Tiny Bits of Kindness

One of the things that has happened since my partner’s suicide is that I’m carrying the burden of not only my own skeletons, but the skeletons that he left behind. It’s a heavy burden to bear and I’m constantly reminded while I navigate this grief how it’s really a two steps forward, three steps back process. This grief, in particular, leaves a series of stones that need to be turned over with the contents beneath it inspected carefully. Especially if you’re someone like me who already moves through life trying to find answers to some of life’s most perplexing questions. It’s also very easy to reach a place prematurely where I’ve thought, “Wow, I’m doing okay today (or this week),” as I’ll seem to manage myself at work and go a week or two where I haven’t had “the conversation” (the one where I talk about it with a stranger or a friend). There are the days where I feel okay or I think to myself, “Am I really moving on with my life?” Which I am, but it isn’t something that happens overnight, and I tend to be the type who enjoys being productive in regards to my own healing. Then there are the days where I wish I could just stand in the middle of my office and scream at the top of my lungs “This is what’s going on with me! And will someone take a moment to stop and listen?” But while I’m burdened, do I really want to burden others? And the more important question becomes, “Why do I feel like I would be a burden?”

But I already know that answer.

If I lived in Indonesia, where I have traveled, the men would be getting their teeth filed come July in preparation for the month-long cremations in August. As a culture, we’d have time to look forward to the time when we, as a society, were going to deal with death as a whole. But unfortunately for me (and trust me, I’ve traveled enough to know that I’m fortunate to be an American), I live in a culture who would rather exploit death through images and movies than talk about it. Death is a downer. And suicide? It’s a secret. I still find myself whispering when a girlfriend and I talk about it over chips and guacamole at lunch at the Ferry Building here in San Francisco. But then I get angry that I feel like I have to do that, so while I’m on the bus, I pull out the book my therapist just leant me by the Father of Suicide himself, Edwin Shneidman, entitled, Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior and slyly peer at other bus riders to witness their reaction. I guess it’s my own way of seeing if anyone will notice, or even better, start a conversation. It’s also my way of flicking my society off for being so scared to and of death.

And no matter how much my friends and family wanted to be there for me, they hadn’t walked in my shoes.