A Faceless Phenomenon

Then above my post, Phoenix Rising’s words caught my eye. His post read:

“Thirteen months ago I stepped out of the darkness and into the path of an Amtrak Acela high-speed train. I lost my left leg, my right arm and, thank god, over the past year, my uncontrollable desire to end my life. I’ve decided to dedicate a portion of each day to increasing awareness that suicide is not a rational choice, but rather the tragic byproduct of terror, confusion, and false perception.”

With Phoenix reaching out to the group about his experience, I wondered if he’d have any insight into how my boyfriend felt when he took his own life earlier this year. I emailed Phoenix about a new group he had created, The USSS: The Unsinkable Society of Suicide Survivors, and I asked this captain if I could come aboard. Phoenix immediately accepted me as a passenger and then he blew my mind. Turns out this social networking thing did work, because Phoenix read my profile and asked to be my friend, and then he followed that by telling me that we went to the same high school.

I realized that while I had been on Phoenix’s personal website watching a video of him sharing his robotic hand (before he had made our high school connection), the thought crossed my mind that Phoenix seemed familiar. But since many people start to look familiar as you circle through life as an adult, I hadn’t put much emphasis on it.

Then the next day, while driving with a girlfriend and telling her the story, an image of Phoenix from high school popped into my mind. Though I hadn’t known him well (he was a senior, while I was a freshman), stuck in my hippocampus’ gray matter was an eighteen-year-old version of Phoenix. Was it possible that Facebook was helping to rewire my brain? I made a mental note to ask the one brain researcher I knew if anyone had started the study.

I’m now the acting Julie on the Promenade deck of The USSS. I’ve found an important community, one that I unknowingly had been searching for during those times I had a laugh, or a frustration, or two. Phoenix and I are posting YouTube videos of songs with lyrics that mean something for those who have struggled, like him, or for those left to understand, like me. He’s charting the course while I continue as the connector. And whether Facebook catches swift wind or travels at an unprecedented knot, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that life has come full circle, and my brain is reevaluating the past. Isn’t that what most of this is all about, anyway?