I have had an interesting life. One day I’ll work out the copy and put it here.
Kevin Stewart, this one at least, is an aspiring writer who dabbles in leatherwork, woodwork, and IT stuff. A graduate of a shithole high school in a shithole Ohio town, he graduated from Eastern Michigan University during middle age. He lives in Michigan with his family and pets. After years of constantly reinventing himself, he hopes he is coming into his final form and will become a published author soon.
Another Thing:
The year I turned 42 my daughter turned 9. In most people’s lives these events are only mildly significant. As usual, my life is not like most people’s. The number 42 is special due to the significance of Douglas Adams in my fan life. It also signifies that I am now older than I ever thought I’d be. As for 9, that makes me realize my daughter was 8 and both those years were very significant on me never believing I’d see 42.
When I was 7, one of my uncles passed away in a horrible accident. His life was cut way too short. We were not particularly close or anything, him and I, it’s just he was very young and loved by the whole family. In the year after his death I watched the waves of pain flow through my family. I understood the sorrow only so much. What I remember most, is that during that aftermath, when the wounds were still fresh in everyone’s hearts, I began to wish I had died instead of him. That perhaps everything would be better and everyone would be happier if I were the dead one and he could have lived. That is when the idea of death, dying, escaping, first wormed itself into my conscience.
Around the age of 8 or 9 I learned about suicide and that it was actually possible for someone to take their own life. This lesson came to me, ironically, from an after-school special against teenage suicide. Remember, I was young, some simple things were yet unknown to me, and this revelation of suicide opened my eyes to a new world. A world where I could make my own peace. A way to squash the darkness.
Over the years that followed, I learned about the proper ways to cut oneself for maximum bleed-out. What happens when a person jumps off a building, especially one too short to allow for terminal velocity. The dangers of improper hanging by the neck. Difficulty in self-drowning. All the dangers of getting suicide wrong became a small obsession of mine. After all, every part of my life was one big mistake after another. I couldn’t afford to screw that up too.
Thoughts of suicide ebbed and flowed with the years and days. Not a month, then week, and sometimes day went by without me thinking about killing myself, ushering in the sweet silence of eternal sleep. I can’t remember when or how old I was when I drew the knife across my wrist and stared gob-smacked at how the dull blade barely left a mark. Another failure to add to my life of failures.
So I sharpened my knife for next time.
All my plans and learning didn’t matter though. When I was 12 I finally died. Struck down by a car while riding my bike. But alas, the sleep fell short of true as I eventually awoke in a hospital bed, groggy and broken. My temporary reprieve from this life gave way to recovery and trying to understand how I could live when I wanted nothing more than to die. How could I be teased so?
Every year I thought more and more about dying. More and more about how I could end everything. I started smoking, a slow suicide. Became very reckless with my own safety—unless there existed no potential for death. Though I never tried to take my life again, the darkness persisted, every week and sometimes multiple times a day. I thought about killing myself.
Once, I heard it gets easier, that living becomes more joyful and desire for the permanent-solution-to-a-temporary-problem (suicide) goes away. No. No it doesn’t. Only a numbness sets in–like hitting your arm over and over, eventually the pain of the strike lessons compared to the first hit, though the pain persists. The older I became my desire for death never wavered. Even when I was happy, even when I was living the life I wanted to, and was in love, and doing the very things that gave my life meaning and purpose, suicide danced across my mind. Every mistake I ever made cast shadows on my accomplishments. Every success tinged with the aftertaste of all my failure. Suicide promised the only way out.
When I discovered I was about to be a father, I knew I needed to fix my thoughts, I needed to become better—whatever in the hell that was. Therapy had always been a hit-or-miss in my youth, but I didn’t know what else to do. I sought out recommendations. Found a counselor that took my insurance and wasted my time. He was not the fit I needed. Before I could discover that though, I had already planned to go all out and contacted U of M Psychiatry for a full psychological work up. I needed to know what was wrong with me, why the darkness never left, why the thoughts of suicide were always there.
Though I didn’t get a comprehensive diagnosis that labeled me this or that, they did prescribe me a medicine that works. They sent me to cognitive therapy that helped. The courts, after a small mishap with my neighbor and a shotgun, sent me to anger management about the same time. This built upon the things I learned in cognitive therapy and I finally had a pathway before me. I finally knew what was wrong with me and how to fix it.
As I turned 42 and I thought about my life and how it is amazing I made it to this age, I also considered how old my daughter is and the thoughts that have plagued me since I was her age. And I realized that while I was 41, the thoughts were finally weaker and much less frequent. I’m not sure when they started falling away, when suicide began to lose power in my life. It is very sobering to realize that life is finally getting easier, that the thoughts are dying before I do.
Now, the fear that surfaced as I looked back and remember the weight of that darkness over all those years from 8 to 42, I look at my daughter. What if she inherited my disease? What if she is broken like me? What if I cursed her to a life under the shadow of suicide and insanity?
I watch her. I see mannerisms that match mine. I see her react as I do/did to things. I wonder if any of them are symptoms or just character. It isn’t right and too dangerous to say anything to her. She knows that sometimes her daddy doesn’t feel well and needs a hug. That is enough. She doesn’t need this burden on her shoulders, to know the hell that overpowers the light. But I have to watch, I have to be ready to reach out and give her the support I never had if she has a darkness that never lets go.
If you know this darkness, if you have these thoughts, don’t hesitate to reach out for help.
The Hilarious World of Depression — How To Find Help
NAMI-National Alliance on Mental Illness
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – Call 800-273-TALK (8255)