Friday, September 24, 2010

The Swarm

Someone I had known for more than 30 years committed suicide a few weeks ago, making him my second longtime acquaintance to have killed himself in the last few years. I knew a third guy who hanged himself, but I didn't know him for as long or as well.
In the most recent suicide, the guy jumped in front of a train, in what ostensibly wasn't a cry-for-help kind of deal. He had conviction. I wonder if he checked the train schedule in advance or just figured there would be one coming along, as there usually is. He probably knew the schedule, because if he just walked up awaiting a random train, he might have had too much time to reconsider, conviction notwithstanding, or something else might have happened in the intervening time to foul up his plans. Someone might have seen him, suspected something and and called the cops. I don't know precisely where he stationed himself, but likely not on the platform, since other people wait there. And if he had jumped on the tracks in front of people waiting on the platform, one of those fuckers probably would have tried to save him. I wonder what was he thinking in those last moments.
What does the suicide method say about a person? Stepping in front of a train makes a splash. Literally, I'd think. Is it better than pills or a gun or a knife to the wrists or hanging or turning the car on in the garage? The carbon-monoxide method seems potentially the most peaceful. The train thing fucks up the day for a lot of other people, and the person who jumps in front of that train must know it's sensational. Sure to get media coverage beyond your run-of-the-mill hanging. The train method involves publicizing your pain to a much greater extent than privately offing yourself. There appears to be a fuck-you aspect to it. And it's selfish to the extent that it screws up the train schedule. And someone drove that train and probably has lasting images of a person split into about 750 pieces.
What remained to put in a coffin? Did his family even have to buy a coffin? Did he arrange the funeral in advance? Did he leave his affairs in order, or, in addition to coping with the loss, do those left behind face the additional burden of having to sort out bank accounts and car registrations and whatever else? And stuff. Everybody has stuff. More stuff than they probably realize. Not as bad as these people, but, still, most people have too much stuff. Someone else has to sort through that shit, throw it out, give certain things to certain kids. Whatever. How many soccer balls? He coached a high-school soccer team for years and once asked me to coach the freshman team at that school. My schedule precluded me from doing it, but I wonder now if anything would have been different had I taken him up on the offer. Not like he wouldn't have killed himself, but I might have more insight into it. Or maybe I would have found my calling and pursued a coaching/teaching path and be happy about that now. Well, maybe not happy, but more satisfied.
Was he selfish? He had five kids. Five. A couple of whom are young. They might miss him. Or, even if they don't, they have to live with the notion that their father killed himself. Fairly or not, that carries a stigma. They also will be left to wonder whether they possess a genetic predisposition to killing themselves. Or maybe they'll consider suicide a viable option when they encounter difficulties. Their lives have become more complicated. Did he think about his younger children before killing himself? Did he wonder how they would process this? Whether they would even be capable of comprehension? What does their mother even tell them? Eventually they'll find out the truth. Did he feel the pain so acutely that his relief became more important than their well-being? Because I look at my kids and think, 'What in the fucking hell?' because to me they're scary little miracles in whom I see myself and I become disconcerted and bewildered considering how my perspective has evolved.
Some people apparently can't fathom getting to the point at which taking one's own life is the only remaining option. Thresholds vary. Perhaps some people who have committed suicide endured only a fraction of what others have endured and continue to endure. Or maybe the cumulative effect of a thousand travails finally weighed too heavily. For some, the prospect of another day can loom like a cloud of dark smoke belched from an smokestack. Some can't take it. Not one more day of work at a dismal job, not one more doctor's appointment, not one more trip to the garage to have the car fixed, not one more bill, not one more day of taking out the garbage or cutting the grass or shoveling the snow or taking a shower or brushing your teeth. Or at least you can't do it straight. So you drink, as my recently departed acquaintance apparently did. Platitudes aside, drinking offers only a temporary respite. So you smoke weed or pop pills, but the longevity of such diversions is limited.
And being intelligent poses an additional challenge, since intelligence can spur a search for insight into the affliction, as opposed to an acceptance and a search for remedial activity, like drinking, without guilt. Intelligence also can hasten a sense of failure, since a smart person probably considers an inability to meet obligations a deficiency, whereas a stupid person considers it a birthright.
When awakening in the morning brings on the sensation of having been kicked in the gut, the dawning of another day holds less appeal than it otherwise might. Perpetual sadness proves a powerful deterrent to living. On the other hand, many times when I've thought I've known what was best for me, I've turned out to be wrong. I think. Suicide simplifies life for the person who commits it, since that person ceases to exist, at least in this realm, and ostensibly gets to leave behind all the niggling bullshit. But taking suicide off the table also simplifies matters. When it no longer remains an option, a person can channel energy elsewhere, like into what he has to do to try to resolve the issues that prompted suicidal notions in the first place.
A swarm of bees enveloped my kids recently, and I ran into that buzzsaw to get them out. And they stung us repeatedly. But my kids know I'll dive into the swarm. You have to travel into the swarm, not away from it, via the train or otherwise.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

No Good Deed

This morning, as I regrettably do most workday mornings, I took the train to New York. A crowded platform typically awaits people getting off the train, with only relatively narrow passageways to slip through en route to one of the various stairways or escalators that cough up travelers from the bowels of the train station.
Sometimes people stand in the middle of these narrow tracts through which others must pass, essentially precluding their passage. This particular morning, as I squeezed through, my backpack bumped a woman. I said excuse me and looked back. She appeared to be near tears, but I kept walking. My concern, however, for a fellow traveler got the better of me as I reached the next set of stairs.
I was going to be better. I was going to rise above the par-for-the-course nature of this shit-heel blight of a city. I was going to put my humanity on display. I went back to see if she was all right. Not from having been bumped, but she just appeared to be in some kind of distress. So I say: "Are you ok."
To which she screams: "You pushed me."
And I say: "I said 'excuse me.' "
She screams: "Why did you push me?"
I was like, "Wow," while weighing her disproportionate hostility. I'm standing there, and she starts to funnel up the escalator, with plexiglass providing a barrier between us. She's ascending, among the throngs, screaming "Fuck you, fuck you," while I stand and watch through the glass, contemplating this gesticulating Manhattan hyena, trying to summon the intestinal fortitude necessary to maintain my dignity. I once read something about composure being the ability to keep your head when people around you are losing theirs.
I don't say anything. But I'm thinking: If you're fucking fat ass hadn't been taking up three-quarters of the platform, I wouldn't have come anywhere near you, you fucking cunt. If you had taken three fucking seconds to consider that there might be other people out here and not just worry about your own fucking self, this might not have occurred. Fucking cunt.
Try to maintain your humanity in a city like this. A city in which wealth and avarice abut the filthy and impoverished street panhandling and the huddled masses beat like ticking time bombs.