Revealing Suicide's 'Mystery': When the Body Becomes an Unbearable Prison
The Depression I Wrote About on Tuesday Has Only Gotten Worse In the Days Since. Here is What You Must Understand, Oh "Normal" and "Healthy" People.
One of the few political writers I still like, at one of the few political publications I still read with some respect, offered this recent writing inspired by the suicide of a colleague. Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote:
(Appreciations to Damian Penny who writes Rigid Thinking for cross-posting the piece and offering some wise comments to introduce it.)
This part in particular leapt out at me as I struggle to pass my fingers over the keys:
“Anyone who, without apparent reason, has had recourse to [suicide], was cursed with such an incurable depravity or gloominess of temper as must poison all enjoyment, and render him equally miserable as if he had been loaded with the most grievous misfortune.” (Emphasis mine.)
“Equally miserable as if he had been loaded with the most grievous misfortune” is a notion that pulls suicidal depression down from that unknowable, incomprehensible plane and puts it back into our continuum. While it may still be different in kind or cause from more familiar kinds of depression, it gives rise to a mindset that is not actually all that different from that of a person whose depression was thrust upon them by tragedy, because as far as the afflicted is concerned, they are experiencing tragedy. Put another way, suicidal depression tricks the mind into thinking that the type of pain caused by their death already exists in life. Or as David Foster Wallace wrote of people who leapt to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center towers: “When the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.”
That’s the kind of torment you wouldn’t wish on anyone, least of all someone with a heart like Blake’s. It’s devastating to think he and so many others are experiencing something like that away from the rest of our field of vision. He will be sorely missed.
Read the whole thing, as the immortal blog instruction goes. I’ll just put the key bit in a pull quote to try and help everyone get it:
Or as David Foster Wallace wrote of people who leapt to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center towers: “When the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.”
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) knew a thing or two about "the flames,” as he ended up hanging himself after decades of struggling with depression. While I’ve respected him as a writer, perhaps one of the greatest of his generation, I’ve avoided reading any of his books ever since - and not just because the only one which I tried when he was still alive, Infinite Jest, is so absurdly long and difficult. As a writer who’s struggled to stay alive for over two decades now, I have a bit of a bias against writers who take their own lives. I just look at their body of work and think, “Well, there’s a dead end right there.” It’s why I still haven’t read any Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) beyond “Hills Like White Elephants” in an undergraduate literature class. It’s why I don’t care for Sylvia Plath (1932-1963).
The only notable exception I make is Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). But her suicide still haunts me and hangs over every beautiful word she ever wrote. I like to speculate with my past-life believing fiancee that we were friends with Virginia in a previous life - and that’s why I remain obsessed with her, even collecting her diaries and letter collections.
I almost don’t want to explain this.
But as the depressive feelings seem to swallow me up like a whirlpool, trying to write about it and explain it seems to give a bit of comfort. So I suppose I’ll try.
I’ve basically managed to survive the last two decades with suicidal ideation every day because I’ve managed to distract myself from it. I’ve chosen to obsess over political ideology, books, movies, my marriage, writing about the innumerable injustices and evils of this world. Now I distract myself by getting angry about antisemitism and screaming about the world’s 1.09 billion antisemites in the most profane, angry language I can muster.
But the PTSD hyperarousal I’ve struggled with for almost a year and a half now has shattered all that apart. So many things which used to give me joy and a sense of purpose are now gone. I have a pile of books that I want to read, but that I lack the ability to focus on for more than a few paragraphs. With streaming services, I now have access to a seemingly endless supply of art films and the greatest gems of classic cinema. And I can’t concentrate long enough to watch them. And, in a sense, I now actually fear them, since I worry constantly that their emotional intensity will “trigger” me too deeply. I’m afraid to watch anything longer or more substantive than a 5-minute YouTube clip from Pawn Stars. Stuff like this that can wrap up in just a few minutes, and I know won’t have anything too emotionally scary:
In the last entry in my “antisemitism and culture” series I talked about the intense depression I was feeling and how much the students I’d spoken with had cheered me up; how much I was looking forward to revisiting the recordings of their interviews to begin drafting my article about their Israel-UAE trip and how it had impacted them:
But here we are, two days later, and I’ve been too depressed to work up the focus needed to start carefully listening to the interviews and transcribing all the great quotes, more than I could ever fit into my maximum word count. I’ve got nearly a dozen posts started here in the Substack dashboard at God of the Desert, but have struggled to focus to finish any of them.
And recall this page from my morning pages journal which I shared yesterday in this post:
I can’t remember the last time I left the house. There’s a movie theater only minutes away. There’s a big Barnes and Noble filled with books I’d love to buy, but I know I already have collected far too many that I cannot read. Sally and I have a gift card to go out to dinner at a nice restaurant, but I have yet to have an evening in which I can summon the will to put on halfway decent clothes and leave. I just look at myself in the mirror and feel utter revulsion. It doesn’t matter how much Sally tells me she finds me attractive; while I think she’s being honest and sincere in what she says, I just can’t believe her.
We’ve been staying with my parents now for almost two months as I try to recover, and they regularly go out to pick up food for dinner. Even the tastiest of burgers and fries from Five Guys fails to excite me or give me joy. My alcohol tolerance seems to have gone way up. Five beers and I feel next to nothing. I’ve now stopped trying with the alcohol. Weed seems equally futile at this point too. Smoking is more a chore than a joy, as the hyperarousal of my senses all too often makes the smoke sting in my throat. More than once, it’s provoked me to puke on the gray carpet out on the screened-in porch.
All there is for me is a weekly talk therapy session over Zoom, which seems like putting a Band-Aid on a gushing wound. I’m afraid to pursue another doctor, since two of the last ones treating me wrongfully forced me into involuntary hospitalization. Any doctor I see could make the same mistake to cover his ass, taking away my freedom again, forcing me into a deeply unpleasant quasi-jail surrounded by schizophrenics, homeless people, and drug addicts.
The pills they keep pushing down my throat seem to do nothing or to make me worse. They’ll make me too tired to function or angrier or so filled with energy it becomes harder and harder to resist suicide’s siren call.
So where’s the “mystery” of suicide?
I have parents here who love me and try and comfort me. I have a fiancee so kind and loving, whom I perpetually feel like I don’t deserve. We have the sweetest little puppy who always wants to play with me, and who licks my face as I’m lying on the floor in agony. But I know she’ll be fine if I’m gone - she’ll soon find someone else to shower with her adoration and attention. She’s just doing what puppies do.
I lack the energy to do the exercise everyone says I need to be doing. Just attempting five minutes of YouTube yoga and I collapse in exhaustion, limbs sore, feeling like an utter failure, unable to maintain even the most basic of poses.
Nowhere do I find joy anymore. None of my distractions seem to work anymore. There’s just utter hopelessness. And I sort of knew it would be this way a year ago. I knew that the medical establishment didn’t know how to treat PTSD effectively. I knew that there weren’t effective medicines to treat it. I knew that homelessness, hard drugs, and suicide were the fates of so many afflicted by this condition.
“When the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.”
So where’s the mystery?
If you couldn’t get joy from any tasty food?
If you couldn’t read books or watch movies anymore?
If you couldn’t ignore the seemingly endless stream of hatred, bigotry, genocide engulfing the world?
If you couldn’t focus enough anymore to do meaningful work consistently?
If you keep yelling out for help, for people to care, but all anyone wants to do is argue with you, and blame you for not getting better, and mock you, and call you someone with bad character, and label you an “asshole,” or a “rancid sack of shit?”
If people just keep telling you to “get over it?” To stop caring about all the cruel things and violence that have happened in your life since childhood to rob you of joy, self-worth and purpose?
If most of your friends just “don’t know what to say,” so they say nothing at all?
Where’s the mystery?
Haven’t those of us perpetually haunted by depression, trauma, and suicidal ideation made ourselves perfectly fucking clear at this point?
Be well, David. Hold on to the good; focus on the good.