Hello BetterMost.
I spent the morning with my friends (a married couple) who had the unfortunate task of laying her father and his father-in-law to rest today. It was an unexpected death.
Also spent some time reviewing some of the more serious blog entries in this section of the forum, and it has me thinking of when I was planning my own suicide.
It wasn't long after graduation from high school. I was never the "big man on campus". Hell, I wasn't even "man on campus". Spent most of my time in school on the run from others who had made me a target. I wasn't "out" but apparently, it was known (assumed) who I was, and I took a lot of verbal and physical abuse for it. Everyone I knew was happy for graduation, to move on to the next phase of life. I was happy to be away from them, and took a job at a local supermarket.
Downfall, that same market hired a few of the guys I was running from, so the abuse just moved from school to work, in the form of sexually explict graffitti and slurs about me on the walls of the men's and women's room. The restrooms were opened to the public, and I was the only Chuck in the place, so it was pretty obvious who was being written about. It was 1987, and no protection for "sexual orientation" on company records. When I took the issue to my bosses, the response was "If we repaint the restrooms, they'll only do it again."
I felt I couldn't quit, and explain to my parents why. Not ready to take that step, so way before Brokeback, I learned if you couldn't fix it, you had to stand it.
The last straw came when a customer decided to pic a fight with me, and called me a 'homo' on my register in front of other customers.
When it was time to go, I walked over to the pharmacy section, grabbed a bottle of sleeping pills, and stuff it in my back pack. Took them to my room that night with a bottle of water, and finding myself without words, wrote the words to this song on a sheet of paper, and planned that as my note.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIBzbdo2LjU[/youtube]
After getting the top off the bottle, I thought of my parents finding me that way the next day, and couldn't do that to them. I shredded the lyrics, and went to the bathroom and flushed the pills, telling myself that God doesn't give you more than you can bear.
20 years later, I look back remembering that I had no idea things would get better. I remember that pain, and I'm quite surprised I am here to tell the tale. It hurt like hell, then. It was the darkest period of my life, and I hope to never be there again....