content warning: suicide, suicidal ideation
sometimes i suspect there’s a curse on my family.
my great grandmother tried to hang herself.
my grandmother tried to slit her wrists.
my great-uncle shot himself.
one of my cousins tried to slit his own throat, but survived, so he hanged himself from a low-hanging branch in a small wooded area.
another cousin shot himself in front of the cops who woke him up after arriving at his house.
(the details of that last incident are puzzling, but nothing good would come from my speculation.)
perhaps there's something sinister in my veins, something wicked which is to blame for my preoccupation with death.
the first time i ever saw a corpse, i was too young to understand the gravity of a body bereft of life. he had been an acquaintance of my mother’s, one with whom she had been close enough to feel obligated to attend his funeral, yet distant enough to not be saddened at his passing. perhaps her affectations of mourning were enough to satisfy the man’s family, but i was not fooled by her demeanor, so i never considered that it would be inappropriate to walk up to the casket and make childish faces at the pale old man lying in that big box.
my mother yanked me away quickly and explained to me that this man was dead, and all of the strangers around me were sad, and i should respect them by refraining from having fun for just a little while. that seemed fair to me, so i behaved.
some time later, she was showing me home videos from when i was a baby. i watched them all, completely enthralled. i couldn’t remember any of the scenes i was witnessing, but there was no doubt about it: that was me in those scenes.
for the first time, i understood that i was aging, constantly growing older. with every passing day, i was becoming less like that baby on those home videos, and more like that old dead man in the big box.
i experienced my first emotional breakdown. i sobbed, i panicked, and i pleaded with my mother to provide me with any reassurance to assuage my existential dread. she placated me with folksy descriptions of heaven. i distinctly remember asking her if i could watch The Flintstones in heaven, and she said, “yes, of course! you can watch anything there.” this recollection strikes me as particularly odd, because i never cared much for The Flintstones.
she couldn’t have believed what she was telling me. she was a good Christian woman, born and raised, but she had never bought into the popular depiction of heaven that had become more or less canonical in all of the Southern Baptist Churches i grew up in. she was raised on an older eschatology which taught that the Lord’s faithful lie dormant in the grave until Jesus returns to Earth to call up those who believed in him during life.
she sold me a vision of heaven she didn’t believe to dry my childish tears. she told me i could watch The Flintstones in heaven. it worked. i lived many years thereafter with a love of life, and a fear of death placated by thoughts of crossing through pearly gates and living in the company of God and every goodly soul that had ever existed.
eventually, the thought of my own death did not inspire terror, but instead carried an intoxicating comfort.
i once loved someone who was suicidal. the first time she told me that she wanted to kill herself, i drove roughly three hours through the dead of night to sneak into her father’s home and sleep beside her. i’ll never forget the look on her face when she came outside to let me in. she seemed so happy. i believe she felt cherished, and the thought of me being afraid to lose her stayed the want of death for that night, at least.
eventually, i stopped being able to make her feel happy and cherished. eventually, i no longer drove through the dead of night to see her when she would voice a desire to die.
one day, we talked about running away together for some kind of horrible holiday, a vacation that would ultimately end in us killing ourselves together. i assured her that i would accompany her. that period of my life, and the feelings i experienced then, seem so distant that i could almost believe they never happened. looking back on it, i have to ask myself–did i mean it? i don’t know. maybe i did. maybe i just couldn’t imagine living without her. maybe i thought that’s what she wanted to hear, and said it out of a misguided wish to say something pleasing.
we never discussed the particulars of the plan, perhaps betraying a lack of commitment on both our parts. i did ask if she would look me in the eyes as i died; she said yes.
i doubled over, dropping to the cold concrete beneath me. a childhood friend and i had been drinking, and while we were walking through the city in the dead of night, i had confessed to him that i once considered mutual suicide with a woman i had loved. the words hadn’t finished reverberating in the air between us when he turned on his heel and punched me square in the stomach.
i coughed and sputtered. without looking down at me, he said bluntly, “don’t ever let me hear you say some shit like that again.”
i picked myself up, brushed the dirt off of my pants, and caught my breath. we continued walking. i never let him hear me say some shit like that again.
i packed my brand new Beretta 92 FS into my house, and immediately went to the kitchen to prepare a peanut butter sandwich. no jelly would grace the bread that day, or any other day i made such a sandwich; i don’t like sweet flavors much. i prefer fatty foods, salty and savory flavors. sugar does not tempt me the way it does most people.
i bought the pistol planning to keep it as an exit plan for whenever i decided i was finished living. i had long assumed this would be shortly after the eventual death of my mother. i have been watching her die slowly for many, many years now. let’s not dwell on that here.
i bit into my sandwich. a thick chunk of it lodged in my windpipe. i had thought of myself as some sort of restrained ascetic for foregoing fruity jelly, the classic accompaniment to peanut butter, but that day i learned the hard way that jelly serves a more important function than a contrasting taste: it’s a necessary lubricant which helps the whole thing go down smoothly.
i desperately gasped for air, but the wad only moved slightly upwards, then downwards, in my throat. i grabbed the kitchen counter and squeezed until my knuckles turned white, reckoning with the rapidly increasing likelihood that i was about to die a clown’s death. moments earlier i had bought a firearm that would most likely end up in my mouth some day in the future, and there i stood in my kitchen, my life being choked out of me by an unjellied peanut butter sandwich, pleading to nothing in particular for my life to be spared.
the line between tragedy and comedy is thin–so thin it may as well be erased. it would have been tragic if i had died there like that. at the same time, it would have been hilarious.
kirtan yoga is an Indian practice which involves the lively singing or recitation of something sacred–in this case, the subjective names of the gods and goddesses that represent some aspect of the absolute Nirguna Brahman. i had been invited to perform kirtan yoga in a neighboring state by a lady i had interviewed for an ethnographic research project. i agreed to attend because i thought it would help get my mind off of the woman i had loved.
we arrived at a small studio and took our seats as the performers readied themselves. the harmonium player fiddled with the pump as he droned out chords. the drummer tapped out little grooves while the sitar player plucked notes, warping them as he tuned his instrument. the lead singer sang a song to Kali as she strummed her guitar.
as the time to begin drew nearer, that little studio grew more and more crowded. i sat along the wall with the lady who invited me, and all sorts of people filled the room. i looked out at them, each one a stranger, and the lack of anything familiar filled me with a feeling of comfort. as i was scanning the room, i saw one last person enter the studio. my stomach sank, and my heart leapt into my throat. i saw the image of the woman i had loved–the one i was trying to forget–walk through that door. why was she here? how did she even get here? how astronomical were the odds that we would both wind up going to this random-ass religious ceremony tucked away in a tiny studio in a different state?
i looked more closely. i realized i had been mistaken. it wasn’t her, it was just someone who looked almost exactly like her. the resemblance was uncanny, but on closer inspection, it was, in fact a stranger, just like all the others.
isn’t that funny? i had gone through all that trouble to get my mind off of someone, and through sheer dumb luck, her spitting image, her doppelgänger, stood right there in the corner of that room. i felt sad; i felt annoyed; mostly, i felt amused. what a ridiculous situation i found myself in! what ridiculous feelings were welling up in my heart! i wanted to laugh. instead, i smiled, and i sang the numerous names of a God i don’t follow, my voice melting into a beautiful, ridiculous union with the voices of all those strangers.
i often think of a girl that hugged me when i was high on MDMA, confessing to her through clenched jaws and grinding teeth that i have felt alienated from every single person i’ve ever known and loved–as if i have been surrounded by a bubble all my life that distorts their voices and warps their faces and keeps me from ever really making contact with them directly. she stepped forward and hugged me with a loving warmth that made my heart swell with joy. she didn’t know me, but she knew something i try to remember:
the lines between any two people are thin–so thin that they may as well be erased.
these days, i sleep with that gun beneath my bed. i no longer plan to use it to blow out the roof of my mouth. i'm not sure why i have it now; it's just kind of there, like all those memories that no longer make me feel much of anything. the zen master ikkyū urged us to remember that the line between life and death is thin–so thin that it may as well be erased. as we walk the road of life, we must remind ourselves that we will one day be corpses in the field. i don't dread being a corpse, like i did when i was a child; nor do i fantasize about death as an eternal peace, like i did as a young man.
i'll be dead in due time; until then, i have many thin lines to erase.