Alive Day (2025)

I took the above picture 9 years ago tomorrow. I walked out of the house into a lovely spring day and saw this flower blooming in our yard. The flower was beautiful, and Barbara loves purple. I took the picture to share it with her and continued on my way. After all, I had a lot to do that day.

Like killing myself.

If the day had gone the way I hoped it would when I took that picture, that would have been the last photo I captured. The final thing on my to-do list that day was to die in a car crash and hopefully make the world a better place by leaving it.

It turns out things didn’t go as planned. I am here, 9 years later, very much alive. It turns out I suck at suicide, but that’s not because I didn’t try.

I really, really tried.

The worst part is that I did it in one of the most selfish and reckless ways imaginable. I didn’t just put myself at risk 9 years ago. I risked the lives, health, and wellness of everyone I encountered that day, from my family who I said goodbye to that morning, to all the drivers on the roads I was on, to the first responders who pulled me from the destroyed van. I was hurt, but still very drunk and belligerent, and eager for a conflict with the police.

9 years ago, I was troubled in every way imaginable.

The mugshot from my arrest.

Of all the crazy things about that day – and there are a lot of crazy things – the craziest is that if you had talked to me a month before, or a day before, or even that morning, I would have seemed lucid and content. What happened at the end of that day would have caught you completely off-guard. It would have been a shock.

Many health professionals and mental health advocates say suicide is “100% preventable.” That is 100% incorrect.

The problem with telling people that suicide is 100% preventable (when it 100% is not) is that it makes people who reach the point of considering it – those who are completely overwhelmed by trauma – feel like complete failures, and telling people who are feeling hopeless that they are failing is not a great strategy for helping them heal. Saying suicide is preventable also makes the people who lose someone close in this way feel like failures. They become haunted by wondering what else they could have done, obsessing about the times they didn’t reach out or didn’t do something to help.

Suicide is the logical endpoint for untreated trauma. If something bad enough happens – or enough bad things are strung together – and you never talk about it, never get help, never do the work to get better, then eventually you are going to become so overwhelmed by it that leaving the world seems like the best way to shed all the weight you carry. The best way to finally move past trauma.

I know. That’s how I felt. I was so overwhelmed by trauma that I had disconnected from myself.

I think that trauma is for our mind and soul what cancer is to our body. It is an invasive thing that we didn’t ask for that somehow infects us and then starts to devour us. To me, saying suicide is 100% preventable is like saying cancer can be cured. Is that true in specific circumstances? Sure. You catch it early enough, if it is the right kind of tumor, if the patient is generally healthy otherwise, then yes, you have a good chance to survive cancer. But will there ever be a universal cancer cure? Almost certainly not. Cancer is too complex, too challenging and too pervasive to be eliminated.

Cancer alienates people from their bodies. It is like they no longer recognize themselves. Cancer causes pain, illness, and physical changes. It causes fatigue, weight loss, and night sweats. You become a stranger to your own body as the cancer fights to take up more and more space.

Trauma does the same thing in our mind and soul. It takes up space. And it is a greedy fucker. It wants more and more. It sends intrusive thoughts. You can’t sleep for days and then you can’t wake up for days. You feel extreme anxiety and guilt. You lose weight or you can’t stop eating. You feel confused and lost, even in familiar settings.

You are lost to yourself. Just like cancer.

The thing is, collectively we almost never blame cancer victims. When they die of cancer, we don’t call them selfish and shame their memory. We do that all the time to those with mental illness. We hold them responsible for their illness. It is hard to imagine someone calling someone who died of cancer a coward who abandoned their friends and family, but I have heard that exact thing said more than one about someone who died of suicide.

Let me be clear - I never asked for my trauma. I never wanted that shit. If I could give it back I would. I think all the time about what life would have been like for me – who I would be – if all the bad things that happened to me just… hadn’t happened. But they did. And I suffered because I never found a way to talk about it. And I got lost fighting my own trauma.

9 years ago, I didn’t even really know what was going on in my own head and heart. I just knew that I was in constant pain, and I wanted it to stop.

I was carrying so much fear and shame and hurt that I didn’t know what to do with it all. The guilt I carried inside – and the pain I saw around me every single day – all felt overwhelming and unmanageable. The biggest challenge was that I felt that much of the pain around me was my fault. I felt like all I did was hurt everyone I met, and that everyone – and I mean literally every person I knew – would be better off if I wasn’t around. Especially my kids. Pain and guilt and fear fed the trauma which grew and caused more pain and guilt and fear. It was a self-sustaining shit storm.

And yet I was able to perform normalcy beautifully. I was so convincing that no one had any idea how bad off I was - even the people closest to me. I should have won an academy award. It was a magnificent performance. And it was all a lie.

Trauma was killing me. Just like it had taken the lives of so many other vets I loved and cared about. So many people I knew and respected.

With the benefit of hindsight – and a decade of therapy and numerous other interventions – I can look back and say that my issue was not the trauma itself. It was having trauma and not dealing with it, not sharing it, not processing and working through it. Instead of finding a tree to drive into, I needed to find a therapist to talk to.

9 years on, I have returned to myself – or as much of myself as I think I can get to. I know that some part of me will always be affected by the things that have happened to me. Healing, after all, is not linear. There is no magic bullet to cure trauma, just like there is no magic bullet to cure cancer. There is a temptation (and some social pressure) to turn every negative thing that happens to us into a positive, to always turn our frown into a smile. That’s bullshit. Sometimes stuff hurts and keeps on hurting forever because some pain and trauma are just like that. I will probably never be 100% okay. But that’s okay. Because I don’t need to be perfect. I am good enough.

And good enough is good enough.

If I get through today (and that is never guaranteed), I will have been sober for 3,286 days. Every day I have at least one moment that fills me with joy - an emotion I was convinced 9 years ago that I would never, ever feel again. Most days I feel joy multiple times. I look inward for affirmation and approval. I am responsible for my happiness. I have people I can talk to when things are difficult, and I don’t feel like I have to do everything myself. I still struggle with wanting to control everything, but that’s a different post…

I haven’t won my battle against trauma. It is ongoing and will be ongoing as long as I am here. People dying from suicide have not lost their battle with trauma. They have simply succumbed to their illness.

I think we should ditch the whole battle analogy for mental illness and illnesses like cancer and ALS. We are not in a battle with these serious and often fatal conditions. We are on a journey of healing. That journey often feels like looking for the lost city of El Dorado when you are sick - both impossible and needful. When we call that journey a “battle,” we fault people when they die. Like it is their fault their bodies and minds betrayed them. Like they are to blame for a condition they didn’t create. Like their brittle humanness is their fault. Like if they had only fought harder, they would still be here. I know people who fought their ass off against their trauma, against mental illness, and still didn’t make it.

Sometimes you just can’t find that city of gold, no matter how much you try.

I think that you have to keep trying, keep searching, for the place where your mind, soul, and body can find connection. Where you can feel integrated. People were surprised by my suicide because they didn’t see me. The person they saw was an avatar, a projection I used to hide the real me. I had disintegrated. I was lost to myself.

My goal now is to stay together and present to everyone I meet the most complete and authentic version of me I can. Sometimes that’s great. Sometimes it’s awful. But mostly, it’s good enough.

I keep searching for healing. I have support in my search. I understand that healing is elusive and never permanent. So, I remain vigilant. And I will keep searching. I may never find El Dorado. And that’s okay.

Good enough is good enough.

My life is wonderful. I know I am blessed. I feel safe and secure, and that is a rare and precious gift in these times. I have people I love and who love me. Things aren’t perfect. There is confusion and rancor and strife sometimes. A few days ago I stubbed the shit out of my toe. Stubbed toes happen sometimes. But things are good enough.

I am okay too. I still occasionally struggle to feel like I am good enough. I still feel the weight of my trauma. Sometimes negative thoughts stampede through my head. I know that I am, at times, quick-tempered, ill-mannered, and easily bored. I know I can be distracted, defiant and pugnacious. I am also kind, loving, energetic, and fun. I can be charismatic and compassionate. And I like that I can do both. There are good things about me and some challenging things about me. After all, two things can be true at the same time.

Most importantly I know that 9 years later…

I am good enough.

May it ever be so.