Hope in the Forsaken One

If, as St. Paul says, Christ who knew no sin was made sin for us, can there be any sin he did not bear there on the cross? If the answer is no, as I believe it must be, then even the utterly forsaken are not bereft of the company of the utterly forsaken one, the Son of God, and therefore not bereft of hope." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

This is a comforting thought as I instinctively contrast my Aunt Helen's life and recent death with my dad's so long ago. He was proud and adamant in his atheism. He would not accept God's grace while he lived, and in his hopelessness took his own life. 

Yet I hope that he is not now bereft of hope.

Perhaps there is hope for me, too, as I continue to refuse to yield my will fully to God's, one way or another, decade after decade. 

I can't stop . . .

. . .  remembering.

. . .  hating remembering.

. . .  wanting to not remember anymore.

The other attempted suicide story . . .

. . . that I recently read - maybe early last week - was about a guy who had a lightning bolt tattoo that he almost never talked about. One night he'd been drinking and told a friend the story behind it. Some time in his past he'd grown weary of dealing with his darkness, and decided to end his life. His gun misfired, but before he realized that, in the moment after he'd actually pulled the trigger to the point of releasing the firing pin, he instantly regretted what he'd done. He was unspeakably relieved when it didn't fire. As it happened, there was a thunderstorm that night, and the lightning became a symbol for him and a reminder that, no matter how bad things might get, he doesn't really want to die.

Sometimes I still have self-destructive thoughts

For a couple minutes yesterday i was feeling incredibly stressed out and frustrated, to the point (excuse the unintended pun) that i considered whether it would be possible to jam my pen through my temple. i recognized the madness in the impulse, and rejected it, and soon worked past it. Though they won't know of it, i'm sure my coworkers would be grateful for that, not to mention the people who love me.

i am, gratefully, long past the days when i would sit on the kitchen floor with the cold steel of the sharpened chef's knife pressed against my wrist. but i still have vestige impulses of the habit of not wanting to live anymore. The two stories i read this month from people who survived suicide attempts help with putting those impulses into perspective. i still think i could probably benefit from more therapy to further help with that, but don't really want to explain why i'd be going there again. 

The Golden Gate jump survivor

The first thing that struck me in his story, and probably the most important, was the panicked regret he felt the instant he was clear of the rail.

The other thing that strikes me, for others, and maybe with a hope of comfort for myself, was how those who've attempted (or committed) suicide so often regret, once it's usually too late, hurting the people they love. Did my dad feel that way, in that fleeting moment between when he pulled the trigger and when the bullet irreparably destroyed his brain?

For that matter, did he love me?

Different experiences of suicide

Or: why I'm pretty sure I'd never do it, no matter how hard life gets. I am blessed with a fundamental trust in God that would have to be completely overwhelmed by despair to reach that point. 

Last week I stumbled across an in-depth story about a middle-aged man who was randomly murdered, while out for a run, by a mentally ill man who'd been a running back at a well known university and had dropped out due issues stemming from his mental illness. This article focused on the difficulties institutions (educational, professional) face dealing with mental illness. He and his wife had no children, and I saw in a related article that she was so devastated by his death that she took her own life a week later. 

I was pretty irritated by the journalist who acknowledge the tragedy this woman had experienced but nonetheless branded her suicide as selfish. This strikes me as an easy way to dismiss those who succumb to their depression and to prop ourselves up at their expense. Maybe she (the journalist) was just invoking an important defense against depression in her own life, but I couldn't make myself read her article after seeing the headline. Perhaps she went on to investigate whether the distraught widow had had a history of issues with depression, and her husband's senseless murder had simply pushed her over an edge at which she had previously managed to maintain a troubled equilibrium. (This causes me to reflect on how stable my own equilibrium might really be, which is probably not a bad thing to consider for a guy who won't get a semicolon tattoo at least partly because his mother always insisted, "Don't write a check with your mouth that your ass can't cash.")

We have a friend who was ten years old when she discovered her grandmother, who lived in her home, dead by suicide. We've never really talked about what that was like for her; I would never ask her directly and she hasn't shared beyond these simple circumstances. But I often think of how important it is for my own grandchildren to know that they bring me joy and hope, or rather, to never have to face the question of why they didn't. My bride, too, would be devastated by my passing should I ever become so low as to disregard the difference her love makes in my life.

My dad's self-inflicted death was not as traumatic for me, though I'm certain that was at least in part because mom hid the details of his death behind the technical code phrase "cerebral hemorrhage," not revealing to me that it was a suicide until over a year later. When he died, the hardest thing for me about my dad's demise was my certainty that the reasons my prayers for him weren't answered were my own fault. Perhaps knowing sooner that he'd killed himself might have alleviated that concern, but I'm not at all certain of that.

I've long felt that the only semi-considerate way to commit suicide is to make it appear accidental. Fortunately - and, on re-reading prior to publishing this post, I take it as a positive sign that I didn't consider putting the prefix "un" on that adverb - I have learned that it is very difficult to set up an "accident" such that it is certain to a) be interpreted as such, b) result in death, and c) not physically or emotionally traumatize someone else.

Life is a precious gift.  But I understand all too well how easy it is to be overwhelmed by it. 

A memory from out of the blue

I just remembered again how certain I was that God wasn't going to answer my prayers for my dad because of my sin. I didn't know, of course, that he was already dead.

I felt responsible for his death . . . even after (much) later learning that his death was self inflicted, although then for a different reason. I suppose that the emotional memories linger even after the understanding grows up.

Darkness

So when a man who freely discusses the facts of his childhood sexual abuse refers to some subsequent time as the darkest of his life, it serves to confirm the notion that the evil we do harms us far worse than the evil that is done to us.

On further thought: although my time in the 45323 zip code included the day that I was closest to ending my own life, even that was not the darkest day of my life. That time came before, to get me there. Because the evil we do is darker, even if we don't fully perceive the darkness at the time.

#whenIbecamewhatIabhor

Hesitation

I've been reading about the semicolon tattoo. The idea appeals to me and terrifies me at the same time. I think it would make my struggles seem bigger and more omnipresent than they have been. At the same time, it represents a degree of openness that feels foreign to me now. (Younger me is slapping me inside my head now.)

So many decisions, too. I'd want it to be more artistic or expressive, but how? And where? Not too in-everyone's-face, not too private.

Okay, this isn't going to happen.

From bondage to "still weak"-ness

The Unbound ministry takes away my excuses for failing to resist temptation. It reminds me of the power of Jesus' victory and brings that power to bear in my life in ways both spiritual and practical. Spiritually, it reminds me of the need to repent of things that I have tolerated or excused away as habit or as "no big deal." Practically, it reminds me to apply the 5 keys to spiritual freedom regularly in the face of my weakness.

I don't want to revisit ground that I covered in this lengthy post from last year, right after I'd first encountered the Unbound ministry. But I feel as if I had again let myself be spiritually bound, and even without having participated in a prayer session on Saturday, this morning I feel merely weak. By asking God to help me through my temptations to look wrongly upon my marriage and indulge my mind in aspects of my sexuality that I am certain are not from him, rather than feeling compelled to follow where those thoughts and fantasies take me, this morning I find I am turning my eyes away from myself and toward him, and relying on his strength rather than trying to manufacture my own.

There does remain one area in which I believe I need to specifically ask for prayer in the Unbound model. I must stop looking for an avenue of escape from my life. Though I have not been as far up the scale as in my darkest days, I have been more consistently further along it than is healthy for me, and I can see that there is likely a spiritual component to that as well as my own thought habit.

A not-completely helpful theme

Suicide is not a cowardly or selfish act.

This is an important message to deliver. However, here's the dangerous thing about it: for some who walk in darkness, the thought that taking their own life would be selfish - a glimmer of understanding of how devastating it would be for those who love us - is sometimes the one thing that has kept us from actually doing it. That is, this stigma that is traditionally associated with suicide does carry some preventive value.

In my darkest moments, I have found it helpful to think of the effects that my demise would have on the people whom I love - particularly the possible financial, emotional and spiritual ramifications. I was actually encouraged and trained to think this way, particularly in terms of the emotional fallout, by mental health professionals, when I was closest to taking my own life. Having lived in the aftermath of my dad's suicide when I was fourteen, these ramifications are not some nebulous concept for me; I actually experienced the short- and longer-term impact that his absence had on my life. That isn't to say that I think my own life would have been better had he continued to live his life impaired by alcohol and emotionally broken, but it certainly would have been different.

In my adult darkness, the effect that my self-inflicted demise would have on the people I've already hurt so deeply has been a touchstone to help me seek out a better answer. Note that this touchstone was actually a part of that answer; in the grand scheme of a healthy life it should be only a minority part - it is still important to find reasons to live for my own sake as well as for that of my loved ones - but in the darkness of despair it can be a bigger lifeline than an emotionally healthy person might imagine. Considering the impact that killing myself would have on those around me has also been a helpful tool for expanding my view beyond the circumstances that might otherwise consume me.

Now, calling suicide cowardly or selfish in its aftermath - as at least one commentator did in response to Robin Williams' death - is completely unhelpful for the loved ones who are trying to deal with it. It is a useless and misguided judgment of the departed. But let's not take the consideration of our relationship with our loved ones and the effect we have on them completely out of the toolbag, okay?

(way) More on Monday (edited)

Caution: probable megapost ahead, with links to previous posts.

I was as nervous as I was excited to see them again, for a combination of reasons. But first, why these relatives that I saw only a half dozen times in my youth mean so much to me.

Well, that will take sharing some more details related to this post. Yes, I was finally going to be reunited with the people that I was with when my dad died. That trip would have been quite memorable for other reasons had it not ended so catastrophically. The idea was to go by train. I don't know how Amtrak pricing compared with flying in those days - it can be significantly more expensive today - but the cost wasn't the main issue. Mom wanted us to experience the country by rail. Dad couldn't go, as he didn't have enough vacation left: he had a Sunday package of Orioles' season tickets, and he never felt good enough to get to work on Monday morning after a game. By then I had come to understand why that always took so much out of him, why my mom objected to my going along with him very often, and why I was forbidden to tell her about the stop that he made just down the street - what was in that odd shaped bottle wrapped in brown paper from which he drank on the way to and throughout the rare games I was allowed to attend with him. (That was by no means the worst thing that I was never to share with her, but it was the most frequent.) Anyway, for this trip it was just the three of us, Mom, my sister and me, with none of dad's alcohol-fueled complications..

The rail station was a different experience, but not that different in nature from an airport. We had dinner in the dining car, and I seem to recall going back later for a snack before it was time for us to sleep in our semi-reclining coach seats. Along the way I developed a crush on one of our fellow passengers who, like most kids my own age, was way less naive than I was. She tried to convince me to let her paint my fingernails with clear polish - lots of guys do that, she assured, and no one will be able to tell because it's clear - and the only reason she didn't succeed was that I was too tied by the apron strings to not check with my mom first - so I guess that wasn't entirely a bad thing. I think we had only one overnight on the train between Baltimore and . . . I can't remember . . . Topeka?  I'm pretty sure it wasn't Kansas City. From there we transferred to a bus - this was the second night of travel, I think - to ride to Dodge City (another "I think") where my dad's brother and/or sister-in-law was picking us up.

There are other details I remember from this trip. It seems to me that this was the year we went to the Seward County fair, which I thought was way fun. We had fairs in MD, but I don't think I'd ever been to one. In the ensuing years I'd go with my high school girlfriend (now my bride of 32 years) to the Glen Burnie carnival, but hadn't been as of yet. Anyway, I remember on that trip and the next playing baseball with my cousins and their friends in the field behind my aunt and uncle's double-wide. When there weren't enough friends around for a game, my cousins and I had plenty of games of catch and rundown - though for the life of me I can't remember the different name they had for the latter. I've finally figured out why I've been remembering them as closer to my age than they really were: they were at least my equal in sports ability, even though Bill and Mark were two and three years younger than me. I can't remember which of the years it was that I helped with the mowing at my grandparents' house, taking a little bit of flack from my cousins and then my uncle for not "following the pattern."

I'll spare the reader (and myself) the details of my clearest memories from before The Call. They happened at night, in youthful ignorance and curiosity. I may not have understood the nature of what we were doing, but I knew it was forbidden. We weren't trying to be naughty, yet I knew we were. And I'm remorseful about it now, but will probably never get a chance to tell them so, because it isn't the sort of thing you raise without it being clear that the other person hasn't already moved past it on their own. I talked about it in therapy, but am not completely without difficult feelings about it. This was the biggest reason for my nervousness about visiting this week.

The power behind those lingering feelings is undeniable. We were in the latter days of the trip, preparing to retrace our steps back home, when The Call came one evening. Some time later, our mom called my sister and I together (I thought I was remembering, though now it is occurring to me that maybe she told me but not Karen?) to tell us most gravely that dad had become very suddenly and seriously ill. It wasn't at all clear that he was going to survive. We were going to have to fly home the next day and pray for the best.

Pray I did. I remember my cousins praying the rosary with me, under the impossibly starry rural Kansas sky. As we offered our repetitive, ritual prayers, I silently begged God to answer my prayer for my father in spite of the bad thing I'd been doing. I was afraid that if he died it would be my fault, because I'd learned that God doesn't answer the prayers of a sinner. We were up, praying and afraid, for most of the night, though I suppose I must have slept for at least several hours.

The seriousness of his condition was underscored when Grandma and Grandpa made the trip back to Maryland with us, too; I can't remember for certain who else came along. We drove to Wichita to catch our plane, but the rest of that part of my life is a distant blur, starting with the flights home; I think I slept through most of both (?; I'm sure it was at least two, even in the "pre-hub" days of air travel) of them. Once we were home in our own living room, Mom told us that Dad had already been dead when she'd gotten The Call before we'd left Kansas, and that she'd wanted to wait until we were back in familiar surroundings to break the worst part of the news to us. She explained that he'd died of a sudden, unexpected cerebral hemorrhage, saving the rest of the truth for some day much later, when I was older and she'd had a chance to deal with it. (That would be after she revealed that my dad wasn't my biological father, I think.) One of my uncles - I'm thinking it was my Kansas uncle, but I just don't remember for certain - dropped the "man of the house, now" line on me, but it didn't seem like the unreasonable burden that it might have been had I been younger. I remember the funeral home behind our school, run by the family of a grade school classmate. I'm pretty sure I had been in it before, but it's way different when it's your own dad and you're there for the duration rather than just to pay your respects and leave. There were a few of his friends from work with whom we'd visited over the years - always at their homes rather than ours - who came for the viewing or funeral. Our pastor led a service at the funeral home and prayers at the gravesite; he was a bit of a rebel, honoring my mom's request that he preside despite my dad's professed atheism and undeniably non-Catholic status. My clearest recollection is the tender moment back in the limo at the graveyard when, remembering my uncle's admonition from our arrival home, I asked my tearful mother if she was okay. She seemed legitimately bolstered and comforted by my asking. Grandma and Grandpa stayed for another day or so, I think. In just a few weeks I started high school, from which there are all sorts of memories that are part of my whole story but are well beyond the scope of this post, even though emotionally some of them might be considered part of a continuous weaving.

The following year we had our big road trip, which included a side trip with our Kansas aunt, uncle, and cousins to the Ozarks (though I suppose it's possible this side trip was the previous year). It was the only time in my life I've ever enjoyed fishing, though I think that maybe I enjoy it more in the memory than I did in the moment. I remember very clearly, though, how patient my uncle was with me, very different from how my dad had been.

So the family members with whom I was reunited on Monday, for the first time since I was fifteen years old, are very dear to me. I was surprised when we got there with the chance to also see the ones who'd almost let my paternity cat out of the bag 38 years ago. My secretive, overprotective mother was so mad at them that day she could have spit fire, as she told me the day she finally revealed my paternity, but then, "Spitfire" did become her nickname. Now, it was nice to visit under these circumstances when there was no longer any need for there to be such secrets between us, and I found myself caught off-guard by how nostalgic I felt toward them despite having only met them on the one previous occasion so long ago. It was wonderful to hear their stories of my dad, who over sixty years ago lived for at least one summer in that small town. I had a short moment of panic near the start of their visit when his aunt looked me in the eye to interrogate as to whether I remembered breaking her ribs, until my aunt reminded her that that had not been me but my dad. It was great to hear stories from before he'd become enslaved to the bottle, when he was once just an enthusiastic kid, too, struggling to find his place in this world, which apparently ever eluded him. The years seemed to contract as I shared with my aunt and cousin how much my late uncle had meant to me, too, and some of what I had learned from his example. His generous spirit lives on in his son who, when showing me his memorabilia room, would not allow me to leave without two baseballs autographed by famous Orioles from the '66 championship team. "They'll mean way more to you than they will to me," my cousin insisted, perhaps not understanding that the biggest reason for that is because of who gave them to me and the renewed relationship with him that they represent.

A cry, a response

What I read: 

My mom divorced my dad in 2007. I never talked to anyone except him, at that time. She got cancer in 2008, and fell into a state of alchoholism to escape her depression, her actions affected everyone. By that christmas, my dad killed himself, he blamed it on her, but we don't know if that was true or just meant to hurt her. I spent one week losing my mind, and when I came out, I was alright. I lived my life. I grew up, I found reasons to live, and even though I'm terrible at socializing, I began to do it.

I went to college. I liked it here, it got me away from that "Home" I had that had now become a home only to the shell that remained of my mother. My last memory of her was her showing up at my apartment unannounced to collect $20,000 my dad left to me, a fact she found out about by going through my private bank letters. She brought me straight to the bank and then right back to my apartment and then only remembered to save she loved me right before she drove away. And two weeks ago she died. Losing a second parent so early on is a completely different kind of pain than I can articulate, and it hurts to think about how she saw me as a person, if she still even considered me a son when she died. And now, I might be losing that house, but I don't know.

Every time I go home, I don't know. I don't what what of my "home" I'll still have. A brother, my papou, my grandma, and some plaster walls on foundation are all I have left, and I don't know which of those I'll still have in a year. Loss is all I feel like I have left to look forward to.

So, I might seem a little unstable in the coming weeks, and I'm sorry. I'm trying to be "admirable", but all I feel is betrayed, by everything I have ever loved or trusted. I don't want to learn any more life lessons, I just want someone for just one god damn second to hold me and say that it's okay to feel the way I feel. And not judge me when I can't stop screaming.

What I wrote back (edited for his privacy):

Hi Xxxx,
You don't know me from Adam, but I'm a cousin of the Xxxxs, which is how I ended up seeing your post. (To be precise on the relationship: xxxxx and xxxxx were xxxxxxx.) What I already knew about your family can be summed up in one sentence: your family is precious to their family. But that by itself would not have caused me, as an utter stranger, to reply to your post.

I don't know how public you intended that post to be, but having read it I find that I cannot just ignore it without responding to your anguish. You've had more to deal with than a young man should have to in a lifetime, let alone by your tender age. Just surviving it with the good sense intact that drives you to rail against it rather than just shut down is a small victory in itself. When such severe emotional trauma happens to us, whatever mechanisms we have in place by that point have to suffice to help us survive it, and we are rarely equipped for it. How wise it is that you have reached out to the people around you for support, in such an honest expression of your frame of mind. Lean on them, and get through it together. Eventually . . . well, "eventually" is pretty meaningless right now; you'll figure out "eventually" later, with the people you have in your life. But don't dismiss them. Everyone who responds to you is offering you support in the ways they can; please find a way to accept it from them. As for me, I have two specific reasons for writing:

1. Yes, in response to your reply (I don't know why my fingers typed "reply" instead of "plea"), what you're feeling is completely okay. Your parents have hurt you unspeakably deeply; express that hurt as you need to. Your feelings are a normal response to highly abnormal hurts that the two people who should have most protected you instead have inflicted on you in their own brokenness. You deserved - and still deserve - way better. However, don't learn from their example and despair in the midst of your own pain. Instead, reach back out to those friends and family members who are offering to support you. Put them to the test, and the ones who prove faithful in response will be your support network, your shoulders to cry on and to lean on. 

2. If you didn't intend your post to be this public, you might want to change its access settings.

I myself was a son of alcoholism and of suicide, and more. The way you're dealing with it is so much healthier than how I did. Acknowledge your hurt, for there is no other path to being healed from it. Dealing with it now is way better than burying it for later; such profound hurts don't rest well.

May you find the peace and healing that you need, in the loving arms of those who reach out to you in your need. And know that there is a stranger in Ohio who is praying for you.

In heartfelt respect, 

There were a number of other things that I maybe could have addressed. No, no amount of his mom being screwed up makes his dad's suicide her fault. He seems to know this, but perhaps fears that cutting his mom any slack on any front is the road to letting her off the hook. But there is plenty for him to be angry at both of his parents about even without mis-attributing blame. I think he could benefit by taking a few months to talk all of this through with a professional, but that wasn't the purpose of my reply, and I couldn't think of any way to say that without it sounding like "Geez, you need a shrink," which would have been the opposite of what I wanted to convey in response to his plea. Maybe I could have found a way to say, "Yes, what you're feeling is normal, and a good counselor can help you process all of that." Then again, maybe I'll still get a chance to . . .

A debt of gratitude that I can never repay

In the resolution of my crime against my family, I was offered mercy in the form of a diversion program. I was to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and complete an intense program of individual, group and family therapy. Most of my six-month sentence would be suspended so long as I cooperated fully in the program. However, for at least a couple of important reasons, they never suspend the entire sentence.

First of all, the changes to one's life that are required to recover from being an abuser are always more drastic than the abuser understands when entering therapy. We tend to think that we have this one broken part of our life that we need to fix, and almost never understand that abuse never happens in a vacuum, that we are going to need to make changes in almost our entire life. Too, many abusers minimize the severity of their crimes, the terrible impact we have on our victims. Not finally, there are also painful and scary elements of our own past that formed us in a way that makes our abusive choices possible, and successful healing of our lives requires that we face this history before we complete our program of therapy. Because there are so many painful obstacles that we might want to avoid along the road to healing, it is important that we have a strong reason to hold fast to our commitment. A taste of the consequences of failing to stay the course of our therapy program is an important motivator, and the only way to really get that is by spending a few days in jail.

Equally importantly, by the end of a successful treatment program we have a better understanding of the harm that we have done than people do whose lives have not been touched by abuse. To not have experienced at least a minimal punishment for our actions can contribute to a lack of resolution.

In this diversion program, one of the goals is to keep the negative impact on the family to a minimum. Because it would be very negative for the primary breadwinner (in most families) to lose their job, they try to schedule the required jail time over the course of several weekends. In my case, I was required to serve three consecutive weekends. My lawyer advised me, in a general sense, that it wouldn't be wise to share with my fellow inmates why I was serving time. I apparently didn't manage that very well, as one inmate who I met while in-processing on Friday spent our entire out-processing time on Sunday making sure I knew that my remaining weekends wouldn't be so easy as this first one was.

By the time I got out of there, I was more afraid than I'd ever been before, so much so that I didn't see how I could possibly go back to serve my remaining non-suspended time. It was obvious that I wasn't especially contributing to my family, and I just figured that if I had a fatal accident they would be well provided for through my insurance policies. On the way to work that morning, I picked out an unprotected bridge support that would serve well as a place for me to end my life on the way home.

In retrospect, I think that I likely wouldn't have been able to go through with it. There have been a number of times in the intervening years that I have begun to wrench the steering wheel toward a potentially fatal hazard, or slide a sharpened blade along the skin of my wrist, only to decide against such a path for one reason or another. But I have never again tasted the level of despair that gripped me that day. I already had an appointment for the Sacrament of Reconciliation scheduled for lunch time, just to deal with the sin I'd committed against my family. Now it was going to be a sort of "last rights" sacrament for me. My quandary was deep: attempting suicide was considered a violation of the program, so an unsuccessful attempt was going to bring worse consequences; if I tried to kill myself I was determined to succeed. My options for help seemed limited: my counselor was on vacation that week, and we had not covered the contingency that I might encounter any sort of crisis in which I would need to speak with someone in her absence. I had a previous counselor with whom I'd started working prior to the determination that my crime had to be reported. I felt we'd worked together well, but she was not an expert on my issues and I was now directed to work only with my assigned counseling team; I also didn't have any extra money to go see her at my own expense. In any case, I didn't consider her an option.

After concluding my confession, Fr. Paul asked me how I was doing. He knew what a tough road we were on, and had referred me to my original counselor. When he asked so sincerely, my defensive wall immediately crumbled and I began to cry as my fear overwhelmed me. He insisted that I simply had to turn to whatever resources I had available at that point regardless of how the new counseling team might feel about it, and further explained that he had some resources available to provide emergency financial help in a situation like mine. So I called my former counselor and made an emergency appointment, by the end of which we had a plan of action that seemed better than the one I'd decided on earlier.

It still ended up being a hard road, but that story isn't for this post. Our pastor was reassigned about nine years ago, and yesterday I saw him for the first time since his Parkinson's diagnosis. We didn't get to talk much, as he was very much in demand among the attendees of the parish picnic. Still, it was good to connect with him again. Perhaps we should visit him again at his current parish soon.

That was then

In the past, my bride inevitably suffered by comparison to, well, pretty much everyone else in my life, but especially my female friends. Always. I'm still chagrined to recognize that a main purpose of these friendships was for my wife to suffer in comparison to them. What I'd share with my close friends was almost never about her, yet that sharing formed the basis for my comparisons. When I would complain about her - with good cause or not - or, more often, simply lament that we were unable to share together in the same way as I could in these friendships, I'd usually find a sympathetic ear, and as a result my emotions often went in a direction that I should never have allowed. This caused my bride much pain in the short term, and myself in the long term the loss of good friends.

The core cause of this dynamic, of course, was my own insecurity. Deep inside, I knew I wasn't a good person, and all of the dynamics of growing up in an alcoholic home and experiencing parental suicide and sexual abuse were at work in me to reinforce that inner knowledge. But it was all a deeply buried secret, most of all to me, so I needed continual evidence to the contrary. This was most easily available in the form of my perceived superiority to my constant foil, my bride.

Today, as a result of a lot of hard work and thanks to the loving grace I've received from so many, first and foremost my dear wife, my own self-concept is very different, which has made all the difference. I still have to be on the lookout against my inferiority/superiority dynamic, because I still deal with a significant amount of self-judgment, but I'm aware of it as I was not before. Since I no longer need to elevate myself at my wife's expense to resolve a cognitive dissonance between my conscious and unconscious images of myself, I'm now able to have a close friend for friendship's own sake, rather than as a means to make up for what I secretly believed to be lacking in myself.

I still have road to walk, but it's a way smoother road.

A bit of Javert in him

Karl always seemed supremely confident in the rightness of his position, which usually seemed appropriate since he was careful to submit himself to Church teaching in most matters. Sometimes he carried it to an extreme, and in one case made the newspapers in a rather gross way for this; the homosexual community hated him for how he expressed what he considered to be the truth with what must have seemed to them an utter lack of love and respect.

We were invited to their house after that, just once, for a cookout, and had a lovely time with him and his wife. I think it was probably in appreciation for the letter of support I shared with him while he was in trouble. We had a very nice time that evening. But by no means would I describe myself as close to Karl. I know another man who would certainly consider himself a good friend to him, and I hope he is at peace in his spirit as he deals with Karl's suicide. I learned of his death while we were in Hawai'i, but only discovered last night that it was by his own hand.

I had no idea he was in such emotional turmoil. It illustrates how even investing our faith in the teachings of the Church won't make us emotionally healthy or protect us from despair, I guess. It's amazing how we can believe all the right things and still not have an intimate relationship with Jesus that transforms and heals us. My friend at Lompoc has been learning the same lesson in another way. I suppose that one difference between them is that this friend does, in fact, have a relationship with Jesus that has been carrying through his difficult days. He becomes more cognizant of the Lord's presence and work in his life each day.

And yet, even now, my own relationship with Him doesn't keep me from sometimes feeling despair, even if I mostly manage to avoid being in it.

Not very restful morning

As I lay awake in bed this morning, I found my thoughts full of the vast collage of painful memories of my childhood.

Ugh.

Sparing the reader the details, from awkward through tragic to gross.

Living for oneself

I'm concerned about writing this when I'm not actually in trouble, for fear of inducing panic in someone.  On the other hand, I could never write it when things seem bleak.

There's a difference between the selfish way most people talk about living for themselves and what I mean by it.  I'm not referring to advice given by both well-intended counselors and hedonists - which can be appropriate or outrageously egocentric - that a person should generally do what is best for themselves.  This is more like how they misconstrue the snippet from Polonius' maxim-laden (and, I contend, comic relief) advice to Laertes: to thine own self be true.  I'm of the opinion that the adage, in general usage and Polonius' intent, referred more to remaining true to one's honorable standards in the face of others' lesser ones.

But what I mean when I reflect that I'm still not really living for myself is the difference between what several Suicide Prevention Center posts talk about - '"consider how much it will hurt your loved ones" - and the longer-term goal of simply living for the joy of my own life.  I've gotten pretty good at the first over the last couple of decades, but am still not very good at the latter.  In the midst of darkness, thinking of others can help a desperate person to realize that there are other truths of their life than the immediate circumstances which seem so overwhelming.  But once the immediate crisis has passed, I'm convinced that we must reach a point at which we're no longer primarily preserving our lives primarily for the sake of others.

The habit of choosing to continue living for the sake of our loved ones is important, but can only carry us so far.

A morbid post that I've been sitting on

(edited to smooth a couple of sharp edges)

I was "accused" (not at all the dynamic in which it was offered, nor in which I received it; I'm just being lazy and not looking for a better word) last week of getting morbid when my wife is away.  A good friend speaks the truth to you as they see it, and a good friend receives that in the spirit in which it is offered and looks for deeper truth within it.  I've decided that this one wasn't completely accurate.

I'm almost always morbid.

I shouldn't be.  I have so many blessings in my life.

But I feel as if I have squelched my own interests for so long that there's no room for them in my life anymore.

Is this what it means to "die to yourself"?  If so, I guess I should feel hopeful and all the more thankful because of it.

So what is better to choose to live for?

• What is over the horizon: a skydive, a trip to Hawaii to visit our dear grandchildren?
• The short term impact on others, such as the effect on Ben and Rebecca and their wedding?
• The long term impact on others: not wanting my wife, daughters, grandchildren and dear friends to deal with the pain and questioning that I've experienced during those times when I've learned that someone I cared for had taken his life?

I suppose it is best to just live for the joy of living and loving, trusting God to make living worthwhile as I live for him.  That latter part is so hard, though, when my faith in him seems so insubstantial.

The thing is, I know I have a great life.  After all, to paraphrase Pearl Jam, "I'm a lucky man (who can't) count on both hands the ones I love."  I need to appreciate my life more, work on changing the things I should, and quit lamenting any other ways I wish it were different.