Splunky's Life

Not Meant to Be

Only a miracle could save him. Miraculously, it happened ...

Across my life, I have experienced more than my fair share of close calls, or brushes with Mr Death - not quite nine, but I can count seven times I almost met my Maker.

As a kid, I fell off the front hood of our green Chevy Blazer while shooting a BB gun at rocks and bottles that lined a dusty mountain road - my head nearly squished beneath one of the Firestone tires. A little bit older, I came frightingly close to slipping to my death on the red sandstone of Arches National Park located in southern Utah - I had climbed a cliff too high and too steep for the treadless Nikes that I wore.

In high school, a lightning bolt as if thrown (inadvertently, I hope) from the hand of Zeus On High struck a sign post a few feet away from where a friend and I walked. The blast of electricity hit so close that all the hair on my body stood at attention, saluting the Heavens in Mohawk fashion. I fractured my spleen on the slopes of Robert Redford's Sundance Ski Resort, nearly bleeding to death internally in six inches of white virgin Utah powder in the Wasatch Mountains. While on vacation in Hawaii, a huge ocean tumbler came ever so close to washing me out to join Neptune in his deep blue sea. And most recently, right here in DC one rainy night, a taxi spun out of control and almost crushed me - missing by scant inches - as I crossed a soaked downtown street.

But the near death experience I keep coming back to most often is the first one, the one in which I tried to take my own life. A deep, dark secret that I harbored for altogether too long. I was 13, that incredibly awkward age when everything is in flux. I had just left the comfort of elementary school and entered the morass that is junior high, a place where one's physical appearance, at least initially, mattered above all else. My body had just started to mature. I had acne and a bad haircut-I felt so ugly. I had begun to detest the person in the mirror who always stares back, who never looks away. Soon it all seemed too much to bear, this yucky self that I saw. A great horde of worthlessness, I felt-devastated. Less than zero, I was-wretched. A cold cemetery wind blew through my soul, buried six feet under above ground.

At first, I withdrew from my friends. Then I withdrew from my family. And last, I withdrew from the world. I slept-nonstop-locked away in my room. The doctor diagnosed a case of mononucleosis, when, in fact, I suffered from a deep depression, a major bout of it. I saw no way out, no remedy for the terrible sense of worthlessness, the incurable loneliness that I felt, a diabolical discomfort. I was sick of sewing seeds in a fruitless ground. I was sick of ever kneeling and asking for some fresher feeling that never arrived, a child of a lesser God.

In this deadened state, I cursed the hour that gave birth to fragile me in this hard world. The world seemed so dark, so bleak, so meaningless-so utterly hopeless. And I was so tired, so bone-weary tired, a skeletal sadness had taken root, deeply, penetrating the very marrow of my bones. I didn't want to live any longer. I wanted to end the aching numbness. I wanted not to be, to be nothing. I wanted turn to dust and simply blow away, get snuffed out, bid my final adieu to the world-gone, forgotten.

So I gave up on what I judged to be a fetid, squalid and brackish existence. Life was a disease; so I tried to end mine, a measly pinpoint of insignificance. And I nearly succeeded.

One weekday morning, while my parents were away at work, I downed countless aspirins, leaving behind only a brief goodbye note to my family. I sat down on the couch and waited to die, again, ready to depart this hollow world, ready to quit this ridiculous charade called life, ready to kiss goodbye this absurd and bleak and callous and hateful and profane and unbearable and Godless Universe, a place supremely indifferent to the fact of my measly existence. A hurricane of deep despair had foundered my ship of being-sickening my soul and laying waste to my heart, turning it to ice, frigid, frozen. As I lay dying, my mind began to fog. My life began to seep away. My eyes burned and burned and burned with hot tears; a steady stream of them coursed down my cheeks and neck. My end was near. I dangled there on my gallow. No one cared if I lived or if I died. Especially I.

And then the phone rang. And it continued to ring. minute after minute after minute. Still, I didn't want to move. I didn't want to get up. I didn't want to live. But the phone would have none of it. It rang and rang and rang. minute after minute after minute. So incessant was the ringing, it went on and on and on, on and on and on-for what must have been close to 10 minutes. Finally, I got up and grabbed the receiver. But no one answered; no one was there -a t least not of this world, it seemed.

The inexplicable call, however, had served its purpose: It had successfully broken me of my neurochemical-caused stupor (years later, I'd be diagnosed as bipolar-prone to brain chemistry run wildly amok), awakened me from my pill-induced haze. I had been brought back into the world of the living, I believed, by a Higher Power.

I immediately ran to the bathroom and forced up the pills. I lit a match to my suicide note. I made a pledge, then and there: From that moment forward, I would live life to the fullest. I had learned a valuable lesson before dying - been given another go-around at life, a second chance. I would not throw away my life ever again; there would be no great tragedy that is suicide; there would be a second act in my American life. This pledge, too long forgotten, has been remembered.

I'd like to think. Scratch that. I now know that things happen for a reason where reason alone is insufficient and, in fact, can be rather frail in its explanation. Nothing in this world, nothing at all, is exactly as it seems. There is mystery in the world. Gobs of it. It keeps us guessing, for sure. But behind it all, I'd like to believe, is the near invisible hand of the Divine-however defined, however understood.

We may not have all the answers in this unfinished, ever evolving but sonically connected and bittersweet symphony called life. But there is a plan. There is a purpose to it all. There is a rhythm to the Cosmos. At least that's what I'll tell my kids and grandkids should I once again win the true love of a woman, a rare woman who will accept me for who I am (mental hiccups and all) and forever stand by me-my friend, my fiancée, my bride, my lover, my wife, my partner. A new romantic destiny I'd flesh out with her warmly at my side.

And if so, if marriage (one time only) and if fatherhood (several times over) and if grandfatherhood (many times over) await me, then I hope that my kids and grandkids will pass the message down the line-all the way down, endless-so that it reaches progeny of mine whose eyes I will never see and whose hands I will never hold. Life is always worth living and better still when you have a little faith, when you hold onto a lot of hope.

Published eary 2000s, reviewed Feb 14, 2008

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Not Meant to Be

Only a miracle could save him. Miraculously, it happened.

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