“The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the
greatest poverty.” - Mother Theresa
“Poverty
is the worst form of violence” - Mahatma
Gandhi
They
say you'll never find love until you love yourself.
Why?
That
makes no sense. From what I can tell, the mass of humanity do not
truly love themselves, or do it imperfectly, in a half-assed fashion,
picking and choosing among their secret histories and abilities and
characteristics those to exalt, and those to revile. It's one of
those things women tell you when they won't tell you what they really
mean, or don't know what they mean, maybe. Just that they hate you
and think you're junk. Somehow, you're just missing some magical,
ineffable trait, invisible and unprovable, and if only you'd try
harder, then they would love you.
It's
a cop out. A way to throw it all on you, and leave you with no
defence. “It's not me, it's you.” And somehow, they
think they know what you're feeling better than you do. That they
can see so far in you to your core and say “That part is
missing. Fuck off, chump.”
It's
a bunch of nonsense. But you can't really argue with it. It's a Zen
Koan.
So
what?
Well,
I do love myself. Sure, not every part. My skin is a little too
pale and flabby. I have a stupid laugh. I sometimes get spiteful
when I'm hurt. I'm scared of confrontation, and pretend I understand
politics more than I really do. Occasionally I embellish my
achievements. Sometimes I've been weak, and sometimes I've done
things I'm not proud of. I occasionally masturbate to cartoons.
Still,
I think I'm pretty good. I'm afraid of fighting, but I am brave
enough to stand up, even so. I feel terrible when I see people
crying, or getting humiliated. I am adventurous, funny, and clever.
Except my stupid laugh and flabby skin, I think I'm at least average
looking. I'm pretty passionate and embrace life. Sometimes, I am a
god-damned hero in the sack. I am a good mechanic, welder,
carpenter, programmer, artist. I'm not a sports guy, but I'm fairly
athletic. I am funny as hell when I have the exact right level of
nervous energy. I can spend an entire month by myself and never get
bored or lonely. I don't hurt people very often, and generally would
rather they hurt me than the other way around. I've helped out a lot
of people in trouble. A couple of times I even had knives and guns
pulled on me when I did. I feel good when I make people happy,
especially when they don't know how hard I worked to do it.. Did I
mention how sometimes I'm a hero in the sack? I think that's kind of
important.
Anyways,
so when I ask about that, or wonder, it's always the same: “You
have to love yourself first.” Bullshit. I already do. What
they are doing is gas-lighting. Telling me I feel something I don't.
Something I can't prove or argue or demonstrate. And they do it
when I'm in pain. Desperate for an answer, and so crushed I try to
convince myself and capitulate. So willing to change, so I can find
that meaning and importance and connection, that I'm an imbecile, as
eager to please as Parsons in MINILUV. Just this
slow-rolled Stockholm Syndrome.
“You
feel what I tell you, not what you think”. And then I'm just
dense or perverse if I disagree. And I'm left thinking I'm so crazy
I don't even know myself or understand anything in the world. And
the panic and incoherence in my thought just grows.
Two
plus two equals five.
So I
search and search for what's in me that I need to change, that I must
hate so much I am broadcasting it to every stranger and clerk and
waitress. I start to judge every foible as the possible culprit:
“Is that why I hate myself? Is that? Is that? Is that?...”
It
never ends. Well, it ended. I do love myself, mostly. That's not
my problem, so don't put it on me. Don't project. If you don't love
me, own it, don't make me responsible for what you feel about me. At
least have that decency. Don't tell me I don't love myself because
you don't have the courage or respect to say you don't love me.
Don't make me bury myself in myself for months and years trying to
fix your problem. Don't send me on a fool's errand. I think I got
enough love for myself to tell you that.
See,
loving myself isn't the problem. Not being loved is my problem.
I've done some remarkable and stupendous and unique things in my
life, and weathered storms you can't imagine. And I'm proud of that.
I
want love, though. I got my own already. I want yours. Or maybe
not yours, but some woman's. Maybe you're not her.
I'm not unlovable to me, but I don't understand why I
am to you. To all of you. I don't understand. Maybe
I want to feel like I matter so much to some woman she is excited to
face every day, or has contentment with life, and joy, and hope, and
peace. Maybe I want to know a woman who says: “Knowing you has
made it all worth it.” and knows I feel the same about her.
Who looks in my eyes with the same stunned, awed expression as I have
for her. Maybe I want affection. A friend. A partner in crime.
Someone who walks into the house and knows she is loved because I've
cleaned the place and supper is on, nearly ready for her arrival.
Sex. Someone who wants to see all the parts of the world with me
that aren't shit, or soulless commercial scum holes or tragic war
zones. Who wants to go skydiving with me. Or have kids. Who
thinks: “You are my man, and I want to have your baby.”
Someone whom I can laugh with about all the stupid shit our kids do,
or who can have a deep and loving conversation when we are worried
about little Timmy or Sally or Adolf getting into drugs or country
music or Poland. Whoever. Whatever.
Maybe
I want to be held and stroked. Snuggled with. Lay around in bed
sharing our little secret jokes. Shovelling the walk before you wake
up so you can walk to the car in the morning without going through
snow. Maybe I want to massage you or wrap myself around you. Or
give you the space to take a Taxidermy or Spanish class at the local
college or whatever. And who would love the crazy, wildly assembled
chimera of a fox and raven you brought home when it's finished,
inexpertly glued, so I can proudly exclaim “?que es
esto?” (exhausting my own Spanish) and put it on the kitchen
table and tell you how awesome you are, because I celebrate how much
I love of the weirdness you've shown in you. Maybe I want to feel
your hair and your skin and hear your laugh and snort. Maybe I want
to watch you as you orgasm. Maybe I want to feel like I matter to
you, and you matter to me, so everything else matters too.
Maybe
that's so important to me, nothing else can hold a candle to it. All
the other wonders of life are flat and grey beside that. Maybe I
only have one life, and the life I want is being denied to me, for no
reason I can understand. What I have acutely wanted to live,
eagerly, every second for decades of my life. And the years just
keep evaporating, week after week, year after year!
Maybe
I'm getting older and older, and this life is running out. Maybe
already my health is starting to fail. Maybe if someone loved me
now, I have already lost so many vital years we could have had
together, or it would be too late to take my kids on trips or walk my
daughter down the aisle, or be a memory of a strong man for my sons
or daughters. I do think I'm worthy of that. I do think I deserve
to be loved. Why hasn't the fact I have wanted that and tried to
find it for over forty years been enough to show I think I'm worthy
of it? Why have I been denied being a part of the conversation of
humanity?
Maybe
I've tried for so many years, you start to just seem perverse and
cruel. I don't see what's so bad about me, but you do. You'd rather
fuck the guy who yells at you. Or have the baby of some other guy
who was fucking you while his wife was at the hospital in labour. Or
marry a guy who doesn't ask anything about you. Or thinks you're
stupid. Who thinks you are just your body. Or who doesn't know what
you like, or hits you, or cheats on you, or makes jokes about you to
his friends. Or expects you to cook and clean and fuck and shut up.
What
the hell is so bad about me you'd rather have that? It certainly
isn't because I don't love myself.
So,
anyways. I'm on a bridge now. It's not really a suicide-type
bridge. If I jumped from here, the worst I would do would be cripple
myself and look retarded. But I can make the jump fatal. It's
cold, and I can see my breath. It's that perfect time of night,
around four a.m. and there is that thick, heavy silence thrumming in
the winter city air. Mostly, everyone is asleep.
I've
got snot hanging from my nose. I've been crying pretty hard for
quite a while. It's mostly run its course, though. That's another
thing I don't really like about me. I think I look dishonest when I
cry. That thought usually makes me stop crying unless I'm alone.
I
have a nice half inch rope. I had pulled out a pencil and Newton's
formulas to figure out the right diameter of rope so it wouldn't
break on me. I tied a noose in one end, a proper thirteen turn
noose. No point doing things half-assed. They should really have a
sense of importance, since nothing else will. I've looked it up and
found out the right length to do a proper “long-drop” hanging.
If the rope is too short, I'd just suffer needlessly, and thrash
around like an idiot suffocating for a couple of minutes and turning
my face black and swollen before I die. Too long, and I'd decapitate
myself. That just seems too dramatic and messy for whoever is
unlucky enough to have to deal with the whole shebang. I feel kind
of bad about it, but not that bad. They've seen worse than what I'm
going to do. I'm nothing if not considerate. That's what I'm
telling myself, anyways. I picked four a.m. so no kids would see it.
I'll be found by some poor drone on her way into the office early,
or one of the regulars for the first of the daily rush: invariably
cleaning women, nurses, and tradesmen.
I
tie a bowline around the rail with the other end of the rope. It's
apparently one of the strongest knots, and it's one of the cleanest.
I can tie one in about a second. If I have a favourite knot, it's
the taut-line hitch, or maybe the half hitch, since that reminds me
how my Dad used to say: “Grandpa always said: ' two half
hitches can hold the devil.'” The bowline is definitely up
there, though. It's sort of my go-to knot.
I
imagine the police photographer photographing my nice neat bowline
and noose, and how I placed the noose appropriately, and how he would
nod in appreciation with how I had done this all properly, and how I
had done it as cleanly as it's possible under the circumstances. How
he would see how I had the sureness to not over-knot things, and
trusted my own knowledge of and skill with the rope.
The
noose is around my neck but it's hidden by my jacket. I am having
one more smoke. I sort of freeze in abject guilt, like I just got
caught spray painting a swastika or something, as some guy walks by.
I'm leaning against the rail, though, so he can't see the rope.
Still, I'm nervous about him stopping me. I stopped this exact thing
in pretty much this exact spot ten years ago. The guy was a drunk
Vietnam vet, and he was bawling quite a bit. Everyone was just
walking by, except one guy struggling with him and trying to also
dial his cellphone. I came up and told the guy to make the call and
I'd hold the old guy. I convinced him to just sit on the ground in
the slush and dirt with me as we waited for the cops. He started to
get up at one point and I just said: “It will get better,
brother.” I was lying and didn't believe it, though, but he
clearly wanted to believe and sat down with me again. The cops were
kind of rough and were having a hard time with him. He was
struggling quite a bit. One cop asked me to come up and undo the
guy's backpack straps as they kept him pinned to the railing. I
walked away after, hoping the guy could maybe find some happiness,
but I didn't think it was likely. I might have even been cruel in
stopping him. Life is shit.
Anyhow,
he was kind of dumb, and trying it in the middle of the day. I'm
mostly alone. I mutter a few lines of poetry I like for this moment:
“I'm
Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,
Who
never knew a dame
From
youth time on and would to God
My
Dad had done the same.”
Normally
I hate Thomas Hardy. Return of the Native was a real let down.
Holden Caulfield was wrong about that, although I probably would have
liked Eustacia Vye, too.
“I
have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I
have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And
in short, I was afraid.”
Always
loved Eliot.
“As
tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were
all too little...
Push
off, and sitting well in order smite
The
sounding furrow....”
Ulysses
means quite a bit to me, but I might not be able to kill myself if I
recite the whole thing. Those lines always make me want to just say
“fuck it”, though.
“Rage,
rage, against the dying of the light...”
Not
that one. Nothing by Thomas. I'll end up alive if I recite anything
by Thomas or Yeats for sure.
“Tomorrow,
and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps
in this petty pace from day to day
To
the last syllable of recorded time,
And
all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The
way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s
but a walking shadow, a poor player
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And
then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.”
Better.
I
snug the noose around my neck and centre the knot just behind my left
ear. There are traditions to think of. I'm feeling kind of dreamy
and asleep. My arms are starting to feel a bit like paralysed wood.
I light another cigarette and then toss it. I realize I'm stalling.
I kind of wail a bit and look up and breathe in the cold air deeply.
“I
wish someone would have loved me!” My voice is over-loud and
warbling pretty badly. I sound like I have a speech impediment. I
suck up the snot violently and climb over the rail in a trance.
I
love myself, but I find this world intolerable without being loved,
too. I need it as desperately, as acutely, and as urgently as I need
air. And if I break occasionally, willing to destroy everything I am
to end this suffocation, gasping for air in this water-boarding of
life, don't be surprised at that. I think you understand. It's not
that hard.
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