Please Enjoy #21

End of the Road

Hey hi hello. This issue might be a little tough for some people to get through. I saw a quote from the philosopher Emil Cioaran recently that said, “Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.” I’ve gotten a few very nice messages after publishing various issues of this newsletter about the vulnerability of the writing within them and I appreciate that. This issue doesn’t stray far from that but do not admire my vulnerability. It is quite easy to type these words into a word document while I’m sitting alone in my room. If anyone happens to read them, that’s a nice by-product. True strength is being able to say things that scare you to people who are willing to listen. I’m not sure if I’m there yet. Thank you for reading.

-Mike

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My cousin Patrick killed himself in 2014. Technically, he's my mother's cousin but we were close enough in age that that was negligible. He stopped taking his medication and wandered off silently. He stopped taking his medication and he jumped off of a bridge. Everyone hoped he was just missing until the police found his body in the river. 

Everyone in my family has their funeral services at the same funeral home. A location made heavy by tradition. I know it more intimately than most of my friends’ homes. The horseshoe driveway out front. The floral furniture in the seating area outside of the viewing rooms. The overhang everyone smokes underneath to hide from the rain. It’s always raining while we’re in there. The clinical backroom you can have a meal in between services. That room feels like you’re on your lunch break at the worst job you’ve ever had with all of your grieving family members as your coworkers.

My great-aunt had a priest come lead a service during his wake. It's hard for the Catholic Church to recruit priests nationally so a large number of new recruits come to America from south Asia or western Africa. Patrick had no ties to the church, so this priest didn't have much to go on. He was giving his normal A Young Person Has Died service. Reading from the same passages I'd heard at friend's funerals. Reading from the same passages he'd read at a number of funerals for young people he’d never met. After reading them, he took a pause and in his thick West African accent said "Patrick's death……. Sad death." which was true. It was a sad death. His comment took me by such a surprise I had to cover my face and pretend I was weeping so no one saw me laughing. 

I used to spend every Christmas day at my aunt Anne's house, where Patrick lived. After our Christmas morning at home, we'd drive over and end up in the same living room with the same furniture at the end of the same gravel driveway and the same people and the same food and the same basketball games and the same secondary fridge next to the piano that was filled with soda. Up the stairs next to the refrigerator were the stairs up to Patrick's room. He lived in what used to be the attic, just like I do in my apartment now. His room was filled with plastic milk crates. Dozens of milk crates holding thousands of records. Thousands of records that I wanted to listen to. KRS-One next to Bolt Thrower next to Annihilation Time next to Lil' Kim next to some of the worst bands you've ever heard in your life.

Patrick would let me have free reign over his room and his crates and his turntables and his headphones whenever I was there. I couldn't wait to get to his house and show him what new CDs I had gotten that morning and he'd pretend to be impressed every year. That feeling never really leaves you, even as you grow older. You want to show off what you have to someone that you deem cool and hope they see you the same way that you see them. A culture of people waiting to have their older cousin pat them on the head for a job well done. 

After he died, my aunt told me that I could go over and take whatever records of his that I wanted. I couldn't let myself walk up those stairs. I had a mental block. If I walked up those stairs it was all over. They ended up getting hauled away by the local record store. I do have a few of his t-shirts in storage that I got after performing on a memorial show booked in his honor. The lineup was: a man doing spoken word, me doing stand up, my uncle doing stand up and then a The Clash cover band. I bombed for 20 minutes straight in front of my entire family and had to remember that the night wasn't about me, even if it felt like it at the time. Sweating and babbling my “art” on the stage of a rock club where I’d previously been kicked in the head by a flying Doc Marten boot, waiting for some guys to play a cover of some other guys songs in memory of a guy who wasn’t around anymore.

The timeline for healing from grief is not linear. You never know when it will pop back up for you. After Patrick died, I shoved it all down. I didn’t allow myself to feel any of my feelings. Living with the boot of masculinity on your throat is an impediment to your progression as a person. I was sad at the funeral and that was that. I thought I had gotten all of my emotions out already but that's not how emotions work. They don't go away if you refuse to deal with them. They flow and seep into all of the crevices of your body like you're trying to seal the cracked head gasket in your heart. One day it'll catch up with you. It always does.

Two months after Patrick died, Robin Williams killed himself. When I found out, I sat on the front steps of my apartment and wept. I wept for Patrick. I wept for my family. I wept for myself. I wish Robin Williams meant more to me so the reaction felt warranted but that's not how emotions work. That day my emotions caught up with me. They always do.

 

I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of life and its consequences. That's where you can get hurt. That's where you can disappoint people. That's where people can disappoint you. I've spent my entire life pretending that I don't care about everyone in my life as deeply as I do so they can't hurt me and now they all believe that to be true. I’ve covered my body in a suit of armor that is actively hurting me.

When people found out my most recent relationship ended, they'd put their hand on my shoulder or forearm and softly tell me how sorry they were. They'd say how much they liked her or that it was all such a shame. Underneath it all, I could feel them thinking "please don't kill yourself, Mike." It's a valid concern. I talk and joke about it in the abstract often enough. But I never wanted to be alive more. To know that I had loved someone and they had loved me is proof enough that life is worth living. 

When I was 13 years old, I pretended to attempt suicide. I did it to impress a woman. Well, a girl. She was a girl then and is a woman now. That's how time works. I was in seventh grade and she was in eighth. I thought I was in love with her because I had seen that in movies and tv shows. The forlorn boy is infatuated with the seemingly indifferent girl until some inciting incident propels them into the greatest achievement possible to my young brain: a kiss.

Her name was Katie and she was goth in the most 2001 way possible. Thumbholes in the sleeve of her hoodie. Sharpie marker all over her Converse. A winter hat with some sort of ears on it. The whole kit. I figured the only way to impress an older goth girl was to show her exactly how dark and brooding I was. If she thought I was suicidal, she'd have to fall in love with me.

We talked on AOL instant messenger occasionally. During our conversation one afternoon, I concocted my plan. Sitting at the family computer in the corner of our wood paneled kitchen where my father used to make us Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes, I told her I had eaten an entire bottle of Advil a few hours earlier. I thought this made me more desirable for some reason.

Katie did what any sane person would do in that situation and immediately told some administrators at our school who, in turn, told my parents. I had no idea it would go this way. I thought I would tell her what I had pretended to do and, at worst, she'd say "weird." and we'd keep on living our lives. Somehow, my genius plan had backfired.

Since the school was notified, they'd have to do something about this. It was suggested that I start seeing the school counselor who I had no idea even existed until that very second. I was in a tough spot. I could acquiesce and begin counseling or I could come clean and tell them the truth. I could let them know I had faked a suicide attempt to gain the attraction of a girl. I could let my parents know their son was a weird, lying loser. I could let her know the details of my disgusting little plan. I could tell the truth and not start a long pattern of small lies snowballing into uncontrollable stories that I could barely keep up with. Or I could let everyone think that I had tried to end my own life and they could all worry about me for a very long time.

I started counseling the next week. In the room behind the wooden doors with the wooden walls and the wooden furniture. The only thing in the room that wasn't made of wood was the drab grey high traffic carpet. I would sit in there and talk about whatever problems I had while the counselor looked vaguely concerned the entire time. They let me know that I was at a tough age and a lot of kids had problems then. I was in a new school, my body was changing, my parents were getting divorced, and my sister was pregnant while still in high school. This was a lot of pressure for a young man and I was acting out, but it wasn't uncommon. I let them think this about me. That I was so consumed by what was going on at home that I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't tell them that I was a nasty pervert who had no idea how to talk to the opposite sex and needed to use stunts to get their attention.

The attention didn't last. Quickly everyone forgot or pretended it never happened. It never came up again. Not with my family. Not in school. Not with friends. Not in counseling, which quietly ended. Not with Katie, who was visibly uncomfortable speaking to me after this whole fiasco and eventually moved to another state. I'm pretty sure that wasn't my fault though. The only person left thinking about it was me.

A few months ago, I received a message from someone chastising me for how often I joke about suicide. This person I do not know. They counted off the ways suicide has affected them in their life. Never once asking if it had factored into mine. They said I was lazy and a hack for going to that same well so often. I never replied because 1) I am a coward who does not desire confrontation or to be reprimanded and 2) messages like this are more for the sender than the recipient. They had purged their demons and my response is an appendix to their tale. 

I don't think their appraisal was entirely incorrect though. I do joke about suicide a lot. I think about suicide a lot. I think about it in the abstract and in the practical. It's something that has affected me personally and something I ruminate on. It's also one of the most extreme things one can do with their own body. Extremes are easy to lean on in comedy. They illuminate your point quickly and with a big bang. I think about it mostly because my life feels out of control. I'm not sure who's piloting this ship but most of the time it doesn't feel like me. When I think about suicide, I'm thinking about control. I can't control much in my life but I can control this. But I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to love. I want to fuck and to eat and to talk and to walk and to swim and to kiss and to fight and to hurt and to cry. I want to live.  

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