I want to be blunt and up front about the content of this blog, what inspired it and my fear that I might come across as “profiting” off of or sensationalizing suicide as topic to write about (Please take that first sentence as a content warning for this whole post and if this post is making you have thoughts or desires related to self harm or violence, please reach out to someone and talk to them about it. Some options for that include the 988 Lifeline, the Trans Lifeline, or the Trevor Project, depending upon what kind of support would be most helpful to you in your current situation). I am still processing my friend’s death, that I wrote about in Post 54 of 100, and I need to do that in writing. He killed himself with a gun. He is not my first old friend to do this with a gun. Nor has every person I’ve known, who identifies as a man, and who died by suicide used a gun. I am going to go into a little bit of that history here, and be real honest about it, so this might be a difficult post for some folks to read.
I have only personally ever experienced suicidal ideation one time really in my life, and I kind made a joke out of it, but really myself, in writing, in the final section of I Fucked Up, the autobiographical anthology of the mistakes of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett. The Final section is called: S1.02.02 – Section III: the End, and you are welcome to read it, is kind of-all about-this experience. The secret truth is that was pretty much the very first thing that I wrote that I knew was going to become I Fucked Up. I can already tell this topic is going to be too big to cover in one blog post that I sat down to start writing at 10 pm after waking up at 4:30 am, because that is my life now. I want to write about why I don’t own a gun; why I am thankful I didn’t go down the path of trying to be a part of an armed militia after being surveilled by the FBI and subpoenaed to appear before a US Grand Jury; about how people (plural) I have known have used the threat of suicide and even possibly attempts at suicide to manipulate and control romantic and soon to be ex-romantic partners, sometimes without even realizing or intending for that to be the consequences of their actions. I want to write about the absolutely filthy, disgusting pressure that gets put upon people to find meaning and fulfillment in romantic (especially monogamous) relationships and the amount of hate that the world I grew up in seems to allow to be directed at oneself for experiencing life, and oneself and the world in ways that fall outside of compulsory heterosexuality, monogamy, authoritarian child raising, and of course, capitalism. So not only might I be exploiting the topic of “suicide” for one or two blog posts, I might be doing it for the next several posts, and if that comes across as a thing I am doing, I really hope someone calls me out on it.
Anyway, with all of these things that I have to write about the intersections of self harm, social harm, and patriarchal misogyny, I am probably going to just write this post about the most fucked up topic for me to write about, especially because I have actually no idea what was going through my friend’s head before the bullet.
The thing I need to write about tonight, that I have been thinking about for 2 weeks, and in a weird metaphysical sense for long before my friend died…is that I think the way we talk about suicide and the moral and ethical responsibilities that are supposed to stop people from committing suicide are fucked up, promote abuse and violence…and are sometimes really fucking hard not to fall into when you are trying to keep a loved one alive.
Life is not an obligation. Not to yourself, not to your family, your romantic partner, your children, your friends, your community, your faith, your nation, or anyone. When people tell you that you have a responsibility to keep living, for whatever reasons they try to feed you, they are manipulating you…just as manipulatingly as when someone tells you that they are thinking about committing suicide based upon your actions, or feelings or response to their actions or feelings. I think generally, society is much more tolerant and accepting of trying to manipulate people into living, and in all transparency, I have been the person telling someone that I love with all my heart that “YOU have no right to kill yourself because I love you too much and your act would just be too selfish…and think about your family and all the other people who love you…and yada, yada, yada.” I’ve been there, and the people I have told that to are still here, and some of the people who I never told that too are not…
…but even when it doesn’t feel like the wrong thing to say from some kind of moral or ethical perspective, and even when the outcome feels worth it, and the person later thanks you for being the one to say it…it is not the actual truth about life or death. It is a rhetorical power play to manipulate another person into doing what you want. It is every bit as selfish an act as anything you are accusing another person of, because life is not a responsibility. Life is a fleeting, terrifying, painful opportunity that has a real (and not improbable) chance to be beautiful, extraordinary, and yours…for as long as you can hold on to it. Absolutely no one else in the entire world gets the opportunity to live your life, or experience what you will get to experience, or can know what the consequences of living your life for yourself will be, so no one can tell you with any real conviction what your life is worth, or what it could yet become.
So yeah, there are a lot of things I wish I could have said to my friends who chose to end their lives, and to all my friends out their struggling with feelings about how crushing and impossible it is to navigate this world without just feeling like you are causing harm to others and the planet and yourself by continuing to live…I want to talk to you about your life, and choices that you might still be able to make that will give you more opportunities for those moments of pure awe and amazement at how kind and beautiful and undeservedly joyous the world and your place in it can be…but a really dark and dangerous reality of this world that too much rainbows and sunshine and trying to guilt trip people into living can and does cause, is that sometimes people make the choice to end their own life before they do something really fucking horrible, instead of after it. And I kind of hate myself for even thinking this could have been otherwise about my friends and the people I love and have cared about so much—but the truth is that no one I have ever cared about who killed themselves did it immediately after they did something unforgivable and terrible to someone else…
…and that is actually something that I respect the fuck out of, and think deserves to be remembered as a strength and blessing about each and everyone I have lost to suicide.
Look, I worked in Sexual Violence prevention, and very well might again one day. I worked at a shelter that had to keep its location secret and have bullet proof windows because spurned lovers, partners, or just possessive stalkers felt entitled to the lives and minds and bodies of others, and thought to themselves that “if I can’t have her (or him or them) then no one can.” There is a very pervasive idea in at least the US, that a powerful and successful person in this world is supposed to have at least one romantic relationship in their lives where the other person’s thoughts and labor and body are essentially an extension of their own property, wealth, and success. This idea rests at the very heart of patriarchal misogyny, and it is so heavily reiterated through cultural media, memes and institutions that it is actually very difficult to know with any kind of certainty whether anyone raised within this culture is going to be able resist its command when that person is at a low point of emotional, physical or economic despair. This is a reality that has to be acknowledge if it is ever going to be addressed, and so when I have a long lost friend (a different story than the one from the last post) who shoots himself in the head, in a car, in front of his partner and his child, and I can barely process how horrible and fucked up a situation that would be to survive for the partner or the child…and how much I wish my old friend would have lived in a world where much, much better options were available for handling the host of potential problems that were tearing his life apart…I also thank all that can be thanked that my friend had the strength in him to point the gun at himself, because there are many in that situation that don’t.
This is kind of spilling over into some really heavy shit, and some of the stuff about guns and masculinity that I am too emotionally and physically exhausted to go into tonight, and that I will want to come back to later, but I will never judge anyone for deciding it is their time, even if that decision breaks my heart and shatters my world, because: I don’t need to be anyone’s judge; I will never really know what other people are going through unless we’ve both created a relationship where they feel safe and comfortable enough to tell me; and the ugliest demons that people wrestle with are not the ones that people wear on their sleeves and show off to the world. I have been trying for about a paragraph and a half to find a natural way to work in this link to a zine about anarchist accountability processes and the failure of well intentioned people to build a community that offer more than the illusion of safety, called “The Broken Teapot”, (that I would love to talk to others about who read it), but the section “Love you Too Much” talks about the reality of the “murder/suicide” that is often explored in fiction and media as romantic plot line or a sensationalized thriller/horror hook, that really drives home for me the importance of remembering to talk with those I love about how life is an opportunity and a choice, not an obligation.
If I love you, you have earned it. You deserve to be loved, and you deserve to be treated with honesty, respect and compassion. I want you to be a part of my world, and I want you to know that your participation in my life brings me much light and joy. I am saying this to specific friends and family, and even some people that I probably shouldn’t because I can’t possibly know you well enough for my ability to love you to be well earned, that I know I need to be saying it to more than I do, and I am saying to more folks who I might have no idea need to hear it all, particularly from me…but I want you here. I want you here, but my love for you means that I trust you to know yourself, your limits and your strengths better than I ever could, and I will keep loving you everywhere this universe will ever take you.