Who You’d Be Today
Warning: the following blog will contain talks about suicide, which may be difficult for some readers.
I have been very candid about my struggles with suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety that I have experienced at various points of my life. Our society still labels the topic of suicide as shameful, or an act of cowardice, but once we work to remove those labels from this topic can we begin to heal from it. I believe that the one thing this COVID pandemic has shown us is that mental health is extremely important. This last year, I have heard of several people (adults and adolescence alike) succumbing to depression and ending their lives, or attempting to do so. So many stories… so many lives lost or potentially lost.
And yet, we still struggle to talk about the topic.
I know that over the last few years that a few people who have died have done so from suicide… you can tell, because their families won’t necessarily speak about HOW they died. For many people, the thought of their loved ones killing themselves brings shame upon the living, as they feel as if their love wasn’t strong enough to keep that person around. I can tell you, as someone who has marched down the road to the oblivion that is ending your life, that is incredibly untrue. You see, even when I was at my lowest periods of my life and wanting to end my life, I still was very aware that I still had a huge amount of friends and family that loved me. It wasn’t about the lack of their love, it was about the pain of existing becoming way too great. Their love was still important… still just as powerful.
The other thing we need to stop doing is calling suicide an act of cowardice. Typically, this phrase comes from people who they themselves are too afraid to be vulnerable or do not know someone who has ended their life. In my opinion, it takes a great deal of bravery to put a gun to your head and end your misery as it does to push forward and live… lets scratch that shit from the equation as it is far too nuanced to say yes or no to. Labeling it with cowardice further pushes the stigma of this heart wrenching disease.
I’d be lying if I said that my existence isn’t painful at times still. I have established my life, and I am so damn happy to be alive and here today, but I still have a huge void in my heart. I still have a longing for that bond, and I hate how the relationship between us is still so tempestuous, to the point where it’s just ludicrous on both sides, but I am far from the place I was in March. Despite that sorrow from my life being drastically changed, and the pain with it, existence is cherished with me.
In 33 years on this earth, I have known several people who haven’t survived this disease… and sadly, I will know more people before my time is done.
I wanted to talk about my friend from college, Destiny (or as some knew her as “Ally”), for the longest time but I wanted to do it in a manner that as not exploitative of her memory. Her story, which I only known just a sliver about, is so worthy… and I wish she were around to tell it.
Destiny ended her life in September, 2011, while she was still in college. I met Destiny in the dorms through our mutual friends and dormmates. She was also in the Air Force ROTC wing, and I would see her every morning with their Squadron doing PT while me and the Army ROTC program did our own. We were both odd ducks in the ROTC programs, both being artists, rebels, and queer in our own ways (although I was closeted). Destiny was able to snag herself a coveted slot in the Fresno State nursing program… when she passed away I took her navy blue stethoscope, which I placed in a shadow box with my college rugby jersey.
I also took her tabby cat, Pikachu, who I raised as my own for 7 years. He was a big, fat, pain in the ass that peed on everything but I loved him. I kept his ashes for years when he died, unsure of what to do with them. I wanted to return them to her grave site, but I wasn’t sure if I could achieve that. My ex girlfriend questioned why I kept Pikachu and Coppers ashes around the house… she wasn’t sure if I was not moving forward with it. Before I left Camarillo, and after my ex-girlfriend broke up with me, I took their ashes to a river that my ex, her son, and myself would walk often. I marched out the door to do the deed, in which she texted me worried if I was ok to do it alone. I didn’t want her there, as I was trying to show her I was emotionally tough (which of course was a lie…). I placed the little plastic flowers that came with their tins on the bridge we’d cross, poured their ashes into the river, and gave my peace. To my exe’s credit, she gave me a big hug when I got home… they were finally at rest, and so was I with that chapter of my life.
I’ll never forgot the night I found out Destiny died. My college roommate, Jessica, called me and told me as I sat in my work van (I was working a shitty job as night security for the school at the time). I called our other roommate, Mallory, and we all cried in disbelief on the phone. It was shocking, but not surprising to me. You see, two weeks prior, Destiny and I were having a conversation on messenger and I had this gut feeling that she was not thrilled with existence. In fact, I kind of have the vibe that she wanted to form a suicide pact with me. It wasn’t anything obvious, but if you’ve ever been down that lonely road before you can just sense it. They use absolutes like “never” and “always.” There is an extreme cynicism to humanity in general.
The ten year anniversary of her death will be this September and it took me nine whole years before I could look up the last conversation we had on Facebook messenger, because I was ashamed at what I would find. I felt ashamed that my intuition was telling me something was off, but I was too pissed off with life too to help her.
The last conversation we had covered everything from the ever rising tuition, to anti-establishment rhetoric, to pot. We were both pissed off at the injustice in the world, and how college was starting to become a money pit. We started talking about public health, and how our whole system was fucked. It’s one of the many reasons why I left public health, even after I got the degree in it.
“God I hope that we stop producing fuckers like that” I said in reference to greedy people.
She laughed and said she couldn’t wait to see the world end, and that she hated schools nowadays. “They’re nothing but big corporations themselves disguised as community jewels.”
This line of thinking made me wonder what mental state she was in, but I myself was so far into my own self-loathing that I couldn’t help her. Part of me wanted to challenge her thoughts and say “yeah, but you know what? We can make that change…” but that small part inside of me that believed that was tired of fighting too.
The truth is, nothing she said was actually wrong. She was correct… our world is fucked, we’re letting greed rule everything, pot shouldn’t be illegal, and school’s are just diploma mills. She was wrong in her assessment that the world was “fucktarded” and we needed to hit a big “reset button.” If she were alive today I know she’d see that… she would also have a field day with all the politics that are going on now!
I’ll spare you the inner dialogue she provided to me that tells her what she thought of the world weeks before she left it as that conversation is still private… I don’t want her frustration with the world to be her legacy, rather I want the themes that she spoke about to be her true legacy. Hidden behind the anger and frustration with the establishment was a true humanitarian. Destiny didn’t believe in morality dictated by organized religion, she believed in doing good SIMPLY FOR THE FACT THAT IT’S GOOD FOR HUMANITY. She believed in not enabling people, but making sure everyone had access to the same tools to achieve their goals. She believed that big government was bullshit, and they should stay the hell out of our lives. She questioned the morality of war and the ethics of us going over to other countries and taking out people on their own soil. We clashed on this, but I appreciated her viewpoint as it kept us honest and challenged our ethics and morality. I loved that about her and our conversations… she made you question your own bullshit.
I can’t help but wonder who she’d be today.
She would have been an amazing nurse… I’m not just saying that because she’s gone, but because she had compassion and empathy. I could see her being the champion of her patients… challenging doctors and management to ensure proper and ethical care was delivered. I could see her working with young and disenfranchised children… even being a children’s psychiatric nurse. She had that caring heart.
Based on our last conversation, she’d be thrilled to know we finally made pot legal in California! :) She and I had conversations about the legality of it, the health consequences, and taxing it. We both agreed that it was stupid for it to be illegal.
I would imagine she’d have voted for Bernie Sanders… or maybe not because she was so anti-establishment. Maybe she’d be libertarian? Either way, I could never see her falling into the mainstream of anything. She’d still be absolutely vocal about what she believed in though… and standing up for the little guy. I’d see her in a long term relationship, but probably never married not because she didn’t love someone (she was very loving) but because it was part of the establishment. I could see her up in arms about the progressive issues of today, and fighting the good fights to ensure people of all walks of life were taken care of.
She’d still be an artist, photographer, or some sort of creator. She’d absolutely still be a gaming nerd of some sort. Weirdly enough, I could see her doing the exact same thing I’m doing right now: writing a blog to reach out to people to help them or talk about big topics that matter.
Had she just had that little sliver of hope… she’d have been so many things today, and ten years later that still breaks my heart to know that one of the most humanistic people I’ve ever known gave up on believing in humanity. She’d be appalled with how we’ve all acted during the last few years in terms of politics and polarization. She and I didn’t always see eye to eye in terms of politics, but we talked to each other respectfully and she actually changed my stance on things.
It still kills me to know this was the very last thing I ever said to her, before I got sucked up into my own bullshit of life:
The only thing that separated her and I in terms of cynicism with the world around us was just one tiny sliver of hope…
It makes you really sit and think about the last thing you’ve ever said to someone. I know that I don’t want the people in my life to go without them knowing how much I love and care about them… just in case it’s either one of our times. I don’t want conversations to end like that… about groceries and school. I wish it would have ended with “keep up the good work. I know it seems futile, but I know if you hold on that you will change the world, just as you have changed my views on life. You matter and your existence is powerful.”
Her Facebook page still has her profile picture… she took that picture the day before she died. Knowing that still haunts me a decade later.
So I like to remember her by this… one of her many portraits she took as she began experimenting with photography.
For those of you who’ve been down this road of despair before, I can tell you that it gets better. You aren’t alone. You matter. There is still so much beauty in the world and in humanity, if you just… hold… on…
For more information on suicide awareness, and to get help, please go to:
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
or call 1-800-273-8255
You matter very much.
