Why I Never Committed Suicide
"Not me, I think I'm gonna stick around. I've just got to find out how this movie ends. And as I stumble through the mystery of this life, I'm gonna keep on trying to find a friend."-- Randy Stonehill, Weight of the Sky

The questions come every once in a while from students and adults alike: Why suicide? Why not suicide? What stopped me from ending my own life? What advice do I have for them not to end theirs? They are intriguing queries, to say the least. Suicide is a great presence; a distressing assassin to some, while a hopeful potential for others.

Simply stated, death is fascinating; scary, but most certainly intriguing. Our mortality has had philosophers and the daft, queens and peasants, atheists and saints hurling theories about our physical end. Are we just dust? Is there an afterlife? Will we be remembered? Will I be remembered?

My first memory of death happened when I was seven: my grandmother died. Her death did not deeply affect me, though she was in and around my life from birth. A year later I would experience another death that would certainly shake me. It was August 2, 1979. I had just finished taking a shower, and heard the heart-stopping news: Thurman Munson, the great Yankee baseball catcher, had died in a plane crash. I fell into a stupor. How could he be dead? Death doesn’t happen to someone like that.

Within minutes, I heard the outside door open, and my brother and our next door neighbor, Rosanne, were coming in to tell me the news. Unfortunately for me, I had just finished taking a shower and I was completely naked. I panicked. I knew that within seconds they would be in the same room in which I now stood. I darted for my bedroom and crawled under the bed; there was no time to dress. Of course, Rosanne and Roy thought that I was playing some reinvented game of hide-n-seek. I wasn’t. While I hid, they sought, eventually finding me screaming under the bed because Rosanne saw me naked. I never was or have been as embarrassed as I was in that moment. I was completely terrified! Not only was I still processing Munson’s death, but now I had to deal with the humiliation of my next door neighbor seeing me as a wet, dangling mess. Death and sex were forever entangled, and my mom promptly took it upon herself to inform all the relatives about this charming incident. Needless to say, I was none too pleased.

After that incident, I don’t remember thinking about death too seriously until my teenage years. My initial reflections about suicide took place around age 14. I don’t remember any specific details concerning this topic, or any real precipitating crisis at the time, but I sense the circumstances around these ponderings dealt with more of my existential need to comprehend my existence. Furthermore, suicide was a subcategory of death, and by age 15, I was thinking about death, daily. I was intrigued by the mystery beyond; I was captivated by books and movies about death; I enjoyed visiting cemeteries (in my later teenage years, I even attempted to take my first girlfriend, Amy, to a graveyard for our first date); I was entranced by the death of relatives and family friends. Death, in truth, occupied more mental space than sex ever did in my teenage years.

Suicide became more of a focus the day I found out that Marc P. died. I was 15. He took a lethal amount of heroin and kissed a few rainbows in his final monologue. Of course all the adults wanted us (or perhaps, themselves) to believe it was an accident, but Marc and I were close enough our freshman year for me to know that it was a suicide. His smile and contagious laugh could not mask the sadness that existed in his ghostly piercing, blue eyes. I was shaken, stunned, angry, yet, obsessed with his exit, and in some ways, quite possibly, I am still gripped by his death. His voice haunts me, for he was one who got away.

It wasn’t too much after Marc’s death when I started thinking about my own demise, but initially, not through suicide; rather, I held this romantic and altruistic view of my death. I was certain I would die in sleep or be murdered like some of the great social leaders before me, and this, undoubtedly, would take place before I turned 25. I remember how assured I was about dying young. I didn’t crave this, but, much like clairvoyant abilities, I sensed this anticipated truth through every fiber of my being.

These thoughts went on and off through my freshman and sophomore years of high school. I was involved in a lot of stupid stuff at the time, creating havoc and idiot moves everywhere I went. It was my freshman year when I started burning down parks and wooded areas; it was in my freshman year when I kissed Tricia R. – she was the first girl I ever kissed, and she worried if I would be a good kisser because I was black; it was in my freshman year that I would steal liquor out of neighbors’ garages; it was in my freshman year that I resumed shoplifting; it was in my freshman year that I was drinking and chewing tobacco; it was in my freshman year when I started to feel really lost. Then my freshman year moved into my sophomore year, and more of the same continued, with a few additions.

On many nights during my sophomore year, I would sneak out of my house, running wild in the neighborhood, stealing people’s mail, starting more fires, drinking alone, smoking tea, sniffing glue and gasoline, and trying to get lucky with some girls.

All these activities added to my depression, and suicidal thoughts were in the background of my mind. I felt empty. Life appeared to have no purpose. In my heart of hearts, I knew that I would not commit suicide; I came from a religious home, and suicide, in my thinking then, was always a one-way ticket to hell. However, on the night of April 25, 1987, I had snuck out of my house and I had gotten very drunk, and when I came home I prayed to God to never allow me to wake the next morning. I was desperately disenchanted by the life I had created. I went to sleep, hoping I would die in that peaceful land of dreams. I couldn’t pull the trigger, slice my wrists, or hang myself, but the urge to subsist was a distant memory; I wanted death.

I awoke the next morning tearful, incensed, and still drunk. It was Sunday, April 26, and my life was about to change. Before going to church, my parents often had a morning worship time where all of us would pray together. For the most part, these were a drag, both then and now, but on this morning, I was a trembling mess. I wailed out to God praying that God would either give me all of God or none of God. I promised that I would submit to God’s will for my life, if God would take these voices from my mind, from my soul.

God answered my prayer.

There was a major change in my life; yet, from time to time, death has made a request for my company, and in my senior year of college, I almost gave in to that ridiculous clanging. During this period of my life, I was dealing with what one 17 year old boy had done to this 11 year old child. Up until then, I thought I was fine, but one of my sociology teachers put a word to what had happened to me: molestation.

Only by the strength of God and friends did I survive that phase.
I’ve battled some depression for chunks of my life, though I’ve never taken medication for it, nor do I think I ever will. When I look at my family history: mother, father, brother, aunts – I see that the mark of depression rests heavily in my genes. I know that within the last 13 years my brother has battled alcohol, sex, and drug addiction, and quite possibly some undiagnosed mental illness. Yes, the drug addiction garners the most attention, but my clinical sense believes it is a tangled web, not a dangling rope.

My mother has been on both anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications, and my father, within the last seven years, told me about wanting to cash it all in when he was laid off from work. This was the most shocking of all. My father, a big, strong man wanted to end it all. He felt humiliated by life and its injustice. Thankfully, because of his faith in God, perhaps the thoughts about family, he stuck it out. We’ve never spoken about this impulse since the first time he nonchalantly mentioned it to me. Finally, one of my aunts is bi-polar and has spent many years on medications and in hospitals.

What has made me not commit suicide? Very simply: God, family, friends, and my instinctive belief that I serve more people by being alive than I would by my death. Will that ever change? I can’t say for certain. I knew in college that it was my sister Joy that kept me alive at times. She is 11.5 years younger than me. She is my baby, though now grown. I knew in college, especially my senior year, that she was the most important reason for me not ending it all. I also knew had anything tragic happened to her at that time, I would take a step away from this life, and perhaps never return.

What about now? I think about my daughter. I think that if something tragic were to happen to her, something that ended her life, would there be enough good (in friends, family, and God) to make me want to continue? I pray that I will never have to answer that question.

For now, I know that suicide has not even remotely called my name since 1993, and for this I’m thankful.