🌎 Stay here on earth with me

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Welcome to the second day of autumn, and the fourth quarterly issue of This Mortal Portal. It includes:

  1. A short story based on true stories of people with suicidal thoughts

  2. Vic's Picks

  3. For the Record

Plus the perfect summer GIF and a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.

-V

(I switched to a new email provider, btw.)

Stay Here On Earth With Me

This story is a composite of many true stories that I've been a part of in my work as a chaplain.

A big man, we'll call him Anthony, walks into my office without knocking, his phone in his hand. He's talking to someone from the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, who tells me on speakerphone that Anthony has been having thoughts of overdosing to end his life, and can I take over from here?

Now Anthony's sitting in my office. Hyperventilating. Knee twitching. Choking back tears. I ask what's going on. I don't know, he says, and starts crying. I give him a little time. Coach him through some breathing. Ask him again.

It's just all too much, he tells me. He feels like he's got to keep a million balls in the air, and starts listing them. His elderly father's sick in the hospital. He just started this new janitorial job, which is good, but it's a lot. He owes so much money to so many places, he doesn't know where to start. And his ex-wife took his kids on a trip to Louisiana, and now they're saying they might stay there. So I zoom in on that. I find out he only first heard about this yesterday.

Anthony lives for his kids. Any day he's not working, he's over there hanging out with them. And now they're in Louisiana, maybe for good. If my kids aren't around, he says, I don't know what I'll do. She has custody, and there's nothing I can do.

We start to slow things down using his breathing. Soon we're moving beyond the facts of the situation, to his feelings and interpretations about the situation. Anthony is terrified and furious with surprise. He just wants to know what's going to happen so he can prepare for it and deal with it. He and his ex-wife have a long history of knock-down drag-out fights, and she's not answering the phone, probably because she doesn't want to deal with his rage.

So I help Anthony come up with a plan. He's going to compose a text to his ex-wife as a sort of olive branch. He's going to let her know that whatever happens, he can make peace with it, he just wants to talk with her. He needs clarity about what's going to happen. He's going to communicate to his kids that they're going to be okay no matter what, and that he's committed to being a part of their lives. I told him who he can talk to for help making a debt repayment plan.

We also talked through his list of who he can talk to if he feels like he's going sideways again. What led him to call the suicide hotline was that he went looking for his mental health counselor and his treatment coordinator, neither of whom were available. And he knew he needed to talk to somebody or he ran the risk of running out the door and getting high within minutes. Fortunately, he barged in my door.

Anthony knows he has a lot of anger. But he's seen the wreckage that it has caused when he has dumped it on to other people. So now he tends to turn it inwards, against himself. Hence the suicidal thoughts. His oldest son, now grown, told him the last time he talked with him that he wished he would go overdose in a bando and die. That it would make everyone else's life easier. But today, Anthony knows that's not true. He wants to live - not just surviving, but thriving. Right now, though, survival is the task at hand.

He asks me to pray for him, and as I begin, he grabs my hand and squeezes it tight between both of his. Anthony's palms are wet with tears and sweat, and for some reason I think of Gethsemane.  He takes a slow, deep breath, without me reminding him to, and settles into his chair. He's holding my hand so tight I think I can feel his pulse - or is it mine? - beating slowly. His knee is no longer bouncing.

More happens, of course. Anthony, or rather the main man behind this Anthony story/character, is doing well today. His kids didn't end up moving out of state,  those debts are diminishing, and his relationships are improving. And all circumstances aside, he's enjoying life again.

But many of us aren't doing well today. Your particular challenges might be different from Anthony's, but despair is a shadow monster that can come for anyone. If his hopeless thoughts sound familiar, you're not alone.

If you're not doing well, would you be willing to talk with someone you trust about it? If it's hard to think of someone, you can call 800-273-9255 or text 741741.

And if you want to be more helpful to others when they're not doing well, I invite you to learn about QPR, which stands for Question / Persuade / Refer - it's like CPR but for suicidality. You can read up on it in 15 minutes (PDF) or take a 60-minute online course.

Next-level prep would be the Mental Health First Aid course, which is a day's worth of learning that's kind of like Wilderness First Aid for the mind.

Vic’s Picks

Here’s a cross-section of what I’ve been diggin' this summer:

Music: My Bluegrass Heart by Bela Fleck

'Ole Mr. Fleck is one of the world's finest banjo players, and he's carried the instrument into all sorts of musical territories. On one of my favorite records, Throw Down Your Heart, he brings the banjo back to its African roots. My wife and I saw him play live on his first tour with Abigail Washburn, where they fell in love with each other while playing her unique fusion of Chinese and American folk music. But in this new record, he returns to his own roots: bluegrass. And brings some blistering-fast flatpickers with him. Favorite track: Vertigo.

Honorable mention: Ask Anyone by Lice. MF Doom was my favorite rapper of the 2000's and is still in my top 5. He died last year, and Aesop Rock, also in my top 5, just dropped this tribute track.

Video: Repress it!

Aussie musician Tom Cardy never fails to make me laugh. Then his stupid minute-long songs get stuck in my head.

Podcast: The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill

This intense podcast miniseries isn't insider baseball for church folk. It's a study in how we choose our leaders and our tribes, and the dark side of celebrity culture.

Article: In 'Dopamine Nation,' Overabundance Keeps Us Craving More

Dr. Anna Lembke is the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Her new book explores the interconnection of pleasure and pain in the brain and helps explain addictive behaviors — not just to drugs and alcohol, but also to food, sex and smart phones.

Food: Spicy Neighborhood Bird Bun from Ekiben

Book: I Am Charlotte Simmons

This Tom Wolfe novel made me question afresh the wisdom of college-as-coming-of-age-ritual. Also gave me flashbacks of my NYU years.

Place: The hills of Honduras

No, I haven't been there. Yet. My Aunt Mim and Uncle Wilmer raised my cousins there, and they're living there again now with their grandkids. I spent some time with my aunt when she was visiting stateside this summer, and the pictures on her phone reminded me of stories my dad told of visiting them there when he was a kid.

For The Record

What I made or helped make this summer

Disembodied

Embodied

King Farm Campout

Joanna and I organized a camping weekend on my parents' farm for a dozen families from our daughters' school. 10/10 will do it again!

Citygate Workshops

The national conference for Citygate Network was held in Baltimore last week, and I got to run seminars on trauma healing groups, trail hikes and recovery retreats, and podcasting 101. Loved meeting good people doing similar work elsewhere. Had breakfast with a former Army Ranger who leads a climbing team of formerly-homeless folks to summit Mount Rainier together.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you thought.

Dum spiro spero,

Vic

PS. Here's a quick quiz you can take to help me with my self-awareness. Thx.

#Longer