tell you that you break shit for lots of reasons, none of which are scientific. You break them because they are there, you break them because you can’t think of anything else to do, and most of all, you break them because you feel helpless. Unfortunately for those who later discover that they’re not helpless, the rage comes back to bite you in the ass, because once it passes, you have the lovely task of fixing whatever damage you wrought while all of your problems still weigh heavily overhead. Lucky for me, I’m not one of those guys. I’m done struggling, I’m done raging, I’m done fighting. All my life I feel like I’ve been fighting. Now all I want to do is go to sleep without facing the prospect of waking up. Hopefully, the three bottles of sleeping pills and fifth of rum sitting on my counter will be enough. Asleep or not, I don’t want to end up in a fucking comma. It’s not that I’m really that intrigued to find out what happens when you die, and I don’t really care about white light, long tunnels, billows of fire, or floating around on puffy clouds. I’ll be perfectly content if I find nothing because in my experience, contrary to popular belief, nothing can be better than something.
I find it interesting that we often picture Heaven, as a floating utopia gliding effortlessly above us, yet we always talk about the weight bearing down on our shoulders. Snide, erudite physicists might point out that weight, imaginary or not, comes from the gravity of the Earth pulling beneath our feet, and therefore, any weight on our backs comes from below, not from above. In reality, no one ever sees it that way. One can blame God a lot more effectively if the source of our troubles corresponds with the supposed location of His residence. Rain falls from the clouds, fire reigns down from the heavens, and our troubles descend upon us from above, unmercifully complicating and destroying our lives. It doesn’t help that we all have a tendency to sprout troubles of our own to complement those “gifts” descending upon us, and the fact is, sometimes you simply can’t shoulder the weight. When pressed upon hard and long enough a tree branch it will do one of two things: It will either break from the pressure and snap in two, or will bend to the point in which it builds up enough momentum of its own to snap back and bend the other way. People are like tree branches in that they either bend or break, the only difference being the amount of pressure they can withstand. Those that are suicidal will undoubtedly argue that they have encountered more than they can bounce back from. To them the phrase “God only gives you what you can handle” appears more than slightly misinformed; it seems like a big joke. Unfortunately, just by continuing to exist you are sure to encounter some unavoidable or self-manufactured trouble unless you live in a cave on top of a mountain somewhere practicing Taoism. Maybe, the trick then is to calmly accept problems, fixing those things you can and not worry about those things you can’t fix. You know it’s the old Serenity prayer: “God grant me the courage to blah, blah, blah…” The prayer might be right on, but in the end, it’s the “blah, blah, blah” that most of us hear.
Life may pan out in an infinite number of ways for an infinite number of people, yet it always pans out somehow. Some people are just lucky I guess. Still, whether you join the Peace Corps and go feed hungry children, shot people from the trunk of your car for no good reason, or sit on your ass smoking pot all day, you still end up with some kind of a story. Most of us think that some people’s stories are better than others. I disagree. I simply think that some people are better at telling their story than others. Some people remember all the little details packed into each second that make life interesting and others remember only repetitive, insignificant events in linear form: The question, “What did you do today?” might lead the typical American teenage boy to the following answer:
“I got up, ate some cereal, rode the bus to school, sat in bunch of classes, ate lunch, sat in bunch more classes, came home, watched TV, and now I’m eating dinner with you.”
This statement, while entirely accurate, represents the “easy” response that sufficiently answers the question with little fuss or effort. The respondent summarizes the content of his day but entirely misrepresents what that little voice in his head really wants to say:
“I woke up and was about to eat my usual bowl of Lucky Charms when I saw that there was this big bee sitting on the edge of the spoon. Since I’m allergic to bees and could die from a sting, I had to wait motionlessly until the bastard realized I was in fact not eating Honey Nut Cheerios and he flew on his way. Because I had to wait for the bee, I was late for the bus and had to chase it down the street. The driver only realized I was there and stopped when I threw my book bag against one of the windows. In my second class of the morning, I got to sit right next to Alison Andrews, this beautiful girl I’ve been crushing on for a long time and could hardly pay attention as Mr. Allen blathered about the deficit because I was too enamored staring at her tits. At lunch, I made five dollars off of Johnny because he didn’t think that I could snort an entire pixie stick up my nose, and in my afternoon gym class, Jennifer Reynolds got really sick and puked all over the teacher after he insisted that she run the mile like everybody else. On the way home, the bus was almost hit by a drunk driver who swerved into our lane but luckily at the last minute he straightened out and came to a stop in time for a nearby cop to come charging over to his window with his pistol drawn. I guess he won’t be making it to happy hour. Anyway, when I got home, our crappy, old TV wasn’t working again so I had to get the screwdriver to push the coaxial cable back in place. After I got shocked for the third time I realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to hold a cup of water while adjusting the TV and prevented myself from becoming electrocuted to death. I got the TV working just in time for the 6PM edition of The Office.”
Some people pay attention to detail and say what they want to say and others don’t. Those that are suicidal most likely do, and will, if someone would just take the time to listen. Maybe that’s why they tend to leave a note, or a manifesto if they’re really batshit. Looking back on my original question, maybe that’s why I’m writing this letter: Because even though I’m not talking directly to someone, I just want to be heard.
The idea that we all have stories to tell is not that odd when you really start to think about it, even though as I’ve said, most people suck at telling them. Maybe that’s because people as a whole are so apprehensive about stopping at a gas station to ask for directions that when it comes down to spilling our guts about the truly important stuff, none of us has the nerve to do it. Every day on the trip in to work or school you might be sitting on a bus or a train next to one of the most influential, interesting, or even psychotic, people in the world and not even know it. Mark David Chapman had to hop a plane from Hawaii to New York in order to deliver the bullet that ended John Lenon’s life. Imagine if the guy sitting next to him had asked, “So what are your plans for your trip?” and Chapman actually felt enough at ease to reply, “Well, I can’t get these damn voices out of my head that keep telling me that I can’t rest until I kill John Lenon. It’s strange because I don’t know Lenon and I really don’t have anything against him personally but these voices are really persistent! Whenever I have doubts about the whole thing, I just reach into my back pocket to pull out my trusty copy of Catcher in the Rye in order to remember how utterly alienated I really am from the rest of the world. Doing so puts the whole thing into perspective and I feel better.”
In the face of such brutal honesty the passenger on the airplane would likely soil his pants or at least grab the nearest flight attendant in order to request a seat reassignment. He’d probably be too scared to tell anybody about the conversation, and even if he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t tell the police. The passenger sitting to the right of Mr. Chapman learns only that next time he should damn well keep his mouth shut when faced with something or someone who is unfamiliar. Don’t ask, don’t tell, wash and repeat. Don’t we all feel better?
So why is my own little note addressed to no one? You probably think it’s because I don’t have any friends or family to whom I could write a
more personal message. Well you’re wrong. I could write to any number of people and I could even include tidbits about what they did to help me along to this point – for better or for worse - But as it stands, I really don’t feel like writing to my family because I think all that it would do is make my mother cry. My mother would cry and my father would try to keep it together but he’d probably end up crying too. Then my brothers would start crying and everyone would be so weepy that they’d all have red eyes and snot all over their faces. The whole thing would just be really sad and pointless and I don’t like making people sad. God knows that I have been sad enough for everybody. I guess there’s always the chance that I’m misreading the situation and thinking worst case scenario, but I would at least like to think that they’d be that upset. Nobody ever wants to think that when they’re gone no one will really give two shits. Hell no! Everyone wants to be fucking Jimmy Stewart from It’s A Wonderful Life and think that without them, the world would be in shambles:
“You