The Dark Side

When a marriage ends, there’s enough angst to write about without having to disclose the very darkest moments of despair, but I feel somewhat disingenuous about my continued skirting around the edges of the pit.  I’ve been a tour guide through my journey thus far, but I’ve avoided escorting you into the darkest depths of the pit intentionally.  It’s not exactly that there are things that are too private- I pretty much relinquished claims to privacy when describing my unsuccessful attempt to win back my husband’s affection through seduction.  It’s more about not wanting to cause pain or regret to those who care about me.

I am however compelled to say a few things.   So here goes:  There is nothing- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING glamorous about suicide.  I know that there are forces at work to romanticize the tortured artist, the misunderstood soul, the 'fragile one'  who  ‘never quite belonged here amongst us.’  But these are lies, ridiculous lies. 

Give your head a good shake if you think Kurt Cobain, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Diane Arbus, and David Foster Wallace died nobly, admirably or artistically.  They died like all those before them and like all of us will eventually.  Their organs shut down.  Their extremities turned cold.  Their bladders and bowels emptied. Their muscles relaxed and then stiffened;their cells were damaged irrevocably and the decomposition process began thereafter.

Some of my very best writing was done in that state of severe depression, contemplating self-destruction, but trust me I wouldn’t trade my life now  for a posthumous publication of my suicidal ramblings. For someone to seriously contemplate taking his or her own life, that individual must be in emotional or physical agony and see no other way out of the pain.   Those who have never experienced that kind of anguish are typically in one of the following two camps:  Camp 1 (wherein the vast majority live) is that place from which people wonder “How could she do that to her ________?” (fill in the blank with one of the following: children, parents, spouse)   OR  “How could he be so ______ ? (fill in the blank with one of the following: selfish, weak, short-sighted).  Camp 2 (wherein dwell the people I am addressing in this blog post) is that place which was created by Hollywood, by biographers and songwriters.  It is the place from which people view death by suicide as inspired, creative or as exercising control over one’s destiny.   Trust me- when you are longing for death, you are far from being in control.

I will not bother to try to persuade those who live in Camp 1 that they ought to reserve judgement and give thanks that they have not experienced that complete lack of will to carry on. But for the others, those who might be tempted to romanticize self-destruction, think again.  This is what it feels like:

I am the apple that’s been jostled and dropped.

Hold me at just the right angle;

I am shiny and unblemished

Spin me in your hand,

 I am bruised and imperfect

Soft and discoloured

I am flawed, slowly rotting inside my skin.

Throw me to the ground.

I have made arrangements with the earth.