The Count TRIGGER WARNING: The following deals with suicide and suicidal thoughts.

 TRIGGER WARNING: The following deals with suicide and suicidal thoughts.

The Count

So I came close to killing myself a few days ago.

That’s really hard for me to say.

That’s really hard for me to admit.

It’s taken me this long to write about it.

In all my life, despite the horrors of my childhood and so many tragedies, I have only tried to kill myself once before.

After my car accident, when the doctors told me that I’d never walk again, and all that I knew about myself was my physical abilities, I tried to roll my wheelchair off a cliff. The woman that I loved, who had moved in with me to help me rehabilitate, who had the reflexes and the skills of a panther, grabbed me by my sweater. I don’t know how she got to me that fast. I was sure she was too far away to stop me and I didn’t hesitate. Not even a little. The wheelchair went over and she dragged me back from the edge.

A little over a year later I was walking.

And she died in a car accident.

Laura.

I didn’t even try to kill myself then.

I knew how she’d feel about that.

Suicide is giving up. 

It’s taking a dive.

And I never took a dive in my whole life.

Except that once.

I sure tried to get other people to kill me. My father came close a bunch of times. My blood father. Not my step-father. My step-father, my real father, was a good man. My mother came after me with a knife a bunch of times. I’ve been shot at, stabbed, been in 14 car wrecks, and somehow I stayed standing.

I’ve been a fighter my whole life.

In the ring, on the matts, on the streets. My life was all about fighting.

And never, not once, except that one time, did I ever stay down or take a dive.

I was just too stubborn, too mean, to die.

But lately I’ve been facing an enemy I never expected to face. 

Old age.

When I was a kid an old Gypsy woman, I mean a real authentic old Roma woman who was visiting my Tóta, my Grandmother, turned to look at me when I walked into my Tóta’s house and told me that I would die violently before I was 21. I believed her. Everything about my life told me it was unlikely that I’d make it even that far.

And she was actually right.

I died in that car accident that almost crippled me in Texas. I was clinically dead for a little over 2 minutes.

But I came back.

And, with the help of some very close friends, and the love of my life, I even learned to walk again, without a cane at that, despite doctors telling me it wasn’t possible.

I survived.

I’ve always been a survivor.

So many people that I loved didn’t make it, but I survived.

And somehow I got old.

I never expected to get old.

I really never expected to live this long.

And lately my memory is slipping and my body is failing me. I’ve lived a very full contact life. I’ve taken so many hits to the head that I couldn’t count them if I tried. I get seizures. I fall down. I forget where I am sometimes and even who I am. I’m in constant pain. My back if gone, my hips are gone, and I get blinding pain in my head like I’m being hit by lightning over and over again. There’s arthritis in my hands and my knees just to add some decoration. I suffer from terrible depression, crippling anxiety and PTSD. I spent most of my life refusing to even take aspirin fearing I’d be a drug addict like so many in my family and so many of those I grew up with on the Reservation and Housing Projects of my youth. Now I’m on so many meds I can hardly keep count. My friends and more than a few psychiatrists convinced me to do that after I had a full on breakdown.

I never calculated for this.

I never even conceived of ending up like this.

Getting old, particularly when you’ve live such a violent full contact life, is not for wimps.

And then, recently, I almost set fire to the house I’m living in. I could have killed those I loved just because I did something stupid, because I was stubborn and arrogant, and did not take into account the warnings, that my mind is slipping.

And that night I went down to the nearby Bluffs with every intention of jumping off into Lake Ontario. I sat there on the edge and said a silent apology to those I love and those I have loved and to my ancestors. I wasn’t afraid. I’ve never been afraid of dying.

I’ve always been afraid of life.

I’ve always been afraid of living.

My kind of cowardice is more subtle, much harder to see, much easier to deny than most.

I blow up relationships so that I won’t have to face any one person for too long, so that no one got to see how afraid I am of being alive.

I just expected my life to kill me before I had to face up to that.

While I was sitting on that precarious edge in the bitter cold a group of kids showed on the rocks below. There had to be at least 15 of them, breaking the Covid protocols, and spoiling my chance of dying unnoticed. 

I waited, but they were drunk and they obviously weren’t going anywhere.

I got up and looked for another spot and almost walked right into two police cars sitting in a parking lot.

Cold and furious I went home punching myself in the face again and again, scratching myself with all my might. Tearing at my skin.

It’s what I do now when I’m angry. At other people. At myself.

What I used to do when I was a kid.

Beat up on myself.

I understand pain. That kind of pain. I’ve known that kind of pain since I was a little kid. I can take that kind of pain.

That kind of pain is like an old friend.

Its other kinds of pain, the pain of being alive, that I can’t take.

I went home thinking I’d do it the next night.

But the sorrow, the deep soul scarring anguish filled me up and there was nothing about me except the soul searing agony.

And, though I know the pain of finding someone I love dead from an O.D., I wanted so badly for it to just end, that I actually decided to overdose. It was selfish. It was cowardly. It was the worst thing I could do to those I love, but I just couldn’t see or feel anything except my own blinding pain.

I wrote a quick e-mail note to those close to me. 

Sent it.

Posted an apology on Facebook.

It was late. I figured everybody was asleep. That they’d find it the next morning.

I started out by taking a bunch of pills. Not enough to kill me yet. I’m a pretty big guy. It would probably take more, but I figured I’d take enough to put me out first, say a final goodbye to my canine friend Benji, and then take a bunch more, enough to kill me, a bit later.

But I miscalculated.

I thought she’d be asleep by now, but Erin, the friend who lives with me, was still awake and she came upstairs to talk me out of it.

I knew it was wrong.

I knew it was a terrible thing to do to the people who I love and who love me.

It didn’t take all that much to make me feel ashamed for having even considered it.

I gave her the rest of the pills and slept it off.

I can’t say that the next day I wanted to be alive any more or that I wanted to be here when I woke up.

I can’t say that I’m in less pain or that I’m happier than I was that night.

My face is a mess. And Benji keeps jumping right onto my face. It really and truly hurts. 

But Benji is one of those I would have abandoned if Erin had not stopped me.

I’m in a lot of physical pain and the emotional pain still fills me up.

But I can say that I’m not okay with taking a dive.

I can say that I’m not okay with hurting so many people.

The darkness, the pain, they’re still there. They’ve been with me my entire life.

But so are the people who care about me.

I’m still afraid of living.

I’m still afraid of growing old, of slipping into something that others will pity.

I’m still a coward in that way.

But today I’m not going to take that long dive.

I’m definitely not going to O.D. the way so many others that I cared about did.

It’s going to hurt, but I’m going to go another round.

One more round.

No more diving and no staying down for the count.

Not today.

Not this round.

Not this week.

We’ll see about next week. We’ll see about the next round.

But this round I’m staying on my feet.

This round I’ll take the pain.

This round I’ll face my fears.

I can do that much.

I’m still tough enough to do that much at least.

And who knows.

Maybe the next round won’t be so bad.

Or maybe I’ll just find the courage to face the next round.

Maybe even the one after that.

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