Friday, September 22, 2017

After the Suicide


             
            My friend killed himself.
I was primping myself for an evening wedding when my phone began chirping and vibrating with a cacophony of texts and calls, all urgently asking if I needed anything, offering support in my grief.  “What the hell is going on?” I replied in panic.  What the fuck was going on?
This summer was the first since birthing my children that I was absolutely required to find employment.  As a teacher, I have always cherished summers with my three kids, even though each September we were financially struggling to dig ourselves out of the financial hole my “vacation” had burrowed. But this summer, I knew we weren’t going to make it.  If I didn’t find a source of income, we wouldn’t be digging ourselves out of a hole, we would be desperately scraping our way out of a credit grave.  
Working at my district’s credit recovery summer school, helping wayward students back onto the path towards graduation, was fine.  However, it killed me just a little more each day to leave my children with a sitter, well aware that the number of summers I have with them during which they will actually want to spend time with me are numbered.  And I have to give this one away.
I could feel myself slipping back into the valley of depression, a valley I’d travelled several times.  I was maintaining the regimen that had worked to pull me from my last serious bout, a struggle with postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of my youngest child: daily exercise, meds, vitamins and supplements, allowing myself the opportunity for 8 hours sleep each night.  But, I could feel myself slipping further.  My sleep is often disturbed by nightmares or insomnia.  My heart pounds, inspired by my mind, which resolutely runs through a gauntlet of highly unlikely, yet still terrifying possibilities.
All of my limited patience was being entirely spent on my students, leaving nothing for my husband and children.  I was short tempered and difficult to please.  Loading my body with carbs, fat, and sugar, desperately trying to stop the slippage though self-medication, was only working to make me feel slow and grotesque.  I was withdrawing from touch and retreating into distraction.
Depression, for me at least, involves my brain challenging itself. The axis powers are spreading a dark cloud of self-doubt and dissatisfaction, a cloud that soon settles as a heavy stone inside my gut, a lethargy that encourages me to shut my eyes and sleep the hours and realities away.  The cloud obscures my realization of all of my blessings and achievements, until I am yearning for a new reality.
The allied powers are struggling to maintain the light.  They realize the battle is being lost, but still have hope for the war, sending fading distress signals: “Batten the hatches! Go for a walk. Do yoga. Eat a healthy meal. Take some time for yourself. Write in a journal.”  It feels impossible to struggle against the depression, but, with the small amount of clarity that the allies have maintained, I make the decision, every day, to push through. 
And, then, he killed himself. I would be dishonest to say that I was completely shocked. In the 16 years of our friendship, his emotions ranged from grumpy to solemn to depressed to distraught with few exceptions.  During the good periods, he’d lose weight and start dressing in his colorful button downs and matching ties.  His dress shoes would shine, and he’d snarkily greet me with some sexist gibe or another. 
During the bad times, his weight would rise, he’d wear the same t-shirt and camouflage pants every day, he’d stuff himself with bagels.  He’d keep his head down, eyes glued to the floor so as not to have to make any eye contact, no connections. 
During the good times, he’d light when he saw me, grab me into a hug that lasted just a little too long, sniff my neck, whisper something flirtatious with a wink in his voice: “I love when you press your boobs against me.”  Or, “If I didn’t respect your husband so much…”  And, it was good because he was my friend, and I was ok with his lighthearted sexual harassment, and I would flirt back because I loved him and wanted to make him feel good and wanted him to understand that I valued him as a person, as a man, to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that he was attractive, that he was worthy of love and sex and flirtation from women. 
In the bad times, the gregariousness went out of the hugs, they had a more desperate quality because he needed to be touched by another human. That was ok with me because I knew that that contact was, for him, maybe the only skin-to-skin contact that he would have all day.
In the best times, his dark, wicked sense of humor drew raucous laughter, laughter from my guts. We would laugh so hard that my cheeks ached with the strain of the smiles.  Someday I am planning to laugh again, about his dirty-minded puppet shows, about his obsessions with unavailable blondes, about his snarky insults, always said with love.  Someday, I plan to remember his passion for Led Zepplin and Rush with fondness, maybe even, despite my own distaste, listen to a few songs in his memory. But, it won’t be today.  There isn’t any room for laughing today.
He put forth effort.  He did, I am certain of it.  Online dating provided opportunity to meet new people, and he did.  He pursued dates.  He asked me to take pictures for his online profile, and I did.  When he smiled, when the smile actually hit his eyes, he was a handsome guy.  I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have had many responses: attractive, professional, intelligent, funny, music-lover, dog lover. He said he wanted, more than anything, a wife and kids: a family of his own. 
I, personally, set him up at least three times.  We went on double dates, me with my husband and him with whomever he was courting at that time. I admit, I was desperate to find him someone, clinging to the hope that a relationship would fix his sadness.  But, it was never “the one.”  There were a litany of reasons: no spark, she wanted different things, too young, too old, didn’t react in the ways he wanted or expected her to react.  It was frustrating to me, and, I have to admit, embarrassing, to apologize to these women with whom I had set him up.  I admit, I gave up to protect myself.  Maybe it was selfish.  As I think back now, I wonder if his disease just wouldn’t allow him to make those connections, that all his “reasons” were just excuses.
            In the deepest parts of my own struggle, my depression and anxiety lead me to crazy thoughts, obsessive actions, some I was aware were outrageous, some to which I was oblivious.  In the two years after my youngest child was born, I lived in near constant terror that my children would be harmed or killed.  I ferociously clung to the people I loved, my husband, my friends, my children, for dear life.  Obsessive thoughts would race through my mind, plunging me into the breathless, pounding, disorienting spin of panic attacks.  I was unable to see the effects of my spin because I was so desperate to keep from drowning.  I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t help it.  I was trying.
            Yet, I was fortunate.  My anxiety and depression never mired me in thoughts of suicide.  I was never plagued with the belief that leaving would be less painful than staying.
            I want to be angry at him for leaving before he biologically had to, but it isn’t that simple.  Depression is a disease in the same way that cancer is a disease.  There are treatments, some of them effective.  Some can be cured.  The therapy and drugs and regimen pulled me out. But, he was terminal.  He died of his depression, and it isn’t his fault, I can’t be angry.  He fought the battle for the 16 years I knew him, probably long before that.  The disease won the war, and that isn’t his fault. 
            Guilt is tugging at me, though I am not egotistical enough to believe that I could have saved him.  But, the “what ifs” are real and heavy.  And, there’s nothing to do to undo what is done. 
            As woeful as I feel imagining him in his last moments, in extreme emotional distress, psychic pain, and without a soul to hold his hand on his terrifying journey, I want to take solace in the fact that he is now free from the pain that he could seemingly never escape during the 16 years I was fortunate enough to know him. 
He didn’t believe in angels, didn’t take comfort in heaven.  So, I will respect his beliefs and refrain from maudlin platitudes about his being a guardian angel in our lives.  But, I do believe that a person is never truly dead until the last person who knew him, who holds a memory of him, dies.  And, all of his friends hold his memory dear, will say his name and, eventually, remember him for his snark, his grump, his humor, his intelligence and temper and passion.  Especially for the warm, red, loving heart he hid beneath the dark and stormy surface.  I was so fortunate to have been held in that heart.