Suicide: Obviously not mine, don't worry

So where has your formerly faithful facebook correspondent been anyway?

He's working on a book, a looooong book, one of those books he may not live long enough to get through ten percent of. One day, if all goes according to plan (which never happens) your grandchildren will all have it on their shelves and drop it on their feet more often than they open it. What kind of book is it? Well, he just finished a chapter that begins with Cleopatra and Marc Anthony performing filthy acts upon each other, and ends with Cleopatra begging her children in her suicide letter to annihilate the Jewish people.

So this is either the kind of book you'll think you want to read and won't like a single word, or the kind of book you think you'll hate every page and love every minute of it.

But the reason he's come back momentarily may surprise you. It's because of this article by, of all people, David Brooks, the dullest, most sanctimonious, cliched commentator in America, who has about as much political insight as your once faithful facebook correspondent has into a sack of rocks.

But when Brooks writes about anything other than politics, he's surprisingly good, and never better than when talking about the suicide of his good friend.

The problem with suicide is that it's so.... final... There's no walking back from the other side to say 'y'know, I shouldn't have done that', there's no ability to stick around and wonder if things ever get better, and worst of all, there's no ability to say to friends and loved ones 'don't do what I did' in their stressful moments.

One of my closest friends sent this article to me, though I'd already read a bit of it, and the implication was extremely clear. I said to him 'Don't worry, I will never put you in this position.' and he said 'thank you.'

Of course, I have to rephrase that slightly: for well over thirty years I've endured levels of inner blackness that have killed people who've experienced less of it for shorter periods; but when part of you has been dead for well over thirty years, what the hell's the point in killing the rest? No one is more surprised I'm still here than I, and I made a promise to myself that whatever horrors to come, I would choose life as all rational people do. If it ever happens, and please understand, there's absolutely no foreseeable danger of it, it would be a decision made with complete irrationality. There is no good reason to end it. We all have things to live for, and if for no other reason, your faithful facebook correspondent wants to be alive as long as he can so he can write all the thousands of ideas percolating in his head when he's not obsessively ruminating on the things that keep him up at night. There are so many more disgusting sex scenes to write, all the moreso in this era when men writing novels with sex in it is the ultimate bad taste.

The world of woke has not thought it important to advocate for the learning disabled, the mentally imbalanced, or Jews, I suspect they never will. Any movement that fervently sincere can turn itself into a cesspool where demagogues can flourish, and I strongly suspect some powerful antisocial(ists) among them are already planning how they can all three groups to the dogs to increase the reach of their power grabs. People who consider themselves the wokest Bernie-bros in the world can begin to sound like the most intolerant Fox News yellers the moment our struggles with conditions that have already ruined our lives affect them. People who consider themselves the height of sensitivity to issues of abuse are willing to turn on anybody who exhibits a moment of turmoil with that dreaded claim. And Jews? Well, if the world is as racist as now claimed, the world is also as antisemitic, and you'd better believe some of the worst antisemites in the world are antiracists. Of all three I could tell stories over the years that would turn Shakespeare's beard white, and for the better part of thirty years, I've lived in terror of all three. Not that it matters: In the dictatorship of the mad, long-term relationships are over before they start. In the anarchy of the learning disabled, friends drop you all the time for being unreliable. In the kakistocracy of living in this world as a Jew... nobody wants to hear what I have to say, gentile or Jewish.

I had an extraordinarily memorable experience recently with a friend who lived in Israel, sadly another former friend now, whom I talked down from suicide threats... three times? Five times? Seven times?

I have reason to do so, I didn't take suicidal threats seriously from a friend ten years ago who would call me ad nauseum, and eventually I stopped taking his calls because he sent me messages that were more and more ominous sounding, as though he might not be the only person he kills - but he didn't, he was just in danger of killing himself, and six months later he jumped in front of a train.

When I was living in Israel, there was another acquaintance/neighbor who came into my room to say goodbye saying 'I'm going away, you won't see me for a long time' just before he jumped from his fifth-floor window. The rest of my time in Israel, that hallway felt haunted.

I'd lost touch with one of my closest high school friends. I was deeply in love with her and when I found out almost offhandedly that she was going to one of the two schools I'd gotten into, of course I chose that one. We barely saw each other, she disappeared into drugs, I disappeared into academic success that surprised no one more than me. We occasionally saw each other until she dropped out. I'd always wondered what happened, then I got the inevitable news: she'd dropped out of more than college.

This other 'friend' from Israel kept threatening suicide on social media; almost casually, clearly for effect, and clearly because he was desperate for some kind of attention, sympathy, companionship... it was a kind of brinksmanship with him: 'I'll do it! Oh yes! I'll do it! Don't think I won't!' I have no doubt he was suffering terribly; but he refused to go to therapy, he refused to believe he had anyone meaningful looking after him when he obviously did, and he would threaten suicide over the stupidest things, including when I pointed out to him that he was overreacting and being intolerant over stupid things. He had unfulfillably high expectations for life, and when the expectations for life are too high, you're asking yourself to be disappointed. Finally, he unfriended me over a trivial remark about something he liked that wasn't even directed at him, and well... I went off on him. I'm Evan Tucker, that's what I do... I even told him "You're so crazy you can't even commit suicide when you threaten to!" ...The next day more than half a dozen Israelis bombed my music page with a screen capture of what I said to him (though I said a lot more). I was told I'd committed abuse and a felony, and all this by the very sorts of friends he said were worthless and meaningless. Such are interactions in the kingdom of the mad.

Did I cross a line? Of course I did. I meant to and I don't regret it. This was a friend of sixteen years and he ended a friendship because of.... well I'm not really sure, I'd been a pretty damn superb friend to him, but I'm sure my sin was grave in his unreliable mind which, as of then, he had no interest in making more reliable. I wish him well, I certainly hope he doesn't do it, and I somehow have a feeling he won't...

In the meantime, there are the rest of us. I try to keep expectations for my own life as low as possible. For a 40 year old I live with a mind that yo-yos like a sine wave, and like so many whose mental illness is never alleviated, the body suffers with the mind: I live with some relatively colossal health issues. The chances I'd 'check myself out' are pretty darn low, but I'd put the actuarial odds pretty high that my body will take me out before 70, long before my mind is willing to stop enduring.

I would like to think that some amount of writing I do will be remembered well by a public larger than this dozen and change public I have here, but what most writers never understand is that however many or few the readers, if it's any good, it's not worth the colossal amount of effort it takes to get good at it. To anyone who can have a life with any relatively normal job, domesticity; take it, never look back. It's just not worth it.

Once I passed a certain age, say... 17... I never wanted to fulfill any stereotype of a tortured artist. How good can anything be that involves torture (don't ask Cleopatra...)? I just realized 'the tortured artist' route was my only option, and I might as well, in my limited way, try to get as good at it as I can. People don't 'torture themselves' to be good at art, they become good at art because they're already tortured and need respite from it. Most artists, once they find a path toward sanity, take it, and no longer spend every waking moment worrying about what they can do to improve what they're working on. Happy artists? They certainly exist, good ones too; but virtually any job is easier. They often leave because they want to remain happy.

So rationally speaking, I never wanted to be a writer, I never wanted to be a composer. I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer or teacher; go to school, get a 9-5 job, live a normal quiet life that wouldn't disappoint your grandparents. That was not in the cards for me. What was in the cards for me is writing, writing like this, writing that I'm not sure anybody will ever read, writing that is, for better or worse, as for myself as by myself.

The saddest thing about all the major depressive disorders, sadder even than the depression itself, is the uncurable nature of the thing. You can get respite, but the danger of it coming back is always gigantic. Once you're in, you're in. Managing it defines large swathes of the rest of your life, and whomever you were or would be before it happens, you have to say goodbye to that person if you ever want to feel better. The new you is no less valuable, certainly not 'worse' than the old you, but the new you is disagreeable company. He is not an organically integrated part of your natural personality, and he was formed to be in the greatest possible clash with the rest of you.

So no matter how dislikable the world finds the disagreeable side of this graphomaniac, he is going to go on, partly out of hope, partly out of love, partly out of spite.

I was formed by life to be a gadfly, a passive player, capable of doing very little but observe how others live their lives, then writing down comments on it. Surely the uniqueness of my vantage lets me see things other people don't, but uncharitable sorts call my role in life a 'troll.' Disagreeable though I may be, I think what I do is a lot harder than trollery; but at this point I know that few people care.what I think unless it resembles trolldom. So on I continue, not knowing if life is worth embracing; but whether it is or isn't, I intend to hang around long enough to find out, and will keep going until my body gives out, which may be sooner than we know..

In the meantime, those who choose to not accompany me for this ride, I pray every day that you're cursed with copious amounts of painful diarrhea. But to all who are there for me, thank you all, and I will try as best I can to do the same for you.

Amen