In my guitar case, there is a small compartment where I keep spare strings, old song lyrics, and a pile of letters (pictured above). They are dated in the first week of November 2011, a week I spent in a mental health care facility after a failed suicide attempt. They were written by my closest friends and family and delivered to me daily during my stay. The nurses remarked that they had never before seen so much mail for one person. I don't play my guitar nearly as much as I used to, but every so often I will open that case and reread the letters. No matter how many times I read them, I never fail to be amazed at the love and support my friends and family showed me in that dark period of my life. They visited me every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. It certainly made spending a week in a terrifying place much easier.
One of my best friends at the time went to great lengths to cheer me up. More than half of the letters I received were written by her. There are doodles and Bible verses scattered across the various types of paper she wrote on, seemingly a different patterned parchment for every day. To this day, her commitment to visiting me daily and writing those encouraging words remains one of the strongest demonstrations of love and friendship I've ever experienced from a friend. I will never forget her actions or her words.
We don't speak anymore. We haven't spoken in over six years.
I would like to tell you that my release from that facility cured me of making any bad decisions, but if you've ever read my blog or talked to me for more than ten minutes, you would know that that is not the case. There was healing that definitely occurred while inside the facility that brought a sense of newfound peace on the outside. But I didn't suddenly stop making selfish decisions. I didn't suddenly stop hurting people. If anything, it merely put those parts of me on hold while I worked on other things. Eventually, the pattern of erratic and terrible decisions that I had become known for in those years returned in my final semester of college (spring 2012). Because of my selfishness and penchant for using people, I irreparably damaged my friendship with this person who had shown nothing but unyielding love and support during my time of mental instability. I still don't know if they have forgiven me, or if they ever truly will. I was able to meet up with them and say goodbye before I left town to eventually make my way up to Seattle. It was a very uncomfortable meeting. The warmth and brightness that had characterized my friend was gone. I had done my part in snuffing it out. There wasn't a hint of friendship on her face that day. It was a terrible goodbye.
I'll never forget that look. The look of hurt, betrayal, pain. I have had a lot of time lately to think about things and very recently I find myself mentally returning to all the people - like this once close friend - that I have hurt and used over the years. I don't mean the people that I cut in front of at the grocery store, I mean people that I truly cared about. Running through the list of them in my head is exhausting. I treated them in a way that conjured that same look of pain on their faces. It's never pretty, there's hardly any closure, and it still brings me shame to this day.
If I can indulge in some melodrama, I left a veritable trail of ruins when I left Texas after school and moved up here. And it didn't stop with the move. I continued to do what I wanted without regard to the emotional well-being of those near to me. The truth is, I had been hurt. Instead of continuing on the path of healing that began in November of 2011, I turned around and hurt others close to me, almost always before they could do the same to me. I attempted suicide again in September of 2012. And after that whole debacle, I remained wounded. And I would go on to inflict those wounds on others.
It took years to break that cycle. Long nights, countless tears, frustrated prayers, paralyzing bouts of depression, etc. But break the cycle I did, thanks in majority to the love of those who for some reason decided to remain by my side throughout all of my struggles.
That's a nice story. But let's return to those people that didn't stay by my side. Not because they hated me, but because I pushed them away after I was finished with them. Those are the ones that have been on my mind all week. It took a long time for me to heal, but what about the pain that I had inflicted on them? Were they ever able to heal? Do they to this day callously recall me as a jerk that wronged them in the past? Am I just a footnote labeled "Jordan Smith - asshole" in the story that is their life? Do they even remember me?
I am not attempting to overstate my importance in the lives of others, but I know the things that I have done, and they are no petty disagreements. What if one of my suicide attempts had been successful? I wouldn't exactly have gone out on a happy note. And those that I had hurt might never be able to recover. In fact, they might have carried that wound with them the rest of their lives. I would have never been given a chance to apologize for how I wronged them. Instead, I would have disappeared from their lives, destroying any chance of reconciliation, and causing more pain on the way out. That is not how I want to be remembered.
I do still think about suicide. I'll never stop thinking about it. It has played far too pivotal of a role in my life to ever truly be extinguished from my thoughts. But the difference in how I view it now is that I don't have suicidal ideation. I think of it more as a concept and as the paradox that it truly is. It is a decision that interrupts the lives of those around us. It puts them on the back foot by shifting the pain of one tortured person to the unsuspecting dozens around them. How did I ever think that that would help anyone? They say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. Even in my darkest days, I only ever wanted the briefest of respites from my demons and mistakes. Just one day of peace. I was too blind to look beyond the finality of suicide and instead viewed it as the only way to get that peace. There can and never will be a peace in that situation.
I've often read that when an individual reaches the decision to go through with the act of suicide, they become calm and at peace, almost uncharacteristically so. In truth, they've given up on battling their demons and have concluded that the only way to overcome their pain is to kill themselves. In doing so, they hope to finally attain the peace that has long eluded them. It is difficult to put into words just what that artificial peace feels like. I experienced the exact feeling prior to my second attempt. I prepared a last meal, watched a funny movie, bought some soda, and swallowed 25 100 mg tablets of Fluvoxamine. I slept easy the night before and woke up that morning with a sense of resolve. I obviously survived, and in the days following that attempt I realized that I never actually wanted to die. I merely wanted a break from the despair. And to get that break, I was willing to try anything. It was the backwards sort of thinking one can only come to in a bout of manic depression.
That was nearly six years ago, the same year I ruined my relationship with that dear friend. And while I have moved on to a place where suicide will never again resemble a solution of any kind, I still wonder about the way in which I hurt that person. I have changed immensely since that falling out. Looking back to my suicidal episodes, my thoughts have since shifted from What was I thinking? to I wasn't thinking of anyone other than myself. That has been true countless times in my life. I have suffered for it and so have those close to me.
I used to recognize the anniversaries of my suicide attempts (October 31st 2011 and September 27th 2012) as days of heavy reflection. Each passing year I would look back with disappointment at the person that I had been. A person that was so determined to get what I wanted that I was willing to cause irreversible pain to others to get it. But the past few years, those dates have slipped by with little to no fanfare. I no longer set aside those days to pontificate the past and congratulate myself on surviving. I have moved on. I am no longer circling those dates on my calendar. Instead, I am busy looking on to the next year. Hell, the next decade. I plan to be around a lot longer, and while I will never forget where I came from and the struggles that made me who I am, the future is too exciting to ignore. I have a lot of life left to live.
Thus, my thoughts return to those people I've hurt along the way. I wish I could apologize to each one of them. I wish I had never caused them so much pain. But because I can not go back and undo what I've done, I simply have to move forward and treat the people in my life now with the love and respect that I could never give others all those years ago.
Truthfully, I am hurting now. But instead of turning that pain indiscriminately onto others, I am reminded of those people that helped me get to where I am today. Now is the time to apologize to those who have wronged us. It is time to close the wounds and begin the process of healing. Hold close the ones that you have in your life. Tell them you care for them and are thankful for them, for there may come a time when you might not have the chance to do so.
Life is too short to have such regrets.
JDS
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