On Valentine's Day I learned another friend had taken his life. This is my survivor's diary for Suicide No. 2. I humbly commit these thoughts to my friend Brian Minton who killed himself in May of 2009 somewhere around what would've been his 40th birthday and also to my friend Stanley Armistead who took his life on June 14, 2010 at the age of 47. Contrary to the theme song to M*A*S*H*, suicide is NOT painless. Not to us survivors.
I have survived other deaths. My 17 year old sister succumbed to Hodgkin's Disease in 1986. My big hearted Daddy died at age 70 shortly after having had quadruple bypass surgery. Both of these deaths left huge holes in my heart, but losing Brian & Stan to suicide...well, it is a keen pain. A "wind blows right through me" pain. Suicide leaves me feeling sucker punched by life. Surviving any death begs questions of life. Surviving a suicide begs questions of life writ LARGE. The question I am pondering tonight in light of Suicide No. 2 is this: "What does it say to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society?"-Krishnamurthi To paraphrase in my own vernacular, "Are some souls too sensitive to survive this world?" Or to use Don McClean's take on it from his song, "Vincent" "And when no hope was left in sight on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers sometimes do. But I could've told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."
You see Brian, Stan and I share some things in common beyond our intelligence, creativity and adoration of dogs. Brian, while undiagnosed, suffered from clinical depression. Stan was diagnosed as Schizoid in his early 20s, and me, I'm just your standard garden variety functional sufferer of Bipolar disorder. Many individuals who suffer from mental illness abuse alcohol or drugs to self-medicate. This was certainly true of Brian and was also true of me in the past. Elie Wiesel proposes in his brilliant book on the holocaust, Night, that people who are alcoholics drink because they find no meaning in the world. If we're going to make sweeping generalizations about alcoholics, I would posit that contrary to Wiesel's theory, the very opposite is true. Alcoholics drink to numb. Alcoholics drink because they are MORE sensitive and if anything, find too MUCH meaning in this world. The Germans have a word that summarizes it perfectly and I'll probably misspell it here, but the word is weltschmertz. Literally translated it means, "the depression that overcomes one when you see the world as it is and opposed to how you wish it was."
Navigating life w/o the requisite "normal" brain chemistry puts the hard in the "hard road to hoe" cliche. Many of us suffering from mental illness manage to do quite well, i.e. Ted Turner, while others succumb to the slings & arrows of life's cruelties & disappointments, until worn down and defeated reach the conclusion that going on is just not worth 1 more second of pain. I pass no judgments on my friends' decisions. I just miss them both horribly. I feel tremendous sorrow not just for myself but for their parents, their siblings, their other friends, all who loved them. I wish that that love had been enough to salve their pain and see them through to another day to soldier on but it wasn't. They were not well adjusted to a profoundly sick society and while I can't bring them back, somehow I find comfort in simply knowing in my spirit that both of THEIR spirits are now in peace. It is the charge to their survivors to honor their lives by honoring our own. I am resolved to value all my relationships with the earth, with my fellow humans, and with the animals and plants with renewed appreciation and love because in the end, it is all about the love. Love is everything. I'll have to work on loving Sarah Palin. Thanks for reading. Please also read Clytemnestra's wonderful diary Suicide.