Here's a sign of the times that I am sure will become far more common than we can ever get comfortable with (but nonetheless surely will, no doubt to either of us):
Father appalled by virtual audience to son's death
I may come back and expand on this later tonight.
Then again, I may not.
I remember how I felt the night of the Columbine massacre, and how everyone but the rocks and stones was sure they knew exactly all there was to know about the inside of the two kids that drove so far off into the evil.
Now we have the parents of this kid who are projecting their rage and indignation and sorrow onto all of those in the ether – er, internet.
Well guess what, Dad.? I'm appalled to read of another kid who was so tortured and torn inside-out that he turned to a worldwide community of strangers in his darkest moments rather than any of his family, his friends, his mentors or teachers. As if somehow none of those people had never been aware of even one single moment where things didn't look right.
I am pissed.
It's the internet, Dad. Not you. It has to be the internet, never any of the sentient beings who interacted with this tortured soul.
And in days, weeks, months to come as this story gets used as just another sensationalist headline to keep the circulation up and the hit counter turning over, we're going to find out that this kid was not just sitting alone by himself on the surface of the moon when he decided to end his life. No, everyone who ever knew him since the day he was born all played a part, however small, in that moment of dispair that he reached on his final day on earth. And I will bet the very soul I have left to wager, that every single one of those people all had a reason to ignore, belittle, dismiss, impugn, or otherwise just walk away from this kid who said there was nothing left to live for – – nothing except the collective shame he could drive right up the asses of everyone who thought it wasnt' their problem, their responsibility, or their worry.
This is a dark moment for me.
It's bad enough trying to fathom the headspace and heart of a kid so desperate that not only did he want to die but wanted everyone he could reach to see it – everyone except those who had a decent chance to stop it.
And we know this is not where it ends. We all know that this is the smallest snowflake that leads to that monster snowball rolling down the hill that is our future.
I've been in that spot.
I'll probably go there again.
But just wait until you hear my reason for coming back out.
I know as well as I can reach out and touch the keyboard that is before me, that the very reason I'm still typing is that the souless othertruckers who I most wish were wracked with agony for the rest of their lives – knowing my loss was laid by me at their feet – would not feel a thing if I ever went through with it. How's that for a reason to live? – to spite the indifference of those who would never miss me. That's constructive angst, but angst pure and viscious nonetheless.
Because that's how “they” get by, by covering themselves in teflon, narrowing their focus with blinders on, and painting a smile on their faces to cover the same anger, frustration, sorrow and misery that's really still there – the same emotions which people like me and this poor kid have the audacity to actually reveal to the world.
So for my first diary on the Docudharma, here it is. Have at it, my fellow beings. give me something to thrash at tomorrow, because tonight all I want to do is start a conflagration and then wrestle with it later. I've been in that space. I'm staying out of it just to spite the othertruckers who actually wanted me to do it, and I'm going to hang on to that angst for all it's worth just to say that the bastards haven't gotten to me yet.
So dad, you're appalled? Well join the club, pal. If you ever allow yourself to look in the mirror again and really figure out why your son came to us and not you, then I'll recognize your indignation. Until then, I'm thinking there's more to this story that dad and a long list of other people who knew this poor kid don't want us to find out about, because they want to keep deluding themselves that they had nothing to do with it. They're just now thrashing with the thoughts that are going to haunt them the rest of their lives. The thoughts they couldn't be bothered with when there was still time to make a difference.
If you know you're already soiled with the misery of this moment and have the courage to admit it won't wash off right now, maybe you'll be so brutally honest about the subject to watch “The Bridge” and then see that this diary is not new, it's not unique, and it's far from being the last discussion over the darkness of the self amongst a planet of souls who can't be bothered.
So for now, blaming the internet is how the father and the rest get by. Good luck with that.
This has been my catharsis rant for today. You wrestle with it now.
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I’d rather talk to you. But maybe not right now.
…have not followed the case too closely, beyond the facts reported and the initial description. I would excuse someone whose child had just killed themselves — regardless of their wit, failures, or outright sins of commission — for running naked down the street and throwing bloody feces at passerby while screaming obscenities. The suicide of someone you love, much less one’s child, no matter how much sense it made to the opter-outer, is an incomprehensible, bottomless grief.
If someone started a “kill myself” video feed, and I were foolish enough to be watching it, I would turn their ass in — not because I think they have no right to pop themeselves, but because I would consider that they are making me — and anyone else who comes along — complicit in their (extremely not sane or safe) scene without consent.
For whatever it’s worth, and trite as it is, I’ve never yet found a space the sucky was permanent, or — far less trivially — worth the inevitable moral hit, in terms of what it would cost those who love me (or those whose hearts were simply open to the news). Having been on the stick-around side of a few things like that, I’m not sure that “love y’all, not enough” (which I still think is funny) — or even the very basic, true and inarguable observation that at some point, it’s all simply — too much to bear — really covers the cost. The suicide of others breaks people and pulls away what little light they have, themselves.
It’s like, eh, despair is a war zone. Cut your body right in half. Kill your friends. As sure as artillery, it will.
It is bleak season, innit it? I liked Crusty’s peice more than a bit. For myself, the cure is Glenn Gould’s 1955 Goldberg Variations. Over and over, something terrible and inchoate bleeding into precision and beauty and elegant order, until it fills the world.