I Broke Our Suicide Pact and You Died Alone

When I did first read those words, three weeks had already passed since you placed them on your Facebook wall. I immediately called your cell; It was dead. I rang your burner; you didn’t pick up. I texted you; you didn’t respond.

How had so much time passed without me noticing a difference in the air? Regardless, it took only the shortest sliver of a second to sink in, and I knew.

You were gone for good. And, beyond that, I broke our pact and let you die alone.

My stomach fell somewhere below the core of this very planet as I searched my phone history and saw what I already knew was there: a missed call from you, dated November 22nd at 2202.

I investigated my phone’s history further. At the time of your call I was on the line with someone who deserved exactly none of my time. You deserved all of it.

The events of that evening in November rapidly returned to my mind, and the sickening truth is, I remembered seeing your name and picture on my screen. I however, was caught up in my usual self-absorbed, cyclical bull shit. I remember deciding to call you later, but I prioritized other things.

As I read your ominous post again, it occurred to me, and I don’t know why it was for the first time, but we had no mutual friends I could call to ask about you. I had my reasons to avoid your crowd. In fact, I even avoided you most of the time, at least in person.

Our real world adventures were sparse, but they served as invaluable little breaks from our respective realities. I learned simply knowing there is a refuge, even if you can’t visit often, is a beautiful thing.

Do you remember that time we met at an office supply store, where we lost all our time but sampled every color of pen? Your cousin called; she didn’t believe you were, “just at Staples with a friend.”

That’s because you’re an addict.

You’d broken her trust time and time again. In another life you were honest. But by then you did whatever you needed to feed the void that sucked every last drip of hope from your bones even before it demanded you sing its gospel.

But you sang it. You lost your marriage over it. You lost your son.

The space we created was, above all, safe. It somehow felt both snug and secure enough to keep us cozy but also had the capacity to house entire evenings of racing thoughts.

You’d call, and in turns we would deliver our angsty performances of the week’s drama. Our one-man gigs left for us only one-man audiences, but when the curtains would fall, from the dark we always pulled some silver lining, somehow, for each other. It’s easier looking in, you know?

One night while texting, I received a message from you on a different platform. You were performing a double authorization of sorts. Apparently my typo and missing Oxford comma in our other thread had you convinced I was an imposter. Was it really me over there?

Yes, dear friend, it was.

At the time I was impressed — what a compliment to have a friend question your identity because of poor editing and a shift in style. But my perspective is wider now and I can’t unsee the tragedy of that scene. Oblivion isn’t blissful to watch.

Your paranoia had been increasing, but it was especially intense that night. I didn’t see how debilitating it had become. You were more altered than usual, and from a vantage point with such altitude, you saw things — people and scenarios and intentions, that others couldn’t.

Nothing would change your mind; you were convinced everything had a common goal — to take you down. I didn’t know you thought even I was out to hurt you. I’m so sorry you were scared.

We bonded over a shared struggle to stay afloat in life, we just reached for different types of life jackets I guess. Yours was misleading. It was closer than mine, easier to reach, more buoyant, and you rose higher than me. But, it also had a leak, a hole you never managed to repair.

And we both had that tendency to lean in suicide’s direction. We were drawn to the consistency of melancholy. It’s thick. And it sticks around, you know? You’re less likely to be lonely when you’re encased in its tenacious, ameboid arms — but, there is a good chance you’ll suffocate.

And sometimes I can’t breathe, but it’s different than when you couldn’t breathe that night, I think. It’s different than when your son couldn’t breathe years ago.

I’m seemingly stuck here, now alone, and burdened with the obligation to take more and more breaths. I become especially aware of my penetrable mortality when the act of breathing stops feeling autonomic. I have to volunteer to breathe? Like, I’ll die if I don’t make the effort to inhale? I instinctively startle. Nothing is guaranteed.

I clamored for a way out of my new reality — the one without you in it, the one in which I wasn’t there for you. Since you had been diagnosed with severe congestive heart failure from chronic methamphetamine use, I let my mind question, just for a moment, if maybe it wasn’t purposeful, maybe your heart had simply given out.

I knew otherwise. You were supposed to have a life vest defibrillator on, but had chosen to leave it behind when you went into the woods that night. I hope you weren’t cold. I hope you weren’t hungry. I hope you weren’t scared. I know you often used that caustic poison to ensure otherwise.

You left a note and addressed it to me. In it, you gifted me something powerful— the acceptance of an apology I had not yet had the chance to give. You knew I would need it.

What others didn’t know was how, from that place of security and understanding, was born a suicide pact. It’s probably not what most expect when they hear that either. It was not a promise to synchronize the end of our lives. In fact, it wasn’t even designed with the intention of changing the outcome — just the feeling. It was something beautiful though, wasn’t it?

In the event either of us ever sank so low that we were, without a doubt, unable to continue to overpower the relentless pull of suicide’s claws, we would call the other to hear the love in another’s voice.

Our sole intention was to alleviate any potential feelings of guilt or of loneliness in an hour of such infinite darkness. It was an opportunity to hear:

It’s ok. I wish it was different, but I believe you when you say it is not. I don’t judge you. I love you.

In that situation, a call directed to anyone else, whether a family member, friend, or hotline, would result in an attempt to change our suicidal minds. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that, and I’m a proponent of reaching out; lives can be saved that way. But it’s not what we wanted and needed from each other. Instead of saving, we needed acceptance.

Do you remember the peace that followed in the moments after we made that promise? I felt my center settle as though a lifelong earthquake finally subsided. One I didn’t even know was there. If ever I was to give in, I wouldn’t have to be alone.

It wasn’t until two years later either of us chose to make that call though, and when that time came, I didn’t hold my end of our bargain. I didn’t answer, I didn’t tell you I understood, and in failing to be there for you, I learned life actually could get harder for me.

So today, as I stand before you all, I want you to hear me, because he chose me to organize this evening and to give this eulogy for a reason. In addition to forgiving me, he made a request — that I share the story of our pact, and that I try to express to others why you should not feel anger towards someone who dies of suicide. I owe it to him to try and explain something that is lost on so many.

See, for people like us, sick people like us, depressed people like us — the weight of those breaths we have to take becomes too heavy to carry, so we start to drag them behind us instead. We’re inevitably criticized and called lazy, because that’s how it sometimes appears, so we start to make compromises to keep up with the others.

But I never detect this sort of pain behind the smiles the other people display, the happy people. They don’t have that aching or that longing, at least not so much that some must be tucked behind their teeth and shoved beyond night’s reach.

To manage, we stitch some of the weight under our skin, but it gets tight in time and the seams burst. So we carve out parts of ourselves, creating recesses for storage. We dispose of more and more pieces of what composes us just so we can keep moving. What could be less lazy than bartering with your very core?

Most just don’t get it, and truthfully, I’m glad, because I wouldn’t wish this state on anyone. But I do wish they’d believe me when I say this:

Suicidal people do not want to die. Suicidal people want to live, but for whatever reason, some of us can’t anymore.

He and I and so many other silent sufferers block out pain, loneliness, despair, and, more than anything, dread, so we can pull off daily functions. We bury them deeply and sometimes fail to notice when their insidious slimes rise above the surface we secured them under.

Inevitably, we isolate socially and reduce the quality of and numbers in our corners. We don’t want to be a burden. The sadness festers, and we regret the time lost with our loved ones even as we sit together, touching.

But I have a confession: to some degree, we like our sad. We intentionally feed our depression. It becomes our comfort zone even despite its discomfort. Nobody is proud of this, but it’s true.

After years of failed attempts, we all seem to eventually arrive wherever it is you go to join them, because we can’t figure out how to beat them. It takes an immense amount of work, support, opportunity, and sometimes luck to escape an abusive relationship with depression. Some people don’t make it out.

I told him many times, but I hope he believed me when I said his brain was unrivaled. He created this tangible form of magic each time he played with markers, doodled on skin, molded clay.

He painted his work, made it so that it glowed in the dark. And how fitting, that his art would be highlighted by the good from the light it absorbed before sending it back into the world, mirroring the way he strived to conduct his own life.

I know one speech won’t do, and I don’t think I have the ability to effectively articulate what he wanted me to, but I’ll keep trying.

I myself have attempted suicide — and I have a daughter. I don’t know how to describe the guilt I felt when I succumbed to the pain that day two years ago. I felt I was choosing myself over her, but I also felt as though my depressed presence in her life dragged her down; she would be better off without me. Somehow it seemed simultaneously selfish and selfless.

Please, If you’ve ever lost someone to suicide and feel either guilt for not saving them or anger with them for dying that way, forgive yourself and forgive them. Not every suicide is preventable and it’s not your fault, but it’s not necessarily theirs either.

And to my friend, ours was the most unique and likely the dearest relationship I’ll ever have. I miss you here, but more than anything I want you to know that I saw the real you, the raw you, the crumbs you left behind of you. I saw how you found purpose in helping others. But you sought solace in a land from which you never could permanently return —your Neverland.

I wish you could have managed a different way, but I don’t blame you. I don’t judge you. I understand. And most of all, dear friend, I hope you’ve finally found your white rabbit. I hope you are with your son — maybe it was him all along.