In a way, itās an anti-suicide letter.
But I understand if you donāt read it
because you may have already killed yourself
as we agreed was your right. We saw it the same way
during that war on ourselves or, to be more straightforward,
the Psych Ward. There were plenty of atheists
in that foxhole, not to mention the occasional Satanist
like the Zyprexa-shut-eyed girl
who lost internet privileges for feeding
her psychosis on occult sites. But they
didnāt take away my copy of The Divine Comedy
because it was Christian I guess
and I was merely depressed.
You were the only unmedicated person on the floor.
First mental patient Iāve ever known diagnosed
purely with an existential crisis. Though when a resident
mentioned Cymbalta, you were adamant:
didnāt want a pill to take away what little you felt,
even if it was pain. I wondered,
doing my best Mrs. Ramsay, if the right med
could make you see a silvered, rough wave
and proclaim, It is enough! It is enough!
But didnāt say so, as I hadnāt read
To the Lighthouse since this condition
caused waves to appear sharp, jagged. Like everything else
in this world, piercing. And you had a point
about the pill. Neither the benzos nor gaba-
pentin had caused me to give up entirely
on the idea of suicide.
The most well-groomed
mental patient I ever saw, you must have shaved
every day before breakfast. Your neck gleamed
in your colour-guarded
V-necks. With my sagging beard
and untamed blond hair, I looked like Christ
but mean. Every night we walked the same square
of corridor. We discussed Camus more than Woolf.
You said you had to draw a line somewhereā
at the small but stifling compromises that
add up then suddenly define a life.
And of course there was a woman
who loved you but also didnāt.
On one of my day passes
I bought you Chekhovās Selected
because I was sure you were in it.
My inscription said, because
you had mentioned it
as an alternative, Move to Russia.
Donāt kill yourself. I didnāt
sign my name. I told you my plans
when I got out: therapy, MBCT, volunteer
somewhere, find god, keep busy. You said
I had a lot of will and I agreed, but
my real issue was a lack
of faith. We could both quote from The Myth
of Sisyphus. I read it
when my life felt relatively full, agreed
then with Camus and thought living worth it.
You read it a few weeks before you tried.
These days weāre both on the outside. Yesterday,
we met at the Starbucks as we would on hour-long passes
but now returned to it as free men with all the time
in this world. It might have been the last day
Iāll ever see you but thatās true
of so many people who enter
and exit our lives. Couldnāt they all have
killed themselves by now? I like
what you said about drawing a line,
which is not the same as agreeing with it.
Maybe, you are the only person Iāve met
who isnāt afraid to die. Though I might ask
if, like me, on the evening I took myself
to lie beneath that willow tree, you are afraid
of life. Over lattes you reminded me
of the Dante line I often quoted in the corridor:
There is no greater sorrow than to recall
our times of joy in wretchedness. Neither of us
can listen to music. It hurts in a way
we canāt explain but understand
when the other says it. Time passes
for you, I imagine, as you smoke and look out
at the lake from your condo, a glass palace
with a name like Solaris, advertising an adventure
in urban solitude. I tell you how on the night of your attempt
you were the Dorian Gray behind the condo ad,
drinking on your leather sofa with a bottle
of fine whiskey and a stomach full of pills.
And you laugh. You really donāt
do much else but smoke and wait
for something to change. The only structure
in your life now is when a nurse comes
to dress slept-through wounds
made by days on the hardwood.
During one of our marathons,
talking around the corridors, I observed
we were lost in a circular labyrinth. You said
it was a pretty good metaphor. I said
when I get out of here I might use it in a poem.
Thought, but didnāt say, I would dedicate
the poem to you, wondering if it might be
an elegy. By the time I wrote it, I figured
I could, assuming you were still alive, tell you
what we found in the labyrinth. Something like
we just needed to kill the part of us
that wanted to die. But I still donāt have a strong case
for you against death, which means
I donāt have much of a case for myself either. I...
