OH, BTW

“We all thought you were suicidal.”

Some of the last words said to me by a group of friends as we all graduated. It could have really helped if someone had spoken up earlier. How much of University did I miss out on because I gave off this “vibe?”

I can remember always sitting in the front row of a particular course (right by the professor, and there were only about thirty students in this class) and finding myself “coming to” somewhere near the end of the class; I suppose I spaced out or something during the class. I had taken no notes, I had not participated (at least I hope not — who knows what I would have shared, or did share), and there is no way in hell that I learned anything from the class itself; following those expensive-ass text books all semester was the only way I made it.

But really, it’s just a dick thing to say. Paraphrasing something that comedian Chris Gethard once said, it’s the people who are afraid that they might make things worse and choose to do nothing at all that are the real problem.

Four years of a top-tier University and no one had the gall to speak up. Sure, we were all learning, more as adults than the teenagers we were in high school, but not a word to me or to whatever health professionals would be on campus. My dad’s only words to me before attending my Mom’s service (“Don’t cry”) could be considered more mature.

Maybe I should take this as a “win” though, as I had just graduated with an undiagnosed disability, even if I always lived on campus housing surrounded by people that I knew, or could at least put up with my intense mood shifts. They may have thought that I was suicidal, but they still kept me close. I was never left out of group events, and years later, I was even the Best Man at one friend’s wedding (I didn’t handle that well though in oh so many ways), but I was there and chosen over other, more stable friends.

Sidenote:

I’ve never lived alone until my wife passed away, and that’s when the suicide attempts began. One would think living in Portland, because nothing says “mental well-being” quite like the PNW, was when I was a danger to myself, but no; she taught me to enjoy the rain, even laugh in its face to some degree. But now that I was alone, I was too paranoid, too manic, too depressed, too {anything} to reach out and find the help I needed. The hospital felt more like a home at this point: that’s where my care team “lived,” so they stood in as roommates. Now that I’ve uprooted myself to the East Coast, with the promise that I’d be near family, I’m living alone again, and don’t have a care team in place. My goal of moving back to Portland remains steady, however misguided it may be.

But hey, at least it wasn’t raining on graduation day like it was the day my Mom died.