Lately, a friend confided to me that he has lost everything. A plan for suicide, he explained, was how he got to this point. For the past few days this has stuck in my mind.
Being troubled- and I mean a truly troubled person with a life that’s rife with troubledness- has a strange barometer. You can’t tell who’s had it worse, who deserves pity, how to help. You can’t tell anything, in fact, and most people just toss you out. You’re crazy, they say, and move along. Even when people try to help you, when they literally show up to pick you up off of the floor, they get tossed out. I don’t need you, says your misery, preferring her own company.
Recently, I hired a new therapist and she asked me, “What do you remember before your father died?”
I remember my mom, fat and pregnant with my younger sister, Laura, too large to bend over to reach ingredients for cookies. I remember LOVING Woody Woodpecker, never knowing when it actually came on, always a treat to hear that ring-ding yodeling laugh. I remember walking my stuffed poodle down the sidewalk on a makeshift leash created from linked plastic charm necklaces, hoping passersby would think it was my real dog. I wanted a real dog. I remember the first time tying a shoelace knot made sense to me, the first thing that seemed complicated that I was able master. I remember the feeling in my brain, literally feeling a new connection was made, something was different inside there, more able to assess the complex. I remember when we had to stay with people from church. Something about dad, something was wrong with dad. Gray skin, carrot juice, blue flannel pajamas. Cancer. I remember Kristen coming in, telling me in the way an older sister tells you a rattling ghost story in a blanket fort, “I saw dad die. I saw his eyes turn black.”
Black eyes, dead face. This became the sun of my world, upon which everything darkened. What do you do, when your most complex thought to date had been securing your own shoelaces? When the rope is cut, what happens to a mind that’s still climbing uphill?
Every day I work at this, all of what haunts me. Every fucking day. I fuck up all of the time. And I keep going. Not much truly offends me, but giving up, truly throwing in the towel on living, that pisses me off. Suicide? Charles Manson, sure. Richard Speck, be my guest.
But you?
You’ve already made it further than me, on less. You help me think differently. You write. You picked me up off of the floor, sure you may have put me there once or twice, but you picked me up. Brushed me off. Listened to Frank Sinatra with me in the dark. You see me the way I am, naked, even with all my clothes on.
If you take yourself down, it validates the darkness. AND WE ARE ALL TRYING SO DAMN HARD TO FIND A LIGHTBULB.
I wrote this, I’ve had this in my head all day, for if this person had killed himself, tears in my eyes at the thought. I no doubt would have found out some obscene way, through Facebook or a text message. This is what I would have said to you, after everyone had left, alone with you.
You, a pen with no ink.
Your Way
Look at you, smooth-faced, peaceful. Nothing like you were before, in your coroner’s makeup. Corners of your mouth slightly upturned, a smirking smile now permanently resting upon your lips, evidence of your final moment, one thought:
My troubles, the feel of them, are almost over.
Rest, dear friend, in your satin bed, in your preservation box. You’re trapped now forever, canned in the misery that brought you here. You have no chance for sunshine now, the darkness you suffered is now your black lantern, your useless guide on your path to nowhere.
Traitor.
You solved nothing.
You left us here, all of us like you, afflicted.
Traitor.
Good troubled men are hard to find.
You abandoned us, spears-in-hand.
One less warrior in our impossible fight.
seeallisonplay 