vanuslux

"I try to find a way to make
All our little joys relate
Without that ever-present hate
But now I know that it's too late, and...
Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please."
- J Mandel "Suicide Is Painless"




Suicide Solution

Thanks to BigBlack81 posting about it in his LiveJournal, I watched the footage of Budd Dwyer's on-air suicide. For those that don't know, Budd Dwyer was a Pennsylvania State Treasurer who shot himself in the head with a 357 Magnum during a news conference the day before he was to be sentenced for allegations of bribery.

This was supposedly the inspiration for the Filter song "Hey Man, Nice Shot", which half the world still seems to think is about Kurt Cobain despite the fact the line "those who were right there Got a new kind of fear" doesn't make sense in that contxt since Kurt was alone when he ventilated his skull. Then again, music fans have this way of making everything about Kurt sometimes. Such as Tool's "Eulogy". I remember a lot of people thinking that was about Kurt too. I'd really like to know what Richard Patrick thinks he could have learned that would help him save face if he'd met this man whose defining act was to kill himself to stay out of jail. Maybe what kind of bullets to use to keep themselves from being just another one hit nobody in the pages of music history.

Anyway, I never really knew about this stuff because I'm not a Filter fan and I was only ten years old when the guy killed himself. So, I found it very interesting to read about and watch. I'm really glad now that I didn't choose a gun as my method when I made my own stupid suicide attempt over a decade ago. So violent. So final. So messy. I hate loud noise and the thunder of a gun shot is probably the last sound I want to be the last sound I ever hear. That's why I put Savatage's "Handful of Rain" on repeat while chased a bottle of cyclobenzaprine with a fifth of vodka. If you're going to go, go pleasantly I say. Granted, I wasn't very successful in the whole dying part...but ultimately I consider that a very good thing.

My friend Joseph Dannels took himself out with a gun almost ten years ago. He wasn't on television, but he was in court and killed himself pretty much for the same reason. So he didn't have to go to jail for failure to pay child support. I wasn't close to Joseph, but he always seemed like a good guy but he was always broke. I'd like to think that if he'd been able to afford to pay child support, he would have rather done that than kill himself. The Asheville courthouse was quick to install metal detectors after that. It was widely talked about for a couple of weeks and after that no one really seemed to care except for Ritchie, who had been pretty close to him. As far as I know, there haven't been any songs written for Joseph.

Aside from that, I don't really have much close experience with suicide. I just know it seemed like a great idea after Crystal broke my heart and I didn't think I'd ever be able to love again. I also know that I'm very glad my attempt failed because I would have missed out on so much awesomeness if I'd succeeded. Now, no matter how shitty life gets, I don't feel any temptation to try again because I know now that you never know what glory next year might bring if you give it a chance.