How Not to Commit Suicide

Balls up after take-off and headed for the Truthosphere . . .

Nary a day goes by when I do not question the significance of my existence. And most days either involve or revolve around thoughts of suicide. Not that I would take that plunge: fact is, I wouldn't, if only because of the harm it would cause my children and friends. But that fact doesn't stop me from thinking about it. For one thing, it's not conscious volition that puts my ass onto that hot seat. Maybe it's genetic propensity, maybe it's blowback from the life I've lived, maybe, maybe, maybe. It doesn't matter, though. It's just something I deal with. Despair can well up around me over the most trivial of circumstances. It takes about twenty seconds for those feelings of despair to transmute themselves into the lead of suicidal ideation. 

I tried (Rx) drugs for awhile. They helped a little bit, but not enough for me to justify being a drug addict. Smoking helped a lot, actually. One of the greatest ignored facts about smoking is the simplicity of that addiction: being addicted to a substance that requires attention every 20 minutes or so (even if you don't smoke that often, if you're a real smoker you certainly think about it at least that often) constantly renews your reason for living. I smoke, therefore I am. But I stopped smoking when it started to become clear that I was going to die before my kids were settled into situations which would enable them to weather life without me. Drinking does help, I'll admit, but that's not something I have the constitution to apply myself to on a regular basis, so I save that behavior for the really execrable days. About once or twice a week. 

For the rest of the days, I just grit my teeth and get through it.

But there are two times during the day when I do not think about the futility of life or the proximity of death or the quietus my bare bodkin might make. One of those times occurs at night from 8:00 or so until 8:20 or so and again from 9:00 or so until 9:20 or so. Because that's when I read to Jacqueline and Joe. Jacqueline and I are currently reading two different picture Bibles and Notre Dames de Paris. (We've been at the latter for a little over a year, and will be finished soon. Which is a cakewalk compared to our last not-Bible read: Les Miserables. That one took us around 4 years.) Joe and I are currently reading Point of Impact (the novel on which Shooter is based), which Joe reads to me, and Land of Terror (the 6th of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar novels), which I read to Joe. (We've been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs novels since 2009, and have finished all of the Tarzan and Barsoom books that ERB wrote. 38 total there.) Reading to the kids . . . and being read to by my kid, in Joe's case . . . is such a sweet part of my life that I try not to ever miss it. If heaven consisted solely of this, it would be more than enough for me.

The other time that I don't think about ____ is from 6:30 until 7:00 in the morning, when I am fixing five meals: breakfast for all three of us and lunch for Jacqueline and Joe. Jacqueline eats pancakes for breakfast. Joe has eggs, bacon, and toast. I have egg and toast most days, sometimes adding a Morning Star fake sausage patty. I threw my toaster away a few months ago (because it was disugsuting) and now toast bread on the griddle. Lunch is pretty much just moving stuff from one package to another (e.g. jello and fruit cups), but I do get to make Joe a chicken patty sandwich, and sometimes Jacqueline has a ham sandwich, which she prefers to be fried. That's a good half hour of life, let me tell you. It feels very busy and hectic, but in a good way. 

So let's see . . . I make breakfast four days a week, so 2 hours there. And I do the readings four nights a week, so 2 hours and 40 minutes there. 

At least 4 hours and 40 minutes of my life are really, really good.

As for the other163 hours and 20 minutes . . . well, we all doing what we ca-an.