Chapter 1- The Book Title
I stared across my dining table at my friend’s piercing blue eyes. Like me, she was a Chicagoan who had landed in NYC. We met in a krav maga class, and I almost always saw her in sweat clothes, face bright red from pummeling a kick pad that I was happy wasn't my body. But today, she wore a bright pink dress with gray heeled shoes and she had on makeup, showing a far more feminine side. Her eyes were both tough and compassionate, a challenging mixture to achieve simultaneously.
I had decorated my dining room in vivid hues of magenta and olive green, with ample lighting- all of which felt too bright at that moment. It did not match the mood. We sipped our fragrant and inexpensive Sauvignon Blanc out of my expensive looking, but actually cheap Ikea wine glasses.
“I don’t know why I am doing this. Writing down my life story,” I said, with trepidation in my voice. I had decided to reveal to my friend that I was writing a book about my life. I hadn't told very many people. I felt a queasy fog drifting up from my core, making its way through my body. I didn't like acknowledging my life story. And yet I knew the story needed to be told.
Then there was the self doubt. What if my life story was just nothing? I lived in Manhattan. Everybody thought their life story was interesting. Everybody was writing a book. Maybe my life wasn't interesting.
Perhaps it was perfectly normal to come from a traditional Indian family and become a high school runaway, fleeing an abusive father and living in 50 different homes. Perhaps everyone's parents tried to have shamans in India chase the demons out of their daughter's body. Perhaps, like me, every teenager tried to commit suicide. And like me, the ones who didn't succeed at their suicide attempt went on to collect several graduate degrees. Surely, like me, people traveled around the world by themselves and used ketamine therapy to chase the depression out of their lives, only to learn the depression could not be outrun. Perhaps my life was nothing other than ordinary. Mundane.
“You should do it because there is value in the physical act of writing it down,” she said earnestly. I felt the queasy fog start to retreat. She didn't seem to think my idea was absurd. There was raw emotion in her soul- a willingness to feel and allow others to feel. Vulnerability was elusive to me. I did not wear it well. “You don’t ever need to show it to anyone. You don’t ever need to publish it. But you should write it down,” she said firmly. She had life stories of her own- she had earned a badge of honor in my mind for needing to show gumption to survive life. It made her words mean more to me.
“It is going to be called ‘The Suicide Letters,’ I half whispered, preparing myself for the horrified reaction I expected to get. Nobody liked to hear me talk about suicide. I thought about suicide at least 10 times a day, but I was smart enough never to talk about it. Thoughts of suicide had ruled my life since I was a child, but I had learned to keep my thoughts well hidden. Dirty, shameful, horrible thoughts. I often wondered whether the suicidal thoughts had been there when I was a mere embryo. Perhaps I had tried to strangle myself with the umbilical cord or drown myself in amniotic fluid. It wouldn't have surprised me.
But the horrified reaction did not come. Instead, her pretty blue eyes lit up. “That is a great name for a book!” she exclaimed, her voice rising an octave with genuine enthusiasm. “Ok, thank God, she isn’t calling 911 on me,” I thought to myself.
I decided to tell her more. “To stay alive, every single time I want to die, I write out a suicide note to a person I care about," I explained. "Forcing myself to imagine the anguish of the person reading the note when I am gone is enough to stop me from acting on it."
My friend nodded her head animatedly, causing her short blonde hair to bounce around her face. Her smile widened and I gave her an authentic smile in return. I was an expert at sporting the inauthentic kind. “The irony is that if one day I did decide to end my life, all of my suicide notes would already have been written. I just really love efficiency,” I said. Her smile faded slightly. She thought for a moment and replied, “well that does reflect your dark sense of humor.” She was right. It did.
The reality was that life had never felt worthwhile to me. The pain made it not worthwhile. Some of the pain came from being genetically hardwired to be in mental anguish, and other parts of the pain were just cruel gifts from people who thrived on tearing others down. I wondered why there was so much sympathy for a terminal cancer patient who wanted to end their pain, but never for a mentally ill patient. It was as though nobody believed the mental illness was an actual illness, but rather, just a dirty illusion that needed to be washed away by thinking or behaving differently.
I decided to write down my life story so my pain can mean something. If I were die with my story untold, the pain would die with me, but it would never hold any worth for anyone else in the world. If I were to write it down, it was available, should anyone ever want to read it. If it could help just one person not feel so alone, to feel validated in their pain - then so be it, I decided. I would share my suicide letters, as well as the tortuous story that led to them.
