Hell mentioned on my last visit that one of his patients had committed suicide. It must be devastating to be a healer and to have someone you are putting on the road to health suddenly end it all so tragically. I have been thinking about her, about how dark her world must have been; about how the present moment became so unbearable that the only end to the torment of her soul seemed to her to be death. Immediate, unforgiving death.
I cannot pretend to know how she felt, or what her world view was, but I have been very close to suicide and I think about it almost continually. Am I more blessed than she was? I do not believe for one moment that she is in some kind of Hell or that Heaven was denied to her. But then I believe in neither. We are very confused, we west-
erners, as to what death is all about. We are confused as to what living is all about. I know I am.
After my first marriage ended in divorce, I rented an apartment on the eleventh floor of a brand new building, rent-free for the first three months. I had no job, but they had not checked into that, so I was given an apartment. I’d lost my job simply because, when my first husband and I separated, I spent my working days with my office door closed, not taking any clients and not taking care of business.
It had been a great job, placing executives, but I had simply stopped functioning. I was a robot. I went to work but did nothing, and after a month of no clients they simply fired me. So here I was in an empty apartment. The only thing I had with me from my marriage was my twin bed. My ex and I had had twin beds put together to make a king-size bed, in the manner of most European couples. So somehow I had my bed. There was nothing else. No furniture. No curtains. The walls were bare. I felt utterly and completely alone.
I stood on my balcony one starry night and looked down at the concrete below and for a long, long time I pondered the thought of simply jumping. It would be easy, it seemed. Once you are over the ledge, there can be no turning back. No “Oh my, I’ve changed my mind about this.” How long would it take? Five seconds, ten seconds and I would be over and falling and falling until I hit that concrete.
What is five or ten seconds? What is twenty-seven years?
I believed in reincarnation and in karma. What kind of karma would I make for myself? What if this was all bunk? What if there is no life after death? No Heaven or Hell. No salvation. What if there is nothing, only a black hole? I would welcome that blackness as I hit the pavement and, hopefully, died instantly. Then I thought what if, by some fluke of bad luck, I didn’t die? Would I go to an asylum? Would the Church excommunicate me? Eleven floors seemed high enough.
Maybe it would be better to try something else.
I stood there and I thought and thought: Yes. No. Yes. No. I was alone. No one would miss me. Who would be advised of my death?
Would the cops make inquiries or just send my body to the morgue?
The Church did not bury parishioners who committed suicide. There would be no Mass said for me. I hadn’t spoken to my mom in months.
She did not know that I was no longer married. My brother was a stranger.
Maybe what saved me is all that chatter that was going on in my head. I was so alone. How was I going to survive? I had no job, no friends, no one who cared for me. No one. There never seemed to be anyone to love me. I had thought my ex did, but I was wrong. He loved someone else. I met him at fifteen, married him at twenty-one and, until I was twenty-seven, he’d been the only man in my life. I thought he was my knight in shining armour. I tried and tried to save our marriage. I endured his relationship with another woman. I had thought it was the right thing to do, and I did not judge their actions.
I was wounded deeply. I could not foresee that I would one day remarry and have a child of my own, I could only mourn the fact that I had never become pregnant. Now he wanted to have children with someone else. He wanted a life with someone else. It seemed our life of six years meant nothing. How does one validate one’s being on this earth? No one seemed to care if I lived or died. What mattered to me was that I could not at that moment relate to anything other than my pain and anguish. I wanted this to end, and jumping seemed a good way to do just that — end the hurt. There is a difference between living by oneself and aloneness. Aloneness is a bottomless pit that no light reaches.
I looked up at the stars. I counted, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
What stopped me? Maybe I was just a coward. Maybe I was just my usual wishy-washy self. It’s not, I thought, that I want death. It’s that I want things to be different. Yes, I want this to end. I want some joy and to feel loved.
I looked at the stars and said silently, “God, I will make a deal with you. I will take whatever you throw at me. I will endure, but please, do not let me become a bitter old woman, ever. That seems a worse punishment than whatever the universe reserves for a soul that fails its calling. The race is long, just do not let me fall short of the mark.”
I have heard of athletes who compete and win many events, yet when it comes to the last hold, the last throw, the last race, they stumble and fall. They do not reach their goal. “Let me reach my goal, whatever it is, but do not let me become bitter.”
So far, I have kept my end of the bargain. I am still in the race.
But God didn’t do what I asked. Anyone can read the bitterness on my face.
People do think that people who kill themselves are cowards, but I think it takes only one moment of total and complete despair. If the moment is rescued by a thought or a deed, then the action is stopped.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a merciful God and for those who commit suicide there is healing on the other side. What haunts me the most is the awful thought that there is only a terrible wailing cry at the realization we are still aware of who we are, still stuck with our pitiful selves.
What would have happened to me? If there is no death, then does it matter? If there is reincarnation, then does it matter? If all that we are accompanies us in the other world, what futile actions do we attempt in the hope of annihilating our thoughts of despair and taming our emotions? If I had jumped and, upon rising from my dead body, found that my despair was as fully present, would I have let out a loud scream of distress? Would there have been any godlike figure to take me by the hand and lead me to a place of light and healing?
Or would I have sought a darker darkness still, in the hope of oblit-erating my being? If we are eternal and indestructible, what hope do people like me have?
It seems that no matter where we are, whether on earth in body, or in Hell or Heaven, we are stuck with ourselves. There does not seem to be any escape. There does not seem to be any hope. I envy those who are autistic or who dissociate themselves completely, not only from their bodies, but also from their souls. Maybe this is the only true escape or alternate route. Healing is a harsh and difficult journey. Madness seems easier, but ultimately one has to take the journey that leads to healing. No miracles, just day to day grit. I suspect it is an eternal journey and that it cannot be avoided, no matter how much we would like to end it.
Jan. 20, 1999 (Dream)