My Own Good Reasons For A Suicide

"No one ever lacks good reasons for suicide." ~ Cesare Pavese

"It would be hard to define chaos better than as a world where children decide they don’t want to live. "~Edward Hoagland, “Heaven and Nature”

Today is the anniversary of my father's suicide. I was considering starting this entry with a Sylvia Plath quote, but I couldn't bear to read any of her poems. Too bad. She's the perfect source for quotes of self-destruction.

On this day, my father left his house while my mother was on the phone, got his gun, went to a neighbor's house and asked for a bullet (my mom had hidden them all) "to kill a snake," stepped outside on the neighbor's lawn and shot himself to death.

I used to think killing oneself was the existential right of every being. I still believe that, but the cost of checking out is unbearably high for those of us left behind. I tried to commit suicide once and I've had suicidal thoughts for months on end, at times. After my father's death, I decided that, no matter how much I needed to escape, there would be no escape as long as there were people who would suffer from that destruction. It is, without question, the worst injury one can inflict on people who love you.

In honor of my father's death, I will share my own attempt. I was 11 years old. Life had become unbearable in so many ways. My father had taken up with the neighborhood girl and the violence in my house was escalating to a level that left me in a continuous state of terror, nothing I tried could fix any of it. I so needed comfort and respite from the agony of getting up and going to school every day and pretending that everything was just fine. My mom was working, so I came home every day to a cold and empty house. We had space heaters and I wasn't allowed to turn them on by myself, so I spent a couple of hours every day being miserably cold. As a matter of fact, every day had begun to seem dark and cold.

I decided one day that I just couldn't show up at school that day. I stayed home, lay on the living room floor, covered with blankets and watched "I Love Lucy" and "The Dick Van Dyke show." It wasn't much in the way of comfort, but it was all I had. I don't really recall how long I stayed away from school, but it was long enough for the school to notice. They called my mom at work one day. When she came home, she was furious with me.

When my father came home, she told him. He called me into the bathroom where he was taking a dump and had me stand there while he raged at me. My father loved to have people come stand in the bathroom while he was taking pooping, but he especially loved it when he was angry. It was a profoundly demeaning act. I don't recall how long I stood there, petrified, or what he said to me. I think there was some reference once again to committing me to a mental institution...always one of my dad's favorites.

There was nothing to be done about it; I was going to have to go to school the next day. after my mother left that morning, I searched around for some method of dying. Part of my problem was that, if I wasn't successful, I shuddered to think of what might happen. There would be plenty of punishment meted out for attempting to kill myself. I lit upon the idea of sleeping pills. My dad always had over the counter sleeping pills around. I didn't know how many it would take to kill myself, since I was just a novice 11 year old. I took as many as I dared; I didn't want anyone to know I had done that if it didn't work. For good measure, I took off my shoes and didn't wear a coat as I walked the four blocks or so to school. It was January and a cold, raw wind blew through my clothes. The sky was dark. I remember there was a robin in the schoolyard as I walked up to the door.

By the time I made it to math class, the pills were making their way into my bloodstream. Unfortunately, being an amateur, I was unaware that it's best to eat something before you take the pills. Otherwise you'll throw up and waste the opportunity. I was standing at the blackboard, trying to do a math problem when I started to gag. I knew no one was going to send me home or have any sympathy for me whatsoever. Best just to try to keep anyone from knowing what was going on. I threw up and a bit of it got on my blue pleated skirt. I managed to swallow the rest. I spent the rest of the day walking around with vomit on myself. I think I was pretty spaced out, but I just kept swallowing whatever arose and putting one foot in front of the other.

Several of my teachers felt justified in making snide remarks in front of everyone in the class. I did not respond. I hated them. I hated myself. I just wanted to die and get out of everyone's way. No such luck.