body recovered, but tragically, her psyche did not.

I haven't stopped thinking about her or feeling heartbroken for her family.

Edwin Schneidman, author of The Suicidal Mind, coined the term "psychache" to describe the psychological torment a suicidal person endures when he or she experiences an unresolved sadness or yearning for so long, suicide seems the only escape from the unbearable psychological pain. This pain, by the way, worsens with stress.

You see the problem here.

I have no doubt there are far more people than we realize hovering on the brink right now, ruminating on what a relief it would be to simply check out.

Because life has some really shitty aspects right now. What are we supposed to be doing at this point in the pandemic? Should we keep isolating? Break out? Wear a mask everywhere? Or give up because others aren't? Will we be able to meet our basic needs for food and toiletries ongoing? Will we lose everything in our retirement accounts because the stock market keeps fluctuating? If we get sick, will we recover?  Or languish alone in a hospital room until we die? When will we ever get to see our friends and family members again?

We're all trying to sort our way through, and every day is frustrating and exasperating and don't even get me started on how really, really, lonely this isolation can be for some folks. Even those of us who are profound introverts enjoy the company of a few close friends. I haven't seen my friends or my kids or my grandkids in months. Yes, we talk on the phone. Sort of. Is texting the same as talking?

Loneliness eats away at potential suicides. And I'll tell you a secret about us: We don't tell people when we're lonely. In fact, we tend to withdraw even more. Because when we get lonely, we assume it's because others have stopped calling because they've stopped caring. I know, I know, it's not true, but the fact is, self-loathing and depression are bosom buddies.

Most people struggling with clinical depression have learned through conditioned response to stop mentioning it. Because mentioning it often brings on platitudes that, at the very least, don't help ("You just need to get out more, have some fun once in a while"), and at worst, might push us a bit closer to the edge ("You wouldn't feel this way if you weren't so self-absorbed all the time").

So we back away quietly (so you won't notice we're missing), wrap ourselves in a mantel of sad thoughts, and go sit somewhere (on a couch, in a bed) so we can listen to sad music or watch sad or dark TV or movies or videos.

This is what I imagine happened with Dr. Lorna Breen. She went from working 18-hour days with colleagues she loved and patients who needed her to being quarantined alone with a disease, day after lonely day. The feeling is that the world, that life, goes on without you, and you aren't needed anyway... so why linger?

I'll tell you--from experience--why you should linger: Because it gets better. No, really, it does. Life is just shitty at times. There is definitely a yin and yang to it, though, a balance of pain and pleasure, sadness and elation. Yes, there are moments of intense despair. But there are dogs. And sunsets. And sunrises. And incredible constellations stretched across the night sky. (Go on, pry yourself out, have a look.) There's ice cream and lasagna. And there are books. Thousands and thousands of books that will transport you so far into your imagination you will forget (if just for a time) how shitty life feels right now.

And there are definitely people who care. I met one of my most beloved friends in an online chat room for clinically depressed people. We have been friends for 20 years now, and I treasure that friendship because he gets it. He'll always be there for me, and I for him. (And just as a side note, if you're thinking an online chat room for really depressed people might be a bad idea, it's the polar opposite of what you would imagine--lots of highly intelligent, very caring, very funny people riffing on the absurdity and/or shittiness of life can be profoundly entertaining. Trust me.)

If you're feeling that dark shadow closing in, please, please reach out. Call someone who is non-judgmental and supportive. Or call the lifeline number above. Sometimes talking to a stranger is much easier than opening up to someone you know. And yes, I realize how very hard it is to take that first step. Just know that there is someone here who knows how hard it is... and how much better you'll feel after you've taken it.

Getting Ink

2016 was a year that was chock-full of truly awful events, the worst of which was the death—by suicide—of my goofy, sweet, troubled friend John. On and off throughout his life, John had battled with depression, self-medicating along the way, getting clean and sober, doing battle again, and on and on. Later in his life, he began to deal with multiple health issues; he quit smoking to get healthy, only to gain enough weight to put increased stress on his heart and lungs. Over the years, he was in and out of relationships. When he took his life, he had been single for some time. “He was just so lonely,” his sister told me later. I had spent time with John in the months prior to his death… but I never saw it coming—and I am one who truly knows the signs.

Two years before John died, a new young friend, Michael, also took his life. I had met him through a writing event that he had put together for other young people, a contest for high school students to help them exhibit their writing and, in the long run, gain confidence in their writing skills. At one of the preparatory events, his father mentioned to me as an aside that writing had been the one stabilizing factor in Michael’s life. “He’s always had difficulty in school fitting in,” his father said. This resonated with me. As a depressed child, I could sit with a pencil and notebook and simply write whatever came to mind. It anchored me, gave me purpose and a sense that I could do something not everyone could do. Robert Frost referred to the act of writing verse as “a momentary stay against confusion.” When I read that for the first time, I was in college, and the idea resonated with me so strongly, it made my heart pound. My journals, kept over the decades since my children were young, contain many pages that were filled on days when I was too sad to function. The act of writing down my thoughts was often enough to calm me, to help organize the chaos and confusion in my head. Setting the emotions carefully down on paper helped me distance myself from them and find resolution to some of the factors contributing to that chaos.

I’ve been alone for a very long time now. I understand loneliness, especially as an older person. I also understand isolation, that feeling of not fitting in, of not finding a tribe to belong to, and of needing to pour onto paper the words that seemed locked away otherwise. And I fully understand the need to make the mental anguish and emotional pain stop. In my life, there have been times when I questioned why I was even continuing to go forward. What’s the point? I often wondered. Of course, intellectually, I understand what “the point” is; it’s my children. It’s my family. Now, it is putting words on a page that just may resonate with someone else, help them heal or laugh or cry or feel less alone. I understand my gift, and what I am to do with it. I doubt that I will feel suicidal again in my life.

But… just as a reminder… and to honor the lives of Michael and John (because I miss their light in this world), I have gotten my first tattoo. It’s a semi-colon. If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see it there on my right wrist, a reminder daily that yes, sometimes our life story needs a “pause.” But it will continue. Life sometimes hurts like a slap in the face from a trusted friend. It’s shocking and it stings and we wonder in the moment how we will recover. But we can. If we wait a bit, things do get better. The pain does ease enough to be tolerable. With time, it’s possible to see beauty in the world again.

When Chris (Christopher Lloyd Davis of Reflect Tattoo Studio in Redlands, California—a former band nerd and beautiful human being) was situating the tattoo on my arm, he said, “I can move it down further so you can cover it if you need to.”

“No,” I told him, “I’m never going to want to cover this up. I want to see it every day. And I want everyone else to see it as well.”

So now the daily reminder is there.

If you have been previously unaware that a semi-colon tattoo is generally done to honor someone who has taken his or her own life, I encourage you to use your search engine to look at images of semi-colon tattoos. Most are far more beautiful than mine, but mine is serving its purpose just fine.

TheNational Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. If you’ve ever had one of those days (or as I used to say, “one of those lives”), jot that down and stick it somewhere safe. Sometimes we just need another voice to reassure us that the pain will ease, things will get better. A pause is fine before going forward once again.

Tis the season...

I didn't write a blog post in November. In fact, I didn't write a single thing (except a one-page journal entry) for the entire month. Although I had several writing projects going, and I'd said that I was going to do NaNoWriMo, I didn't, and I pretty much abandoned everything regarding writing. Or singing. I didn't sing, either, which is pretty unusual for me.

While everyone else was weeping over or celebrating the results of the national election, I was learning that a close family friend had taken his own life. So yeah, as time periods go, November really blew. In most years, November is a good month for me (despite the dreaded time change and the ever-expanding darkness). Our family celebrates a big Thanksgiving at my brother's house, and I see people I don't see the rest of the year. But this year my brother had the stomach flu... and certain family members were unhappy with other family members.... You know, typical family stuff (though in other years, we've been great at setting all that aside).

So Thanksgiving was canceled, essentially. And John opted out of a life that was fraught with pain and loneliness. And my son, who had originally planned to stay a week with me, ended up staying for two. When I returned from driving him to San Diego where he will hop a flight back to Ohio, I told myself this: "You may now return to living inside your head."

Because that's what it takes for me to produce anything on the page. I have to ponder, contemplate, muse and reflect. I have to be still in the silence and listen to what my heart is singing about. Whatever the song turns out to be is what I am feeling. All that is left, then, is to determine why I am feeling what I am feeling.

My son has been gone nearly twenty-four hours and mostly what I have heard is silence. I did not hear the owl calling last night nor did I hear the coyotes howling. The churning of the washer and the hum of the refrigerator are all that are breaking through.

I don't know what to think or feel or say about John's death. Of all my friends who struggle with the darkness, he was the least likely on my list to finally say, "I'm done." I'm trying not to feel guilty. (If I'd called more often... made more of an effort to go see him....) Intellectually, that's wasted energy; it wasn't my fault, was not my decision, and it certainly won't change things for John. I think I'm also trying not to feel relieved or at least admit to those feelings. John was a big, hard man and he lived a big, hard life (to riff off of Eddie Vedder's song). Once his body began to break down from all its years of hard living, his pain was monumental. And he wanted to be loved. He desperately wanted to find exquisite, transcendental, romantic love (as we all do, really, if the truth were told), but that had proven to be an elusive dream... and he was nearing seventy. I'm sure he felt his time had come and gone, and there was little left to live for. The last several times we'd talked or spent time together, he'd cried. He wanted to go off-roading in his 4x4 truck and take long motorcycle rides on his Harley, and he wanted to do all that without feeling stiff and tired and achy the next day. And he wanted to fall head over heels in love. In short, he wanted to be young again. I wish on all that is sacred to me I could have helped him do that. But I couldn't.

I guess I'm glad Thanksgiving was canceled. It would not have been the same without John's booming laughter (followed by his horrendous chronic smoker's cough) at the table. It's almost like the Universe felt my pain and said, "You know what, let's just skip this one. Next year will be better."

Next year will. Time will give me opportunity to muse and reflect. And hey, back there a couple of paragraphs ago, I think I started to hear a song.