I Sing The Stupid Defeatist

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(this is an apology)


You died and I really wanted it to mean something profound to me. I wanted to feel as if these are the hardships I endure in my life and this is something I have to learn how to live with. But that isn’t real. And just because you killed yourself doesn’t mean I have to feel sorry for you. That is some sick selfish fantasy I have acquired to feel more normal with this information. Of course I have to be devastated. I can’t just own up to the idea that it made me feel awkward and I didn’t want to talk to your friends about it. Even my admission right now feels like it is for irony’s sake and not because I truly want to make amends. I remembered walking down to the coffee shop that day, and it was so cold outside that my fingers were actually in pain from the frigid air. It was such a dreary, depressing morning that it seemed appropriate that some tragedy had taken place. It felt like the low, black clouds knew what had happened, and were bowing their heads in reverence. I envied them. I envied the clouds and the rain and those who had been a good enough friend to you to be truly affected. I remembered feeling helpless and stupid at your funeral. My suit fit weird and I met your parents. I bet you never thought that I would meet your parents. But there I was, right in line with everyone else. Probably the only dry eyes in the place. It’s not that I am callous or bitter, it is that I was watching it to take it all in. The THEATRE OF LIFE. I know, it sounds like I am a total sociopath. You know something? I have always wondered about that. I don’t know what it feels like to be inside anyone else’s head, so how do I know if I am anywhere near normal?

Case in point: I may be the only person who sits at an intersection when a light turns green, wondering if it is really green, OR if I have finally lost my mind and I just think it has turned green, and I will speed out into oncoming traffic, killing myself and taking several other perfectly sane people with me.

Listen, according to the DSM 4 diagnostics manual, sociopaths lack moral sense, control of impulses, they don’t learn from mistakes and have little to no empathy for others. That feels like where my head was. I think for a while there, the only thing that was really keeping me from going crazy was the fear that I was going crazy, if that makes any sense. Then you went and died, and maybe your death wrecked me because I was already on my way there myself, and seeing someone else do it first made me feel like the second kid to show up to school with an ALF lunchbox. You know, like, we each had our own independent motivation for doing it, but you just got yours out there quicker, so now if I do it, I was totally copying you, or its because I was secretly in love with you, or we had some death pact, or there was some Shakespearean-like betrayal.

The reality is that I couldn’t deal with the association. I hate that part the worst. Did you think about that? It isn’t ever just “Man, Carl looked really happy in these pictures. He sure did love going fishing!” It’s “Man, Carl looked really happy in these pictures. He sure did love going fishing! I wonder if he was thinking about hanging himself in the bathroom with the telephone cord when this picture of him was taken. Do you think he knew how much weight the light fixture could hold when we went out to eat that one night? Maybe he had tested it with the garbage can and found out that it started to seem to lose its integrity at one hundred and eighty five pounds and that’s why he didn’t want to get dessert even though they had his favorite because then he would have weighed too much to successfully hang himself and hey, what if he had gotten dessert that night and the death by chocolate fudgarama he would have eaten would have boosted his blood sugar, thereby raising the level of serotonin in his brain, and as we all know, high levels of serotonin affects impulse control. He would have thought more about the consequences and he would have weighed too much anyhow! Why didn’t he eat that fucking fudgarama?!?!”

See, when someone kills themselves, they have cast a stigma across their entire life. Every memory of the person is now accompanied with an image of their cold blue body in a vacant hotel room, the slits hatched down the wrists, and blood strewn across bathroom tile, the body swinging from the end of a clothsline. These grotesque visions come barking at the heels of the loving memory of the person, like rabid dogs. It’s almost impossible to separate the two.

I used to have this dream where I am in the old house where I grew up as a kid. My stepfather is there, and everything is fine. But then I remember that he is supposed to be dead, and then everyone else remembers too. Then he remembers, and he starts panicking, crying that he doesn’t want to have to be dead again. I would wake up to the bright blue horror of five a.m., and know that he was still out there somewhere, in the ground.

I’m not mad. I don’t even have a right to be. And maybe just as two humans on this planet that happened to cross paths I can mourn for you without it seeming forced or selfish. Is that alright? You killed yourself, and no one knew why. Least of all one who took time to write it all down. Maybe that’s what changed my mind. Lord knows I don’t want a bunch of fucking ass hole acquaintances showing up to my funeral and blubbering to my mother just because I had a bad week and decided to check out.

Sorry. I don’t know that. Just shooting my mouth off.

I wrote an ending to this piece about the precious nature of life. Something about stars, or birds, or those unattainable moments that keep life moving. Those things we should hold so dear. But I know that. Anyone still alive knows that, even if for just minutes at a time. So I erased it, and I will dignify my goodbye for you without wrapping this up in a cute analogy, or without reading a fucking Robert Frost poem, or without mentioning God, or the Celestial Kingdom. Instead I will just say that you are dead, and many will not sleep tonight due to that.