Self-murder. Suicide. There are a million and two books dealing with every aspect of self annhiliation. There are proclamations and handwringings galore. There are advancements in science, in medicine, in self-help, better drugs, easily accessible porn, women, travel, pills, fight clubs, children, movies, entertainment--there are things to salve ones demons, ones cravings for the end of this monotonous dread, the excruciating mundane nothing. The big zero that Life sometimes is. There are religions. There are a number of ways to escape, momentarily...but none as thorough, as forever as suicide. Momentarily. Alcohol, for example, lasts a few hours; more often than not it only aggravates the emotional state youre in. And, if you happen to be not quite right with your existence? It will plant mines, it will decimate you, it will turn you against you. You become your own worst enemy. The more your drink, the more often you drink, your inner fortress becomes undefended, the enemy at his pleasure seeps in, takes over and hoists his flag, which is your soul in tatters. You lose. In the end, a fight against oneself ends with both parties defeated.
At the outset, the onset of adulthood, we form prejudices that will dictate our future if we dont abandon them when theyre not needed anymore. In our teens we feel insecure, anxious, angst-ridden, fearful. Suspicious of self. By adulthood, we should be past this, otherwise we become almost fated to madness or self-death. At 25, I had a son. I ditched my desire to die the day he was born. What would hound me, for the rest of my life , is a desire, if not to destroy me, to question me, to berate me, to bitchslap me whenever I do something good for myself or for others. I have often wanted the luxury, the dubious luxury, of being able to plot my own death. I have yearned for this. Why? I cannot tell you. It isnt logical.
A few years ago, I befriended a man who struck me as my doppleganger. We discussed life, art, literature, ideas...and death. Every time we met, the big questions were discussed. Life was so serious as to be something to laugh at. I know now, the laughter was a bank of fog obfuscating the reality on the ground: my friends fortress was over-ran. His flag, gone. In its place, Deaths...which is always our soul. After his breakdown and asylum stay, I related to him my own experiences: half a dozen stays in sanitarioums, asylums, locked down for attempting to kill myself. Drugged. Psychoanalyzed. Despairing. Reaching the nadir each second. Every moment of my existence a Kursk, a D-Day, a mayday alert, cacophony, pandemonium, a din that nothing could squelch. Until my son. I told Carlos of this. I'd see his eyes and see myself reflected, myself from before my son, myself when myself was my own worst enemy. I wanted to save him. I wanted him to get better. To escape himself. I know his mind, because, it is my own. Call it madness, call it a chemical imbalance, a curse, a malady---anything you want---whatever it is, it is the worst emotions one can imagine, the absolute assuredness of knowing that one does not belong...anywhere. And, that ones very skin is enemy territory. You live inside enemy territory each second, waiting, despairing, death seems the only option. For years. One week of this is enough Hell to last a lifetime. A lifetime of feeling like this is beyond comprehension. I really cannot explain to someone who hasn't felt this, what it feels like. Just know that it is torture. I'm not being flippant or insulting when I say that a life lived in this manner is no life, it is a holocaust, it is a genocide, famine, war, plague, and apocalypse distilled inside each cell of ones body. It dictates ones actions, which all lead to one place and one place only. After the alcohol, the travel, the drugs, the doctors ,after everything and anything cease to work...only a miracle can save you. Nothing else. Hearing of Carlos' death smarted me, hit me worse than any death before, even my grandfathers. Because, I 'am Carlos. He is me. The thing that afflicted Woolf, Plath,Sexton,Byron,Nietszche, Styron, Thomas, Kurt Cobain ad infinitum, ad delirium, ad nauseum, etc et al is the same strange blood that afflicts me. For 13 years I have kept the enemy at bay. I have the faces, the love of three children and , for me, this is enough to fight me. I have a wife, this is another powerful deterrent. Their souls fly from my castle. Yet, the axe to chop down the flagpole lay at its base. It is a fixture rather than something to fixate on. I notice it, say Bonjour to it, 'Allo, Privet and leave it at that. There is other work to do than to attack my fragile self. This is key. I think the trauma that people like Carlos and I have experienced at our own hands is akin to PTSD. In fact, Ive had every doctor diagnose me with it. Am I a veteran of a psychic war? Am I a veteran of possibly the least understood battle? Have I survived the last apocalypse? Today I have. Tears fall from my eyes, hot and easy. There is a grief for my friend, for his pain, for the pain his family surely feels, for my wife who knew him longer than I did. This is the first time a friend of hers has passed away. In a sense, even though many friends and family have passed, Carlos' death is the most deeply felt because he was a brother, a comrade in arms, we had seen the exact same battles, been in the same war, the war that never seems to end. The war that is always waiting.Today, this moment I salute you, Carlos. For trying. For fighting. You are a brave man. A man not less than any other. You did fight. You did try. For this, for your memory, for our camaraderie, I salute you, even though I wished you had kept going.Even though, I know that there is nothing anyone could have done. When I was mad, when I sought my own demise, I felt, as sure as the sun rises, that my exit from this world would alleviate the suffering of my friends and family.I was sure of this . As I'm sure you were thinking the same thoughts ---but, just as I was more sick than wrong, so you were, Carlos. Sick. So many of us miss you. I understand. Too much. Thank you, my friend, for sharing your life with my own.
