Two years was not enough. I had waited for so long to find what I thought was really love. What I felt was real. Unbreakable. Nothing seemed authentic until he came into my life. Until he kissed me on the lips and I knew. He came out of nowhere and then he became a part of me. And for two years I was happy, complete, hopeful. I saw a future in his promises. Finally love had found me and I it. He had found me. It was wonderful. Beyond wonderful. Then two years later he took it all away from me. The love. The happiness. The completeness. The future. I struggle to survive without him. While my friends were going thought boyfriends like picking them from a rack at a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day sale, there was no replacing him like the shirt on my back. How can one replace love? I found myself on the very edge of live. On the every edge of death. So I made a choice to end the pain; the overwhelming pain of my loss. My heart was broken, destroyed, ripped from my very chest that he had time and time again rested his head on and listened to that very heart beat for him. It is a difficult thing, even for me, to understand what pushed me so far over. But I longed for the end. I longed to be without heartache. I longed for it to end. So I killed myself. I do not expect anyone to grasp the concept of my decision to bring on death. A part of me feels I do not need to explain because few will understand anyway. Another part wants me to try to tell why; tell what was going on in my mind and heart; to at least make an attempt. So here it is.
Many will just think I lost it, that I went crazy. But they would be wrong. Beside, it is impossible for them to look into my soul and know the pain my heart was expected to endure after he left. It was the final heartbreak of a lifetime of disappointments. And as I stood on that edge dividing life and death. I chose that latter.
I fought all my life to be something. I struggled with issues of low self-esteem from a horrible childhood, but I pulled myself up time and time again to make something of myself. It took me fifty-two years to find love. The one thing I had always wanted—someone to love and love me back. I saw it in his eyes. I felt it in his touch. I heard it in his voice. I tasted it on his lips. Love. Sure, others had told me they loved me, but I never truly felt it was real—for me or them until I meet him. And before him, it was a forced love covered in uncertainty. But that is not how I felt with him—with Patrick. He is the love of my life; a gift I had been waiting for, and for two years I thought everything was wonderful. Sure there were obstacles, but they were surmountable. For the first time in my life, the smile on my face was real, the warmth in my heart was reassuring, and the comfort felt in my soul was complete and without doubt. I resisted at first, but I soon found myself falling deeply for him. I saw so much of myself in him at his age and I had, upon our meeting, realized that I had missed out on so much during my youth. I carried the scares of that horrendous childhood that nightmares are made of; where I watched my father destroy himself as well as my mother and our family. My childhood fears and struggles with my abusive, alcoholic father, his suicide and my mother’s own alcoholism and struggles with mental illness rose up from the deep place I thought I had buried years ago; where at seventeen, my hands were soaked by my father’s blood after a bullet ripped through his head. Then the years that followed, watching my mother’s decline into the depths of darkness of which I thought I might escape. But that darkness came upon me and I was lost as if I had been dropped in an abyss unable to take a breath without thinking about what I once had with Patrick and what I had lost when I watch his car drive away. How could I ever find that love again? It just was not possible. And, I did not want to find it with another person. He was irreplaceable. Patrick left me at a very fragile age—fifty-three.
On July 4, 2009 I opened death’s door, as I lay on an emergency room operating table without a heart beat and the majority of the blood drained from my body. But even then, death would not let me stay wrapped in its placate arms. It was my second attempt at trying to die. The first was on the 12th day of January earlier the same year. I had just turned fifty-four-years-old the month before the second attempt and the future seemed unclear and pointless, even though I was physically in perfect health and in incredible shape—being athletically inclined and an avid weight trainer most of my adult life. One would think I had everything going for me. I had a great little house, three blocks from a beautiful park. Financially I was secure from being a successful artist and writer. I had great friends. I had a dog—my love’s and mine. And at one time I thought I had a life. At one time I had passion for my art and writing and was one of those people that had always wanted to save the world. For many years, I had given hours and hours of my time, money and work to various charities, from AIDS, to Human Rights, to orphan children causes—even teaching an art and writing workshop on Saturday mornings, and I was big on supporting Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth—strongly believing they deserved a safe place to find education, counseling, understanding and support.
But on a day set aside for celebration, I felt there was nothing to rejoice about, I felt my life was over and I could not face another day filled with the emotional pain that had left me paralyzed for months. Every minute of every day I ached for him. I ached for Patrick. The pain of him leaving me for another guy-- a guy that I am ten times the man--after our two year relationship, over the end of the year holidays consumed me day and night. I had met my love just a month or so after the death of my mother, after she had endured a long illness. The first time Patrick told me he loved me I felt this great warmth grow inside of me. Now I was cold and alone, and for months that followed his leaving I struggled with his absence, waking up every morning longing to feel him next to me. I longed to kiss him, to hold him, to spend Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons together with him and our dog. I went from—the best thing that ever happened to him to nothing. I felt betrayed, discarded, disposable and unwanted by him. I felt life had played a malicious joke on me.
I was also struggling to finish my third book and felt like a failure after finding out my editor had missed so many mistakes after the book was already in print. How could I face my readers? I had told my editor that because of my heartache I could not read the proof copy of the book and she would have to do a final read to make sure the book was clean. She convinced me she would not fail me, but she did.
Even though the overlooked mistakes were corrected and a revision was sent to the printer, I felt the world was crashing in on me and there was no way out. The pending humiliation from book critics and the heartache of lost love pushed me to the edge. I knew what I was going to do, what I had to do to free myself from the mammoth pain that invaded every part of my soul. So for two months I saved up my sleeping and anxiety pills, thinking that two months worth should do the job and I would finally find some kind of peace. But I had to be sure I succeeded this time. I did not want to fail again.
In the late afternoon, I took 260 pills along with thirty-something Benadryl. I put my will on my desk, wrote out a large check to my sister and placed it in an envelope with a note. Then I went online and transferred another large amount of money to the joint checking account I had opened for Patrick. Despite everything, I still loved him and wanted to make sure his future was secure. Then I went into the bathroom with our dog, Dugan, shutting him in with me and filled the large tub with hot water. I had on a pair of khaki shorts and changed my T-shirt to the light blue one that Patrick had given me. I got into the tub, which I and he had spent many hours in soaking and talking, as Dugan looked at us trying to jump in. To make sure I would die, I took an industrial razor blade and proceeded to cut open my left arm at the bend of the elbow as long and as deep as I could. I felt lighted headed from the pills and the sight of the blood gushing out of my arm. Oddly I felt no pain except for a slight sting as the razor cut into my flesh. I lowered my arm into the water, watching it turn red. I looked at Dugan sitting next to the tub, and remembered saying, "Be a good dog Duggie." I closed my eyes as images of Patrick and Dugan playing together raced through my mind, then, within a minute I passed out.
Between taking the pills and before getting into the tub, my dear friends Wil and Rusty were flying back from their home in California to Miami. Although I had no recollection of the call, they called me from the Atlanta airport where they had a short layover. Wil, a doctor, could tell something was wrong. He told Rusty to rent a car and go to my house. Wil had to be at the hospital early the next morning. From the airport, Rusty called a mutual friend, Harvey to meet him at my house. An hour had passed. Harvey arrived at the house first. He saw that both my cars were in the driveway and banged on the front door. With no answer, Harvey then kicked in the back gate and looked through the large picture window over the tub. He saw me in the tub of bloody water. He ran back around to the front door and kicked it in before calling 911.
I was rushed to Grady Hospital, a trauma center. All I remember was waking up two days later disappointed I was still alive. My sister, brother and several friends were in my room. My arm was bandaged and I was tied down to the bed.
The next day the doctor that operated on me came to check on my progress. I was still somewhat out of it, but remember her as a lovely woman with great compassion. She told me that I should have died, that I had lost so much blood they had to transfused me and had to keep injecting something into my heart to make it start beating again. They worked on me from to , and just before they were about to call my death, they got a heartbeat. The doctor told me she believed it was divine intervention and that was the only reason I came back to life. She also shared something very personal with me. She told me that several years ago she tried to kill herself over lost love and that she understood and felt drawn to me. The doctor said she was okay and that he was going to be okay, too.
So, I am holding on to what the doctor told me and that there is a reason death did not take me. There is more for me to do in my life. Now that I have gotten my third book straighten out, which deals with depression and suicide, I am going to be traveling the country doing readings and donating 100 percent of my proceeds to Suicide Prevention Groups, especially those that support, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth. The suicide rate of these young people is staggering and I want to try to make a difference, and in the process, find a new purpose and a way to heal emotionally. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates as many as 30% of completed youth suicides each year are performed by gays and lesbians.
I feel like I should thank my sister, and the friends that have come out of the woodwork, for all the tremendous support who tried to help me believe in myself again. I know I should be grateful, but to this day I still wish death had embraced me. I wish I was a pile of ashes being scurried around with the sand by the wind on Laguna Beach. If I cannot have my love I would rather have death. And that does not make me crazy. It makes me more human than most of you reading this. I know at this point I cannot put my sister and friends through the horror of what they saw in my bathroom on that July 4th. Every day I pray that Patrick will find his way back to me; to us. But no matter what you may think or believe I hold on to the memories of being with Patrick. Of having him by my side. Of feeling his love warm my heart and soul. And most importantly I want him to know that I love and miss him deeply, and cherish every moment we spent together. I long to be with you again, to hold you in my arms my dear Patrick. How could you leave me? How could you leave us? Now I just wait, my mind flooded with memories as winter flesh grows under my skin like the bark of a tree.