Written 12-12-2024, published here 12-17-2024

I recently finished writing the toughest story I’ve ever written and submitted it to the amazingly supportive publisher. And by “tough” I don’t mean it was difficult to write because I followed a different format or story structure or utilized tropes or concepts that involved a lot of research and whatnot. No. The book I speak of took no research at all. All it took was mining through my past traumas, digging up the raw feelings from my past, cutting open old wounds and digging below the scar tissue so I could write the tale with outspoken honesty. No, it is not an autobiography, but I did pull from past experiences to put it all together. The book I speak of is called Try Not to Die: By Your Own Hand, and it’s about suicide and its aftermath. It’s a co-authored project in the Try Not to Die Series from Mark Tullius and Vincere Press. It is set for publication near the end of 2025.

I recently lost a dear friend to suicide a year ago today: on December 12, 2023. His name is Joey, (Never forgotten!)

and he is missed dearly. Mark at Vincere Press came to me soon after Joey’s death, when my wounds of loss still festered raw and bloody and painful, and asked if I had any interest in co-authoring a TNTD novel with his close friend Wes Levine on the subject of suicide. Mark told me that after he read my first book, The Bone Cutters, he knew I was the perfect author to write candidly about a protagonist suffering from suicidal ideation. (For those who aren’t already in the know: The Bone Cutters’ and Chisel the Bone’s protagonist is suicidal.) Mark and Wes have both lost loved ones to suicide, and Wes’s loss, like my own, had been recent, triggering their idea for this book. Without hesitation, I agreed. I have always wanted to take part in a co-authored project, and writing about this subject, I had thought at the time, would help me process my feelings of shock and loss after losing Joey. Well, let me tell you—writing that book made me face and process many more difficult occurrences from my past. I, too, was once suicidal.

The darkest time of the year, which is when I am writing this, comes with a rise in seasonal affective disorder, increased depression and anxiety, and an increased suicide rate. And I want everyone out there who suffers from any or all of these difficulties to know—I understand. You are not alone.

In my teens and early twenties, I suffered from depression, severe anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. And at the age of twenty-three, I attempted suicide with a razor blade to my arm. Back then, everything I tried to achieve kept derailing. My big dream of graduating from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production and Engineering was crushed by financial troubles and a father who refused to pay my parent-student loan payments on time. (I borrowed as much as financial aid would grant me. And my mother had already taken out a loan to get me through the first year, and the second year was my father’s turn to help me. FYI: My parents divorced when I was three. I had a single mom, who raised four kids by herself, and one of those children needed 24/7 care for his disability and mental illness.) Berklee’s Registrar’s office kept calling me about late payments, refusing to release my grades if the bill wasn’t paid on time. I had an 8-class school schedule that involved hours upon hours of guitar and vocal practice on top of all the regular homework, and I was waitressing all weekend, every weekend and working one evening during the week. The phone calls and threats of grade-withholding and demands for payments took its toll on me, and it was difficult to concentrate due to my increased anxiety, depression, and stress level. Not to mention, I was a guitar major at one of the best music schools in the country (a school I felt blessed to have gotten accepted into and privileged that my mother was able to borrow enough money to get me through my first year), while also suffering with debilitating performance anxiety. Shit kept piling up, burying me, suffocating me. Until one day when my stress hit the fucking ceiling and smashed through. Realizing I would never have the money to finish my last two years at Berklee, I had to leave Berklee—my dream school—for a more affordable music production and engineering course at a college in Florida. Then everything got worse.

What happened in Florida set me on a path that led straight to the razor blade. Just as I started my first class at Full Sail University: Center for the Recording Arts, the rug was pulled out from under me by a malicious, manipulative, and self-serving individual, and I had no place to live and couldn’t stay there for the school program I had moved there to attend. I didn’t know anyone in Florida, and the few I had met and was acquaintances with were not the type of people I could safely live with: drug addicts and partiers were everywhere. With all my hopes and dreams crushed, and feeling like all the hard work it took to get there to achieve what I had set out to achieve was all for nothing, I couldn’t bear the shame and humiliation and the letdown. It felt like I would never be able to climb out of the hole I had been swallowed up in. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. I was a top spinning faster and faster and faster, working its way toward the edge, ready to fly right off the deep end into oblivion. With razor blade to flesh, I sunk that sharp edge in and started dragging it across my arm. That’s when it hit me. An outer body experience, accompanied by thoughts that changed my entire perspective.

As I saw myself there, crying, hyperventilating, a total fucking mess with razor blade to flesh, I thought: If you think you’re a failure now, what will killing yourself prove? After all, quitting is the only true failure. And suicide is the ultimate quit.

Yes, I may have felt like everything I tried to accomplish had failed. I may have no longer had a place to live. I may have no longer been able to attend the college I had moved to Florida to attend. I may have had no idea what I was going to do for a career now that the Florida college was not happening for me. And, yes, I may have felt immense shame and hurt and like digging my way out was going to be a long, hard road that seemed impossible to traverse—but, motherfucker, I was stronger than that shame. I was stronger than all those letdowns. I was not going to let all those setbacks end me. I refused to let what someone else did to me take me down for good. I set out to prove to myself that no matter what happens, I can and will find a way to deal with it and make it work for me rather than allow it to work against me. After those thoughts hit me, I set down that razorblade, didn’t finish the dreaded deed, and vowed never to let myself get that low again. And I haven’t. I packed up my truck and moved across the country with my four cats. I arrived in Arizona with only 20 bucks in my pocket, crashed with a friend, and I rebuilt my life from scratch. It was not easy, but I did it.

Now, I am not going to try to convince anyone that not dropping back down to that suicidal low has been easy because it hasn’t. It has been a long, rough road to get where I am today. There have been many more setbacks and disappointments along the way, many more heartaches and pain, but I can now handle it all. Having knocked on suicide’s one-way door, having faced that darkness and contemplated life’s early ending, I now choose life. And life is good. I can now look back and find the positive in all that seemed negative back in my darkest hour and through the years that followed.

Writing Try Not to Die: By Your Own Hand not only helped me come to terms with Joey’s suicide and the loss of my dear friend (I also wrote a song for Joey to help with this process), but it also made me realize some of my own scar tissue from past wounds still feel tender to the touch. Before mining through all those memories and writing that story, I thought I had recovered from all my trauma. I thought I had truly moved past all the hurt and anguish. But just by creating, writing, and editing that story, I have been able to process the pieces of pain I had stuffed down deep and hidden away. After dusting off the dirty memories of it all, staring at them long and hard on the story’s pages, I can now say I have risen above what had kicked me down, held me back, and bound my head and heart. Writing that story worked like an experienced and nurturing therapist. And I didn’t need money or health insurance to get it done.

During this darkest time of the year, with all its messages of family and friends, togetherness and the joy of giving, the suicide rate rises dramatically. Though I understand how depressing this time of year can be for many, even those without a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, I want to stress the simple fact—no one truly knows what tomorrow will bring. Today you may feel like nothing good ever happens for you, or that nothing you do ever seems good enough, or that everything you try fails, or that no matter how hard you try to improve your life it always goes wrong or you always mess up or someone else always sabotages it all. Maybe you lost your job, lost a loved one. Maybe you’re struggling with drug or alcohol addiction. Maybe you’re homeless or can no longer afford your home with the rising costs of living. Maybe no one in your life accepts you for who you are. Maybe you live with an abuser or bullies keep hating on you. Maybe you live in an unsafe area and fear debilitates you. Maybe health problems weigh heavy on your mind and body. Whatever troubles land on your doorstep or outside your tent flap, tomorrow could bring the change you need or the change you’ve been hoping for. Tomorrow could bring a special new friend or partner into your life, a new job, a new health treatment, a new place to live, or even the simple kindness of a stranger that makes all the difference.

To everyone out there who feels like they want to end it all and take a leap out of this life, I beg you to please hold on, keep trying your best, keep doing everything you can think of to pull yourself back up so you can see what tomorrow brings. You may need help doing that, and that is okay. That is common for all of us. I’ve been in therapy various times throughout my life. And it helped. A lot. There is nothing wrong with needing help. We all need help now and then. Try talking to a friend or family member, talk with a counselor or social worker or a coworker or your boss. Anyone willing to listen—really listen. I am willing to listen. The simple act of talking about what’s troubling you can make a world of difference in and of itself. And believe me when I say, it may not be easy, it may be the toughest thing you ever do. You may need to claw and scratch your way back up and out of your suicidal funk. But guess what—you are worth it. You are worth fighting for. You matter. This world needs you and is better with you in it.

Always remember—The clouds will eventually clear, and the sun will rise again, but you must keep your eyes open to see it.

Peace~Love~Happiness