Ch. 19
If you can find 3 words that touch what your heart feels you’ve already broken the dams to mighty waters bound. Find those three words and share your heart. For an oasis may water the soul, but a river, a river untethered can bring life to nations. Let your pen flow in the mighty waters so the world may know, may know you and your soul and quench a thirst before unquenchable. Mighty waters flow. Ebb and flow doth they roll. Ebb and flow doth they…
The nurse came up to me and told me it was time for group. Dammit I thought I was getting somewhere with that, I thought to myself, as I put down my pen and closed my cheap pleather bound journal. Part of me fucking hated group therapy, but hell what the fuck else was I supposed to do. My insurance wasn’t paying all that money for me to read and write all day. Fuck I could do that at home. I would have plenty of time to do that after I got out of this fucking place anyway. Not that I was in any particular hurry. I knew I needed to be here. Fuck if that line of stitches in my arm didn’t scream that out as a blatant truth I don’t know what else could. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to leave as bad as the next guy, but Lindner is pretty strict on not fucking up on areas of this concern. The thoughts I might and are having wouldn’t be bearable on the outside of these fucking looney toon walls that now surrounded me. At least that’s what they told me. And it wasn’t like I had much ammo to argue with too fucking boot. Well, given what had just happened, some might say I’m a slight hazard to myself if I were to be left… well by myself I guess. I had to accept an untimely truth that if I left today or tomorrow or even the next I would surely end up back here or in a morgue.
From what I’m told I’m “very lucky” that wasn’t already the case. You know, me being in a fucking body bag right now in some goddamn dismal morgue. But I no longer had an explicit plan to die… well at least not one that involved my own doing of such, for deep down I knew I didn’t wish to die. I knew it. Why couldn’t these fucking stiffs see it. Well they’re actually all wonderful people, but that’s neither here nor there. If only they knew I can’t, I won’t die now that these little blue pills and some therapy were helping me regain my sanity. I could see that now. I didn’t want to die without my sunset. Die with a noose maybe this time, tied around my fucking neck… ok, so I was still thinking about the suicidal how’s and when’s a little bit, but for fucksake sue me. I just fucking tried to off myself. Ok ya, so I definitely need to stay a couple more days to figure this shit out a little more, but come on it’s only natural I might ponder what methodologically went wrong.
When I first woke up in the hospital, stitches in place, I couldn’t help thinking what the fuck. Well that wasn’t exactly my first thought. I guess I didn’t really recollect fully what I had done, you know with that whole repressing of traumatic shitty shit going on in my ole psyche. So as I woke and asked my mom why I was in the hospital and she told me… Well I started crying like a little baby back bitch. We both did. But anyway, after I sat there for a while, my mom never ceasing to hold on tightly to my hand, I couldn’t help but wonder what the fuck did happen? Why in the hell am I still here? Did I do something wrong? Did I… questions of that nature were legion and ever floating around my head in those next couple hours, and they were too long to list. It wasn’t like I was remorseful that I was still alive or fucking anything, actually I had never been more grateful in my entire fucking life, but still... not even unparalleled gratitude could trump my need for an explanation.
Mainly though, it wasn’t even a problem of method or anything I did. At least that’s what my doctor tells me. In fact it was one of utterly unknowable fucking contingencies and dumbass fucking luck, if I might quote him slightly out of medical context. See, concerning my failure to successfully bleed out on my bathroom floor I seemed to have “lucked out” in three vital areas, the doctor explained to me. One, he says quite sternly. You forgot to lock the door to your house thus preventing any true isolation needed in a successful suicide. Thanks Doc I’ll keep that in mind next time, I says to him. What the fuck did you just say, snapped my mom. Oh no mamma bear is coming out with a vengeance. It’s ok Mom I’m sure the doctor will continue in a more… what’s the phrase…. fucking acceptable manner from now on. I wasn’t that offended by it anyway. If anything I was just fucking glad the doctor said that while my father, the Colonel, was in the fucking head. If he would have been present I’m sure he would have probably dick punched him so hard his eyes would have fucking been spinning… or something along those lines. I don’t know, I was still a little fucking out of it. So, as I slowly returned my gaze from the ceiling to my doctor, he awkwardly fumbled his words around looking for where he might go next, given that titanic fucking blunder of bedside manner. But, before he could regain his composure a voice from behind the curtain emerged.
Two, ya see, is that you didn’t plan on me and Clefus getting off work early that evening and heading promptly to your place, right as you planned to plan to off yourself ya jackass, says Chancey, more serious than joking but loving nonetheless. And before I could even say anything to him, though I doubt I would have been able to right away, another voice began to speak, as a tiny yet expectedly shady figure appeared from around the curtain. But let us not forget most importantly, the voice says to me, though I already knew who it was. Clefus, I says to him tenderly. Hey wait a second fucker I’m talking, he says more jokingly than serious. As I was saying, most importantly number three, he says with an air of the dramatic in his voice. You motherfucker shit all fucking over yourself, yet again, in said bathroom and the stench was so horrid that it had made its way throughout the house, which led me and Chancey right to you in the nick of time to save your poor ass self.
I shit myself, I asks them. Yup, they both kind of morbidly chuckled. So I’m alive because I shit myself, I asks, so bizarrely and existentially disoriented. Well ya thanks to us and like the paramedics too you fucking fuck, but other than that ya pretty much sums it up.
Ah contingencies, contingencies. What the fuck is a man to do? But anyway, off to group cuz these mother fucking crazy thoughts gots to go. They gots to get the fuck right on out of my head if I am going to live my final days the way men should ought. Not if I didn’t want to bring catastrophe to my mother’s soul, as if one death sentence wasn’t enough. If I were to carry it out by my own hand, and take that which should be most dear to me in another attempt, I don’t think she would make it. I can’t do that to her. I can’t do that to all of them. So as I put my journal and my copy of Gandhi’s My Theory of Trusteeship behind the front desk for safekeeping, I proceeded to get up and go to mother fucking group. Maybe it might work if I give it a shot. Maybe it might if I… Hey buddy don’t forget your afternoon meds, the nurse chimed in from behind the station. Ah yes, my wonderful dose of Abilify before lunch. How could I forget? Fucking shit here we go. But then again I can go no further. Not with you at least.
So much happened that week… well... weeks I spent at the Lindner Center. So much healing, so many tears. I wish I could share it all with you, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do that at the current moment. I don’t know how well I’ve been describing it so far with regards… to well anything. It’s been hard. Fuck, talking to you this whole time has been hard. I’m sorry if it hasn’t been much of a story up till now. I’m sorry if I’ve been lost in fragments that I call my life, but part of me feels like it’s inescapable. A man becomes but a fragment in face of his own end. If it wasn’t yet so unnatural that man must die, it is even more unnatural that he may know his death be soon upon him. For death, he tears, he rips, he scowls into thy heart. But most of all he laughs so cheerfully at my dismay. But healing is to be found. I found some of that healing at the Lindner center. I found it in Franky’s phone calls to me when I needed them most. I guess she wasn’t as mad as I thought about the whole lying situation, but then again when you’re a perfect soul like hers forgiveness comes pretty natural to ya and her forgiveness was healing enough. I also found it in my grandparents, who came and visited me almost every day. God did I fucking love them. I found it in my family, who stood next me through it all. God were they fucking amazing. See, I wish I could share this time in my life with you, but I can’t… not completely at least. Not much more than letting you know I got better there. Not fucking cured or anything, but I got a taste of what better looks like and I knew where my road might now be lead. I have this for you though. Something I wrote while I was “in.” It sums it up pretty nicely. At least I think it does.
Mine was not a suicide attempt. It was the failure to commit suicide, but a failure it was not. The failure to cease to be is a divine calling, a calling to be and to do so joyfully with a heart full of love. To be ungrateful no longer for gratitude is all there shall be in the eyes of the living. For family, for friends, for unknown others that one day may become known, loved, and estranged no more. What deserves our unconditional gratitude and thanks other than such a wonder that is those in our life who love us most and those whose love is to come. It is a gratitude that can only be made holy through Love and Life. So love I shall give and my life I shall live. Amen.