It has been nearly twenty years since I sat in a dark room, smoking cigarettes,
flipping through an old photo album filled with pictures from my childhood. I
stopped at a picture of my father holding my tiny hand in his. Beside the
picture was written, “Hand in hand with daddy forever.” I ran my fingers
over the page and wished that things could be that way again. But even though
he was somewhere on this Earth, that was not possible. And so I sat motionless
in the dark crying, waiting to fall asleep. Afterall, if the life that lay
before me was not the life that I had envisioned, than perhaps the alternative
was not to live it. Perhaps the
alternative was simply not to live.
Filled
with loneliness and despair, I went to the medicine cabinet and gathered everything
together. The pills, the capsules, the tablets—I swallowed them all, and then I wrote my
good-bye note. Misshapen letters scrawled across the paper spelled out
that I was tired; that all I wanted was to go to sleep and never wake
up. I sat back on the couch, waves of blackness crashing over me.
But
there was this noise—this incessant ringing inside my ears that wouldn’t stop,
that refused to be ignored. The telephone. And in that moment I made
a choice. A choice to reach out and save myself. I chose to put the
pieces of my shattered-self back together.
In
that moment, had you asked me why people
attempt suicide, I could not have narrowed it down to only one reason. I
can now. The road to suicide is paved with traumatic loss and unresolved
pain. My loss and pain came as the result of what I refer to as “the death
of my family and friends.”
At
the age of seventeen my world imploded. The ever-pleasing, never-defiant
Preacher’s daughter decided that she no longer wanted to be a member of the religious
faith in which she had been raised. The day that my secret was revealed I
sat opposite two church elders. A meeting had been convened for the
purpose of deciding my fate.
It
had been brought to the elders’ attention that I had sinned. I had gotten drunk
on a prior occasion, and they wanted me to repent. Simple. All I
needed to say was that I was sorry. I desperately wanted to tell them what
they wanted to hear, but I couldn’t. It would have been a lie, and I was
tired of living a life that I no longer believed in. The tears pooled in
my eyes, and when I was finally able to speak the words—“I am sorry for what
you will have to do, but I am not sorry for what I have done”—I couldn’t stop
them from spilling over and streaking down my cheeks.
There
was nothing more to be said. The heavy silence that fell between us
signaled that everyone knew what my pronouncement meant. I would be
ex-communicated from the Church, my parents would disown me, and the only
friends I had ever known would turn their backs and walk away from me.
People
often look at me peculiarly when I recount “the death of my family and
friends.” The notion of one’s family and friends choosing a belief-system
over their child is so foreign to most people that they cannot
relate. They can never know the tremendous pain that I felt then, and
still feel even to this day. The pain, however, is no longer debilitating;
it no longer threatens to consume me. There has been a transformation of
sorts. A transformation that has been nearly two decades in the making—one
breath and one day at a time.
For
the first seventeen years of my life who
I was, and what I was, had been
defined in terms of religious doctrine. When I was stripped of that
identity, I was “lost” and left to wander alone. The most important thing
I came to understand with the passage of time, however, was that I was not the one in need of forgiveness
and redemption. Even though others had labeled me a sinner and unworthy of
membership within their group, I dared to define my own self-worth, the type of
person that I would be, and the type of life that I would live.
When
I uttered those life-altering words, “I am sorry for what you will have to do,
but I am not sorry for what I have done,” I made a choice to walk my life’s
path alone. That was not what I
had envisioned for myself or my future. The alternative, however, was far
more bleak—continuing to live a life that others wanted for me. Finally
the time had arrived when being able to look myself in the face each day with
respect and dignity took precedence over having the acceptance and approval of
others.
I
used to believe that being true to myself had cost me more than it was
worth. I no longer feel that way. Even when faced with expulsion from
the only way of life I’d ever known, I remained faithful to what I believed
in. In spite of the judgment pronounced against me, I never compromised
myself. And although my spirit was crushed in the aftermath, in time it
learned to soar higher than it ever had.
But
this gentle current of despair kept swirling about my mind and body, seducing
me with the promise of release from pain. I had but only to give myself over to
the illicitness of the affair; allow myself to be swept out to sea.
But
I was “aware”. And this awareness was gnawing at my nerve endings and alighting
my mind with brilliant fire. The tide could carry me away, but I was aware that
it could also wash me gently ashore, a place where I had once stood. I
just needed to rise up and move. I needed to place one foot in front of the
other, let the wet sand squish between my toes, and slowly make my way back toward solid ground.
