VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA 7 MAY 2006
DEAR ED FYI: I've kept my cranium clean-shaven since our last correspondence. Life keeps ticking along. I'm swamped trying to earn enough money to survive by working two jobs:
JOB 1 TRADES LABOUR CORPORATION (TLC) Driver. Driving construction workers to job sites.
JOB 1 CHINTZ & COMPANY (HIGH-END FURNITURE STORE) Chintz & Company (high-end furniture store)Shipper/Receiver.
Bartending would have been my job of choice. I was damn good at it; the bar provided me with a stage; I loved performing and bringing people together. Now in my forties, I guess the age factor erased that option. Oh well, I can still drink in bars!
Driving for TLC requires me to wake each morning before 5 AM. Waking before 5 AM sucks; it is nearly impossible to get used to rising at that ungodly hour. It leaves me out of sync with the rest of society, dinner at 4 PM, drunk by 5:30, hit the sack by 9, my midnight. At least being out-of-sync showers me in individuality. I often walk alone.
Mondays are the worst; this Monday was to be unavoidably calamitous.
I rounded the second last corner before the office. Emergency vehicles were racing toward me; a car similar to my non-descript beige Toyota Corolla had been t-boned by a large truck. It spun through the intersection of Quebec Street and National Avenue, finally coming to rest one-hundred feet from the point of impact.
I was first on the scene. I stopped twelve feet from the mangled wreckage. I looked to my left to see a middle-aged man slumping over the steering wheel of his car. I could see his neck pulse faintly, his eyes went blank, becoming vacant, he died.
Tears rolled over my cheeks, breaking at my chin, dripping onto my lap. Soon, I would be driving a dead man to work.
My first run was four workers to two different construction sites. I had never met them before. During the drive, we engaged in lightly flavoured small talk about the never- ending rain and teleportation.
The conversation u-turned from light when one of the workers expressed, he was in a rut. He said if his life didn't turn around by the seventeenth, his birthday, he was going to go to the highest point on a bridge and jump. He shared his disturbing story before he even shared his name. His name was Ken.
Struggling for words, I asked if he could do it during off-hours to avoid screwing up traffic. Unfortunately, my attempt at adding levity failed miserably.
I desperately tried to treat his words as if they belonged in a normal conversation. So, I asked him what was stewing in the rut destroying him.
"What's so tragic that you want to end your life?" I asked.
My job has deposited me in a place where such conversations are commonplace. Many of the workers I transport have been marginalized and struggle for survival.
Ken told me his debilitating mental state was a product of the death of his parents, his wife leaving him; and arriving at midlife alone.
If you listen carefully, you can almost hear self-righteous people yelling: Take responsibility for your life!
I've come to understand that it's not that easy for most people.
I could tell by the calm resignation in his voice and the emptiness in his eyes, he was serious. He experimented with crazy drug concoctions.
Sprinkle CRACK and DOWN into the rut and stir vigorously His voice began to tremor when he added, "Down is heroin." . His desperation caused me to consider whether I could ever pull the proverbial trigger. Ed, I'd like to say the answer to the question was an emphatic no.
Unfortunately, I think most of us, when life brings us darkness, are capable of doing unthinkable measures, like suicide.
I tried once, but I failed miserably.
Let's hop into the Wayback Machine and travel back to that tragic moment. WAYBACK JULY 1991 The love of my life dumped me. How often have you heard 'love of my life and 'dumped' in the same sentence?
Ed, why do we punish ourselves by holding onto a love that is no longer there? Is being friends with someone who doesn't want you an accomplishment?
We've been through so much together. Oh, you've replaced me. Tell me all about your news...oh, please.
After my breakup, I sank deeper and deeper into misery. I believed I couldn't go on. The weight of my anguish was crushing me. I needed to end the pain. I phoned a Crisis Hotline for help. And then refused to accept the advice.
I decided to take the misery into my own hands. I filled my bathtub with tepid water and climbed in. My left hand pushed the back of my head under the water. I gasped. Before I surrendered, my right hand came to the rescue.
I stepped out of the tub and collapsed onto the floor in laughter.
The healing process began at that precise moment, and this time: I won.
If I had succeeded with my selfishness, you wouldn't have read the last line.
FLASHBACK MARCH- OCTOBER 2003 In March 2003, a series of traumatic events knocked at my door and entered my life, each one pushing me closer to an emotional breaking point. Each trauma introduced a new low point.
Ed, I desperately needed to escape. So, I decided to travel to Europe with my buddy David. In October, we embarked on a thirty-one-day trip. I needed to find my happiness.
FLASHBACK TO EUROPE DAY 15 OCTOBER 22 MUNICH On Day 15, I hit an all-time low. I became privy to a dark family secret, one my entire family cloaked in secrecy, even the family pets. Since July, I struggled with a revelation about my parents, placing my very identity in question. It was consuming every ounce of my spirit. On this crisp fall day in Munich, my foundation was shaken more when my dear friend Wayne called from Vancouver. He read the contents of a letter revealing a secret about my family. I was now being challenged to change the course of my life. I needed my family more than ever before; I just didn't know how to tell them I knew they had participated in a lie?
I believed I had sunk as far as I could; that all changed on Day 19 in Nice.
FLASHBACK TO EUROPE DAY 19 OCTOBER 6 NICE FRANCE Sunday morning in Nice brought with a warm, overcast haze. I crawled out of bed at 6 AM, sleepless from the night before. Sleep had become torturous because my past kept swirling in my head.
I walked to an internet café with my head and spirit slumping.
When I opened my mailbox, one email greeted me. It was from my ex-girlfriend, Trish. I left the café in tears.
Dear Asshole, I hate everything about you. You suck, I love my new man more. He's far better than you Blah, blah, fucking blah. Trish twisted the dagger by finishing with. I hate you. Trish My life up to now had been a rollercoaster ride of extreme highs and lows. I learnt to mask my pain with humour. For the first time in my life, I couldn't find a comedic way to cope with my pain. PAIN + PAIN + MORE PAIN + TIME = COMEDY/ (PAIN (CUBED)) = DESPAIR My next comedic performance: CANCELLED, maybe forever. WAYBACK FEBRUARY 17, 1991 ST PAUL'S HOSPITAL – SASKATOON Three days after reconstructive knee surgery, I pleasantly hallucinated on a morphine drip. My nurse came in and upped my dosage. Fifteen minutes later, she returned to remove a drain inserted on the outside of my left knee. Then, she tugged vigorously on the drain; it wouldn't budge—she pulled again—when the hardware finally came out; it felt like a wire brush was tearing my veins to shreds. I screamed FUCK so loudly it ricocheted throughout the hospital, sparking coma patients awake.
On this day in Nice, the pain I was experiencing was far more agonizing than knee surgery. My life was spinning out of control.
I walked away from the internet café, stumbling with every few steps. A brick appeared out of thin air and landed on the pavement before me. Brick after brick were stacked upon each other by invisible hands in rapid succession until an impossibly high wall was built.
I sank further into depression. I needed to find the strength to climb over the wall. I needed desperately to move forward, but how?
With this new revelation disrupting my life, life had become: Stranger than Fiction.
Tears continued spilling from my eyes as I staggered down Nice's promenade. I wondered if I'd be better off dead. That would teach them, I thought. I was facing two ethereal doors:
DOOR 1 Life and all of its struggles, good and bad. DOOR 2 DEATH.
I sat down on a bench and looked out at the Mediterranean, tears pouring from my eyes. My mind flashed to an episode of "The Simpsons:" Moe's college professor asks Moe if he has a cure for cancer. He then walks into a lake, taking his own life.
Moe watches from the shore and says Professor, don't you want to take off your shoes? Oh... Oh... oh.
I contemplated doing the same and having my bloated corpse spat out of the Mediterranean days later. I wanted to go home. I just wasn't sure where my home was anymore. The house had always meant where I grew up; however, with the truth about my family, was that place ever truly my home? The previous night: night eighteen of the trip, was blissful. Dave and I met Steph & Arno. They used to be a couple. They speak French. Do you remember? This rendezvous with Steph and Arno led to the night stopping just shy of casual sex. I'll spare the details. I believed: casual...would have spoiled the moment. Instead, I bid them adieu and hopped back on the despair train. I had cried every day for more than four months.
I returned to the hotel to wake Dave; it was now 9 AM.
Two blocks away from the hotel, I came across a well-dressed man wearing a driving cap. He was standing in front of a taxi. My eyes were nearly swollen shut. I peered at him through droplets of tears.
Time stood still.
I glanced over my left shoulder. The man was crouching beside the taxi. My vision was blurry from crying, like a drinking & driving advertisement where you look through a series of empty beer glasses lined up in a row. My crying marathon continued.
The Academy Award for entering an Emotional Wasteland goes to—
And then, SMASH.
The man smashed out the car's passenger window directly in front of the taxi. He looked at me, pressing his index finger against his lips, and shushed. He started running. He was clutching a purse.
I chased after him. I shouted at him in French. Since I don't speak French, I made loud, incoherent sounds in a non-existent language.
When he rounded the corner and saw me running after him, he realized: I was about to catch him, so he threw the purse into the air. I caught it. He scurried away like a rat.
I dropped to the ground, panting; I was now clutching the purse. I strolled back toward the car. "Poulet Vous policia, cell phone, "I called out to the people on the promenade. Eventually, I found someone who cared. I spoke to this good Samaritan loudly and clearly to make my English understandable.
Two more good Samaritans joined us. They called the police. By this time, my tears had slowed to a trickle.