either. In fact, I couldn’t make out any of the constellations at all. The sky was haphazard and made no sense.
Nothing’s colder and lonelier than a manic morning after. I’m never quite sure what actually happened, and what’s just a by-product of my feverish imagination. Did the sky ever really explode with shooting stars, and if so, what did that mean? Did it mean anything at all?
I chose to let the stars decide. I would lie here and watch the sky until morning. If I saw another shooting star by then, it would mean that I was supposed to break up with Rick. If I saw nothing, then I would just let things go on between us the way they were. I settled in. I didn’t have to wait long: within fifteen minutes, a flash of silver streaked through the sky. It happened so fast, the image barely registered before it was gone. Maybe I was seeing things, I thought. If I saw two shooting stars sometime before morning, that would clearly be a sign from God that I should end it with Rick.
Four, maybe five minutes later, another streak of silver shot through the sky. Then another. Then another. Then a sudden barrage of brilliance. Surely this was some kind of astronomical phenomenon, a once-every-blue-moon spectacle like Halley’s Comet or the convergence of Venus and Mars. If so, it wasn’t fair to use it to decide my fate. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t natural. It was loaded dice.
Part of me protested at this. “What better evidence could you possibly want?” I asked myself. Deep down I knew I was probably right. And I also knew that there weren’t enough shooting stars in the galaxy to convince me that I should break up with Rick.
There are all kinds of riptides, and love is surely the most powerful. I’d been sucked in so deep I could barely find my footing anymore. For the second time that evening, I was in danger of drowning. I was fully conscious, and I knew exactly what I was doing. I was doing the wrong thing.
I thought back to my epiphany earlier that night. “Don’t blink, never blink.” Manic epiphanies are like shooting stars: flashes of brilliance that are gone in an instant.
8
It’s a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can’t doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can’t wait to start looking.
My search began in Africa. I hadn’t planned on going there, but then, I hadn’t planned on being alive at all. In early 1991 I’d made a sincere but thwarted suicide attempt (amateurish in comparison to the attempt I would make several years later in Santa Fe). Not long afterward, a girlfriend called to ask me if I’d be interested in going on safari with her. She was supposed to go with her boyfriend, but he was having problems. She knew I was unhappy at work, wasn’t a vacation just what I needed?
Lisa didn’t know anything about my recent suicide attempt. No one did, except my doctors and the paramedics who had saved me. But she was right about my unhappiness. For the past two years, I had become increasingly miserable, in spite of my promotions and pay raises. The worse I felt on the inside, it seemed, the greater my success. Part of this was due, ironically, to the depression: I had to try harder than everyone else, and trying harder ultimately had its rewards. But the rest of it—the finest
Nothing’s colder and lonelier than a manic morning after. I’m never quite sure what actually happened, and what’s just a by-product of my feverish imagination. Did the sky ever really explode with shooting stars, and if so, what did that mean? Did it mean anything at all?
I chose to let the stars decide. I would lie here and watch the sky until morning. If I saw another shooting star by then, it would mean that I was supposed to break up with Rick. If I saw nothing, then I would just let things go on between us the way they were. I settled in. I didn’t have to wait long: within fifteen minutes, a flash of silver streaked through the sky. It happened so fast, the image barely registered before it was gone. Maybe I was seeing things, I thought. If I saw two shooting stars sometime before morning, that would clearly be a sign from God that I should end it with Rick.
Four, maybe five minutes later, another streak of silver shot through the sky. Then another. Then another. Then a sudden barrage of brilliance. Surely this was some kind of astronomical phenomenon, a once-every-blue-moon spectacle like Halley’s Comet or the convergence of Venus and Mars. If so, it wasn’t fair to use it to decide my fate. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t natural. It was loaded dice.
Part of me protested at this. “What better evidence could you possibly want?” I asked myself. Deep down I knew I was probably right. And I also knew that there weren’t enough shooting stars in the galaxy to convince me that I should break up with Rick.
There are all kinds of riptides, and love is surely the most powerful. I’d been sucked in so deep I could barely find my footing anymore. For the second time that evening, I was in danger of drowning. I was fully conscious, and I knew exactly what I was doing. I was doing the wrong thing.
I thought back to my epiphany earlier that night. “Don’t blink, never blink.” Manic epiphanies are like shooting stars: flashes of brilliance that are gone in an instant.
8
It’s a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can’t doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can’t wait to start looking.
My search began in Africa. I hadn’t planned on going there, but then, I hadn’t planned on being alive at all. In early 1991 I’d made a sincere but thwarted suicide attempt (amateurish in comparison to the attempt I would make several years later in Santa Fe). Not long afterward, a girlfriend called to ask me if I’d be interested in going on safari with her. She was supposed to go with her boyfriend, but he was having problems. She knew I was unhappy at work, wasn’t a vacation just what I needed?
Lisa didn’t know anything about my recent suicide attempt. No one did, except my doctors and the paramedics who had saved me. But she was right about my unhappiness. For the past two years, I had become increasingly miserable, in spite of my promotions and pay raises. The worse I felt on the inside, it seemed, the greater my success. Part of this was due, ironically, to the depression: I had to try harder than everyone else, and trying harder ultimately had its rewards. But the rest of it—the finest
Similar Books
