Wasted

My cousin Robert has finally killed himself.  It’s hard to know how to feel about it. I know it sounds odd to say finally, but his first attempt was a swan dive off the Golden Gate Bridge ten years ago. He broke nearly every bone in his body and after he was released from his mandatory year-long committment, he spent his life finding somewhat slower alternatives. Drinking, smoking, landing his ass in jail numerous times. In the end he went back to the bridge.

So when I say finally, that’s just what I mean. I have to hope that what’s waiting for him on the other side is a damn sight better than what he’s had on this side. I have to think that it is.

I’m sad in a sort of abstract way. I mean, I’m not sad for myself. I won’t miss him because I never saw him. I haven’t seen him in almost 8 years and even then he wasn’t the Robert of just a few years before. I’m sad because there but for the grace of God go I. Bipolar disorder has now claimed the lives of three relatives (that I know of).  Sobering thought, that. And I’m sad for my aunt and uncle who have to bury a son, for my cousin Kelley who’s burying her brother (and probably thanking heaven she missed that little genetic glitch), for his son who will never ever understand why his father did this (and I honestly hope he never does understand that level of despair).

The living think of suicide as such a selfish act. It is, but it isn’t at the same time. Yeah, people who kill themselves are thinking of the end of their pain and misery, but they’re also thinking about the future pain they won’t see or be the cause of, the pain their depression is causing to their families. I suppose if you’ve never been on that ledge you can’t understand. And that’s a good thing. For you.  Speaking as someone who has been there, it wasn’t even that I didn’t feel loved. I had this void inside me. This disconnect. And there wasn’t enough love in the world to fill that void. There wasn’t a tether strong enough to keep me there.

What I had, and what Robert probably didn’t, was a little part of me that was afloat on this dark ocean. Clinging to desperately to her life raft as the storm raged and as she drifted through the featureless doldrums of the sargasso sea of my emotional life. And all the time shouting "This isn’t really who you are!" A tiny voice that was really and truly mine.

I wish I could I could go to the funeral. But San Francisco isn’t in our budget.

I wish the best for you, Robert. RIP. And when I think of you I’ll remember the suntanned boy with his day’s catch hooked over his thumbs in sunny Florida.

~Liz