This is not the end

…only a turning point.

I had arrived in Boston a few days early to settle into, as I saw it, my new life. My days of my graduate school life would begin in a few days. I had a new city, and the promise of new friends, which let me believe I would do things right this time. To not give in to loves that offered no hope. To not relive the wanting, waiting, longing, and sadness.

In almost every facet of life, despair is the most dreaded emotion: the end of the line, the lack of hope, a prelude to death. But despair combined with love, from a love not gained, can sometimes make a most powerful life force. With this force, you have an endless, deep, and secret hope that the one for which you long - as in all the dreams you've so often had - will reveal his true feelings: that he too is experiencing the same despair. That he will finally look into your eyes and tell you that maybe this is something that will work, the two of you. And he is willing to try. And he pulls in closer, and the racing of your heart draws you in, and your soul rejoices that, at long last, he and you will finally be together, as one…

It never happens. It's a load of crap. But the one ember within you survives the darkness of despair, because of love. And it drives you forward. Plodding and listless, but onward, nevertheless.

I went through that in high school, and it was bad. Though I ended up getting good grades, since I wanted to impress. In college, I avoided that scene for some time, save for one severe year. Why, in those times, didn't I just yell, "Dude, you're in love with a straight guy!"

Is this one of the reasons so many gay youth kill themselves - realizing, time and again, there is no one out there with which to share their lives?

What kept me going was that were also friends. Yeah, I couldn't share with them but I still had fun. And that helped.

But in my new place, in Boston, I began to realize I had no one. It took me until senior year of college to meet other gay people and go to bars. Now, I thought, I know how to make friends that I can share everything with, and maybe meet someone with whom I have at least a chance. Everything was looking up.

But my mind had other things planned. Now, all alone, a graduate student in a dorm filled with undergrads, I was isolated by age. In a room with a black floor, dark brick walls, a small window at one end, a tiny fluorescent light at the other, I began to grow uneasy with myself. Looking at myself in the fluorescent lit mirror, I slowly began to see someone who was not just plain, but was laughably unattractive. Ugly.

I was resolute in this. And my growing anxiety pushed me away from all who might have been a friend. I never went to a single bar. I went no where and talked to no one. Night after night, the image grew worse until one night I realized no one can ever possibly like me, even as a friend, due to my horrible self.

Life would have no meaning, no purpose, no joy.
And certainly, under no circumstances, would I ever find love.

And then I snapped.

It was just sleeping pills.

(Well, I didn't have a sword and kimono handy, sorry.)

I sat in a cement staircase just after swallowing a full pack. Now it would end.

And I closed my eyes. And I was content.

And I saw my self on the stairs. And I saw the stars. And I saw my mother crying. And my old friends from college, and everyone new, all confused, why did this happen? And those I had wanted to love me. And my mother crying.

All my fears were at once shoved aside, to my surprise, by an absolute desire not to die. I was sluggish but pulled myself down the stairs, called a cab, and got myself to the emergency room. I thought to myself, I had chickened out.
---
I didn't know it was nearly impossible to die with over-the-counter sleeping pills. They kept saying, "so you took a full pack of Nyquil?" "No," I kept saying, "NyTOL. You know, 'Nytol will help you get some Z's.'"

I stayed two weeks in what seemed like the opposite of an "asylum", and by God they certainly never called it one. It was a friendly place with a packed common kitchen, a smoking den (back then), tv room, and dorm rooms, once again for me. After, I moved out of the dark dank dorm I had gone wacko in, and into a cool house with miraculously good roommates.

The dark dorm was ultimately demolished.

This was a long time ago, now. I had pangs of returning loveless despair for quite a few years, but less intense, like the waves of sadness that wash over you after the death of a loved one – they crash over again and again, but with always less intensity, until they settle out again, and things are calm.

That was a long time ago.

But I have not forgotten.