I first tried to kill myself in 2000, and writing about it of course resulted in another fucking award from Columbia.
My drug dealer broke into my apartment, found my phone, called everyone he’d ever heard me talk about, and then finally 911. I’d been thorough.
At that point, it was merely personal problems; we now have systemic ones.
I’m still crashing with a friend but return to the marginally movable trash can tomorrow.
I don’t know what I’m looking for by posting. I just know “not this” is where I’m at in life, and one can only spend so much time with the crisis line.
The tremendous irony is my dad was considered Arizona’s foremost expert on adolescent suicide prevention as a clinical psychologist. News crews would come by the house to interview him.
After my first attempt, once they’d gotten back to the states, they flew up to Seattle, demanding that I come up with “an accounting of everything [they’ve] given [me] and what [I’ve] done with it.” This is not a prompt you want to throw at a columnist, because you’ll get 40" tearing you down and not at all about finance, which was the ostensible idea.
I was already managing ed at Seattle’s third-largest daily. The other two? Times and Post-Intelligencer. I’d found my voice by this point, and it went poorly.
My dad opened with “I thought something like [my suicide attempt] might be coming.” Great. Way to be proactive. Mom was crying within 20 minutes.
You literally asked for it, you fucks.