"you must change your lives"
--Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Letters to a Young Poet"
My name is Ruth Nolan. I'm a creative writing and English professor and book editor/author living in Palm Desert. This is a piece of writing I never could have imagined, prior to this past spring, writing, let alone dreaming. This is a tragic telling, one from which I am scantily protected, nearly five months after the fact, after my life and the lives of so many others connected to a single instant's event, went from white to black without a blink, and changed painfully, horrifically, irrevocably. Some days - like today - I feel so weighted down and crushed I can barely perform. Crying jags come on, unannounced, with a schedule of their own. As I shared with a friend recently - who also suffered a shocking loss of her own not long ago - and she agreed: "I'm okay. But I'm not okay. I'm really not okay."
It's not easy to write this. My stomach is in knots, and I've been dreading sharing this for months. My sole encouragement: to share my story, the barely speakable, tragic ending to the story of an amazing person who was one of the best friends and most gifted people I've known in my entire life, in the hopes that this will help others in their struggles to heal from the loss, such as this one, of someone they loved better than life itself. I write this in a mixed state of shock, tears, numbness, and overwhelm, and it is through these words that I hope to continue to move through the most tragic event I've experienced in my life.
And I write this because I've been asked to write this, by a newly-created local organization - part of the nationwide American Foundation for the Prevention of Suicide - that is reaching out to intervene for others: before it is too late. I teach at a college, and so many of my young adult students are struggling with difficulties and challenges I never imagined at their age: lack of jobs, lack of classes, parents losing homes, a ten-year-old war claiming so many of their own, and more. They need adult support, and although I can barely manage it now, my abiding concern for all of my students - past - present- future - helps me write this now. Like it not, I'm a community leader, and so, I pen these words now, and share a bit of my private details - far from all of them - in the hope that it might help someone you know. Or you.
Early on the morning of Friday, April 9, 2010, I awoke my boyfriend Philip to tell him good-bye. I was headed for Berkeley, California, to make a presentation at the Western Wilderness Conference, 2010. I didn't want to leave. Philip had been acting so exhausted, remote, dozing on the couch the day before, and he told me he thought he had the flu. I had cooked him a really nice dinner, and was moved to tears when, in a very sweet voice, he suddenly said out loud (I thought he was asleep): I really love to watch you cook for me. It makes me feel loved:
He insisted that I go to the conference. I told him I'd be racing back on Sunday morning, that I'd pick him up all kinds of cool fliers and handouts at this environmental event. We'd do something fun the next weekend, when he felt better. Visit one of the many hot springs resorts we loved to check out, during the three years we were friends. Maybe get in another desert wildflower spring hike in the Santa Rosa Mountains. Or talk about our ideas for organic gardening/farming, Philip's passion. And so I flew to Oakland.
I remember standing on a balcony at the Martin Luther King, Jr. student union, top floor, in the late afternoon, and looking out at a clear view of the San Francisco Bay, and feeling, suddenly, really quiet - a spiritually effervescent moment that put me in a strange daze and made me uneasy for the rest of the night. That evening, I had a series of horrific dreams, which awoke me, and I struggled to make it through Saturday until the evening's presentation and then catch the first plane home. As we all often do, I managed to (barely) curtail thoughts of "something wrong at home," somehow pulled through making my presentation, and rushed home. And from there, it was all a horror show. Five police cars arrived not long after I did.
My house had been staked out since Friday night, neighbors later told me. I was advised - not knowing what was going on, only that Philip's car was gone - to call the Cabazon Police. And I was told, in an impassive phone call, that my longtime friend and lover was "gone" from a "shooting accident" that had happened on Friday afternoon. Which had turned out very quickly to be ruled the dreaded word nobody ever wants to experience: suicide. It's still so hard to reconcile, to look at pictures of me at that event, knowing Philip was already "gone" by then, and I had absolutely not the least clue. Except that I had that awful, gnawing feeling in my gut and felt compelled to take the earliest Sunday morning plane home, phone calls to him going unanswered. Which wasn't unusual for Phil, he wasn't one to chat on the phone. Maybe, I thought, he ran out of minutes. Which was also common. And then. I got home. But....we had just gone camping! We had fun plans! Phil - a doctor's son - had plans for his organic farming ambitions - for his deep interest in natural healing practices & alternative medicine, which was incredibly knowledgeable about -- ! ?????
My life went off a cliff that day. It plunged from helicopter to broken bone free-fall on a flight I never embarked on, an entanglement with every body part going the wrong way. I stunned awake to find myself on a remote peak where I sometimes doze and sometimes awake and scream and sometimes find small solace in the visit of a yellow butterfly or the new nest of a small bird, or hummingbirds keeping tabs, and lately even bees coming to comfort me - before night falls again and I'm trying to not get sliced by stars, and trying to keep the maurauding mountain lions at bay. Some moments, a promise of cloud or moisture for burn wounds. Infection raging, and then cooling down. Not knowing if am human or if I'm in clock zone without arms.
It was and continues to be a beautiful spring day turned inescapable nightmare that rages on its own accord, like a fully-engaged wildfire that can't be contained - I used to work on helicopter hotshot and fireline crews, some fires rage for weeks, they develop a life of their own - and this, my friends and strangers, is a permanent fire season. A fire that never went out and is only, barely manageable. Not contained, not controlled. Just survived. Sometimes it backs down, and I am walking through mountainsides of ash - alternating between cold gray matter and suddenly burnt on a "hot spot" that never cooled off. We've had zero rain this summer. And fall is usually worse for those of us in southern California. I control nothing. The fire runs this show. It takes my entire stamina to survive.
My message to anyone and everyone reading this. Philip: talented, brilliant, self-made, entrepreneur, beloved by everyone he knew, gorgeous, kind, gifted musically and cosmic beyond words - never said a word. None of us will ever know "why" and it really doesn't matter now. What matters is that one of the planet's finer soul-brothers is inexplicably gone, just gone, leaving behind only a few material things. A walking stick, a few clothes in my house which I returned to his family; music downloaded on my PC which I listen to every day. The reminders every day in every way. I can't take a hike, can't think a thought, can't take a breath without inhaling the pain of this loss. He was 25 years old and wise and perfect far beyond his years. He and I knew each others' souls firsthand from the minute we met and I refuse to un-imagine the views and beauty of the incredible vistas -Jungian, literally, poetically - that we shared and inspired each other to find. Nothing, not even this tragedy, can detract from what he added to our friendship, and to those whose lives he touched in his brief time here. He was one-of-a-kind.
That he had the inner torment, pain, whatever it was that made him feel that he had to end his life - and never shared it to me or his family - is among the worst side effect of this. I can't imagine how I knew someone so well, or thought I did, and lived with for first a year, in 2008, and then for the 6 months leading up to his death - would choose to kill himself. Let alone someone with such a bright mind and soul, spirit of aliveness, passionate love for life, potential, a young man who earned the full admiration and inspiration of everyone he knew. That he felt this was what he had to do - I knew/know Philip that well, to know that this was not a rash choice, he was incredibly smart and strategic in how he lived his life - indicates to me that he felt he was without recourse or alternate option. Look at the pressures facing us as individuals and a society today. I think it's no coincidence, awfully, that young-adult and middle-age-adult suicide is on a sharp rise. And this is what I wish to address now.
I am not going to write fake stuff, that life is always great, and that nobody should every think of killing themselves. What I will say is this: a suicide does not occur in isolation. It digs a deep wound through everyone associated, and leaves lifelong traumatic loss-marks. Perhaps if we, as a society, can finally move beyond our bullshit attitudes, dismissal, cruelties and marginalization of those who are more aware, awake, vulnerable, alone, and affected by the collective trials facing all of us now, then perhaps the topic of "suicide" can be elicited - with a strong emphasis on what leads to these thoughts in the first place - and we, as a culture, can begin to articulate the language of this most awful and irreversible of things, and perhaps cultivate an awareness and empathy - not just sympathy afterwards, but PREVENTION, damnit - that allow us as a collective whole to stem the awful tide of desperation that churns in so many peoples' souls in these scary times. As it does sometimes in me, like anyone else.
I take my inspiration now (and believe me, it's a narrow thread, but I cling to it like a stranded sailor lost at sea for days might cling to that tiny piece of raft....or wood....somehow mustering the belief and strength in rescue, safety, a better day): from the simple fact that many of the tribes of Native American people of our country, who have lived in harmony for centuries - prior to Anglicization - with their souls, within extremely close and sustainable, inclusive and integrated communities, and with the earth, had no word for suicide. They not only didn't have suicide. They had no word for it. Because no one ever felt so alone, so without a concept or a word when experiencing some heavy stuff, that they felt that body-death could solve one's inner, insolvent and inarticulable struggling and pain.
Suicide is not romantic. It's no joke. It's a violent form of genocide in its own way, no matter how "alone" someone thinks they are. If the concept of death is seen as alluring, or mystical, or a last ditch act that will "end the pain and lead a better afterward," then that probably offers some form of relief/encouragement to someone suffering abysmal emotional-mental-brain physical pain - tragically, ironically, it's often the sense of "being cut off from others" that leads to someone thinking they are only ending their life - not in a certain way ending something in the lives of all of those who a related to, or know them.
Remember: suicide is not natural. I'm no expert, but my own research has allowed me to tentatively conclude here that it is an extreme matter, which comes from the pressure, internal and external, extreme circumstances, biological and social. In so many cases, we are dealing that fatal combination of biological propensities, which increasingly can't endure our roughshod, chaotic societal ways. How about, as a culture, we get over the concept of "death as the end" and start to celebrate our eternal soul-selves here on the planet, in a sustainable way. Pain never goes away. We have to learn to negotiate with it. The pain that suicide causes to myriad others solves nothing, it only spreads the pain, as does war. It's as erroneous of a solution as is pouring battery acid on all of your skin just because your finger has a cut and hurts. We must learn to help and heal each other, in the here and now. It doesn't happen in isolation. It takes "the whole village."
Let's feel safe to ask for help. Let's feel safe to offer help. Most of all, let's feel safe, and not waste any more time, to create a society-wide "help desk" where those suffering the unimaginable overload of brain-synapse-stimuli network breakdown can feel safe to ask for help, and safe to receive help, and safe to have a vocabulary of words to use to articulate what they feel. Without thinking it's a black mark forever on their reputation. Without, most importantly, feeling isolated, feeling failed, feeling that "death" is the only option. Education, here, with compassion, is key. Most of all, let's end the "blame game" that leads many who commit suicide to never tell anyone of their plans - the idea that those considering suicide are "defective" somehow.
Would we tell someone with diabetes to just "snap out of it," or tell them we are tired of hearing them talk about their insulin dosages? Having many diabetic friends + family members, I believe that talking about their medical condition on a regular basis is what allows them in managing their illness, and in feeling some comfort in this. I've watched awareness + education of breast cancer take huge strides in my lifetime, erasing the onetime stigma (my grandmother died far too young of advanced breast cancer in the 70's because she was too embarrassed to tell anyone until it was too late) and saving countless lives. Likewise, AIDS_HIV education-prevention has made huge strides thanks to fairly early social discussion and awareness, even though it continues, sadly, to retain stigma to some.
Mental illness- depression - and all its other forms - all of the conditions that can and do far too often tip the scales for someone who is vulnerable to them - need to become table topic discussion words right now!! Let's erase the stigma once and for all, take the "mental" out of "illness." Let's quit mocking and dismissing those with "mental illness" and pushing them aside, social behaviors that I assure you only make matters exponentially, often with fatal consequences, much worse for those suffering, so often in silence. It's not hard, so sadly, to see why some people suffering like this choose not to talk about it. Because they know that they are then sitting ducks, when it comes to so many crucial life needs: like finding a job, or even just functioning in the many areas of society that are necessary for us all. Let alone the stigmas coming so often from one's own family and friends in regards to the "diagnosed." I can't imagine we'd be so cruel to one with a heart condition. Which may or may not have been exacerbated by genetics + modern life, but probably was/is a combination of both and quite hard to avert.
It's my hope to work with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, particularly for teens and young adults, to help take the steps towards understanding. Not just helping "survivors" and not just putting a band-aid on the "problem." But to help us all, as a collective whole, learn what it means to create, develop, and practice compassion for humankind, the type of love-living and acceptance and open discussions and behavior that lessen, and starting NOW, this ridiculous concept of each individual struggling alone against increasingly insurmountable odds.
with my best, if tired, foot forward - hoping I am on some kind of solid ground - and most sincerely - Prof Ruth Nolan/College of the Desert.
And most of all, in the quiet and loving memory of Philip, and with respect and honoring of his loving family.In fact, Philip himself created this blog for me more than two years ago, and encouraged me to start this blog, and creatively selected my user-name and password, so I feel his energy here with all of us in the here and now.
