SUICIDE IS PAINLESS?

aloha,
one of the consequences of Depression (and PTSD) is suicide.
it is not always logical but it is true.

once i had left my mother's poisoned nest and was living on my own in LA (after the traffic accident but b4 LSD) i became deeply depressed.here's an LSD related analogy,it's about 3 or 4 ayem, you're not sure which-sometimes you wonder if Time has even been invented yet, you're on a dark deserted subway platform,almost alone.waiting for a train (or Godot?) creatures which may or may not be human lurk in the shadows.if you're lucky they're the harmless homeless or hopped up hypes,if you're not they're vicious muggers or predators looking for the weak...this goes on for several eternities then a train comes.
in Depression the train never comes, the sun never shines and all hope is lost forever...
as a child i lived on the twelfth floor of the Abraham Lincoln Projects in Harlem,i often thot about leaping from my bedroom window to my death.unlucky or stupid people were routinely murdered by being thrown off rooftops,since we were all black the local cops always wrote it off as sucide.so yes,people did get away with murder,routinely.
somehow i didn't leap.
i thot things would improve once i got to LA but as they say in the movie Buckeroo Banzai "no matter where you go,there you are" or,as i have boiled it down over these years "it is what it is".
i was deeply suicidal, i thot of walking in front of a bus or car blasting thru a red light.i thot about it more than sex and chocolate Combined,which should astound those who know me.
i used to go to the Love Ins at Griffith Park to watch half naked hippie girls dancing,it was free beyond the bus fare.one day on the grass i found a book STEPPENWOLF by Herman Hesse (made into a decent movie with Max Von Sydow i think) about a man planning to committ suicide on his birthday-I LOVED IT! spoiler alert! it has a Happy Ending.(damn).
after I'd read and re read the book another book appeared on the grass for me (no no not on The Grassy Knoll) ZEN FLESH,ZEN BONES by Paul Reps,at least it had a murky indeterminate ending.then i found LSD and started living and feeling less sorry for myself, this worked quite well (despite chronic back pain) until my back blew up in 1993.
Vicodin did nothing for me (sorry Dr.House) and i was SO DEPRESSED I STARTED WATCHING BASEBALL REGULARLY.
now i was very conflicted,
i had divorced GriZelda ("I don't want to be Happy!" besides she'd already found my replacement) about two years before this and met my Soul Mate (after much futile searching and newspaper ads) a year previous, so i was sure i'd finally met THE LOVE OF MY LIFE (other than my kids and the good parts of GriZelda) and i had very detailed plans about taking my truck down to the beach at sunset,taking an overdose,taping a plastic bag over my head and handcuffing my wrists to the steering wheel (can't be too careful right?)-with a very visible note of course.i didn't want Soul Mate to think any of this was her fault,her life had been hard enuff already.
this plan kept me going for day to day. one day Soul Mate told me half naked women were belly dancing, for free, two blocks away and when i refused to leave my dead end baseball game,she knew i was in trouble...turns out i was dying of Liver Failure (from the Vicodin) and the chiropractor she found,(Erda a wonderful fat dyke with brain tumors who loved me,it's mutual) thot i'd be dead in less than the two weeks it took things to turn around,but i had something to live for (see above).Soul Mate also found me peer counseling groups concerned with death,dying and chronic pain where i met heroic women like Jackie and Juliette (both since deceased).
years later i was suicidal again when we lived in Mendocino County,i typed my weird ass stories on my garage PC with an unloaded gun on my actual desktop.
'self liberation' is what the pro suicide elements call it (i've been a member of the Hemlock society since the 70s,bout the same time i joined the Universal Life Church-i am a Reverend in it still), most times i agree.
suicide is like one of those funguses that doctors can't cure, that sounds too flippant but that's all i got today.constant applications of hope,joy,faith,beauty and discipline.that and be Very Very Honest with yourself,writing a journal and having great gay friends works for me (thanks G Man & Kev and my dearly beloved dead buddies).

in other news,
my oldest son has a birthday tomorrow YEA Z MAN,
his mother's is the day after Yea GriZelda.
check out the Blog about Midlife Treachery when you have a moment.okay?
note; love the song but never watched the series MASH.

namaste
semper grumpy
mega