A Broken Elevator Could Save A Life
A Broken Elevator Could Save A Life
Last night, I left my neighborhood bar, slightly inebriated, with the intention of going home to my sixth floor apartment and jumping out my window. I have ten windows to choose from and in the state I was in, I pondered which window would be easiest to open as all ten of them tend to stick. Fortunately, I guess, my building management company is a slumlord and the elevator has been down for the last 12 days. By the time I climbed six flights of stairs and labored out of breath into my apartment my plan to jump had somehow dissipated and all I could think of was sitting down on my couch and resuming my binge watching of the show Gotham.
Today, of course, I am disappointed. Not that I would have done it. I don’t know. But I am secretly hopeful that one of these days I will follow through. I have contemplated ending my life at least 3 times a week since I was 22 years old. Right now, I am frighteningly close to 50 so that is a ridiculously long time. I imagine if I was going to do it, I would have done if by now.
I actually had a plan. When I was struggling through my 20s and 30s I made a promise to myself. To stick around for my family as long as I could. But if I didn’t find love, or happiness, or success by the time I was 40, I would sneak away by myself on the eve of my 40th birthday and quietly step in front of a bus or subway train. Lol. I am not kidding here. I was serious. I got through almost 20 years of my life by believing it would all be over when I turned 40. All the disappointment, all the failure, all the addiction, and burdens I placed on friends and family I loved would be over. It is all that kept me going, knowing this pain and these feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness would eventually stop.
Unfortunately I am a bitch. A coward. Too little of a man to do even that part right. When the time came, I convinced myself I couldn’t do that to my mom and my nieces and nephews. To my friends. Lol. Excuses. The reality is suicide is for strong people. For people who are resolute and determined. For people who obviously really want to escape the despair and don’t have time to worry about the consequences or the thoughts and feelings of those they leave behind. And again, I am not that a strong a person.
The problem is, I made absolutely no plains to be 40 years old. Or 41. Or 42. Or 43, or on and on and on. I wasted every penny I made. I freely gave in to addiction (in my case gambling) and just repeatedly blew it over and over again. I worked every job I had half assed. I mean I have naturally been good at all of them but my indifference got in the way every time. So I just stayed in place, never getting promoted never showing what I could do. I never furthered my education beyond my bachelors. I even took the LSATs once but said what the fuck and never followed up on that. I made NO plans to have any kind of future. Any kind of success in life.
And that is why I find myself where I am now. More than half my life is over. I got laid off from my last good job six years ago and have been through 4 jobs since then. Unemployed FOUR times in the last six years after always working!
I live alone in an apartment I can’t even afford on my own. Obviously I can’t keep a job, remember? I have never been in love. I never allowed myself to risk it. I never felt I was worth loving. I never felt any woman wanted me. And in what experiences I have had, they have all rejected or denied some part of me. So all that did was affirm how shitty I felt about myself and to this day I still spend every night of my life alone.
I know. Wah wah wah. Quit crying, be a man, go out get a good job and find a woman. No one cares that you have battled depression for 30 years and can’t look in the mirror without bowing your head in shame. I WISH I COULD. I battle such brutal anxiety associated with the life I have created for myself that it is as if my feet and ankles are buried deep in settled concrete.
I have ten maybe twenty years of life left. I have nothing, and I have NO idea how to get it. I am so lost and so overwhelmed I want to scream. I do scream. And I cry. And I occasionally pray. Because I don’t know how to get out of my own way. I don’t know how to move my fears of death and old age and homelessness and further failure out of the fucking way, and get about the business of trying to find a little success, a little love, and little happiness with what life I have left. I only know how to exist. Living has always been foreign to me.
So tonight I will go back to that neighborhood bar. Drink beers amongst people who on some level consider themselves my friends, but have no idea what I go through on a daily basis. Put a fake smile on my face. Make some half-hearted giggles. Talk about sports, and life and women (as if I know anything about the latter two). And at the end of the night I will make the walk to my apartment building, and contemplate my ten windows and maybe my elevator in my building will be broke.
And maybe it won’t.
But I am writing this piece, and I will write more, with the hope that I can find myself. Find hope or purpose. That this can be cathartic for me. That my struggles can help someone else, or give me access to someone who can help me. My life is at stake, I have no time for pride. I am fighting myself, and its not a battle I can lose.
I DON’T WANT TO JUMP.
