A personal journey through despair, anger, and meaning in the face of life’s absurdities
I think about killing myself all the time.
Albert Camus writes:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
I believe that.
One of the reasons I bought a gun is to test that theory. I am a serious person (my wife’s ex-boyfriend once said that she shouldn’t marry me because I’m too serious. I’ve been trying to prove him wrong for 30 years. “I AM FUN, DAMNIT!”).
I don’t see how you can walk blindly through this life without addressing the most serious questions.
- Why are veterans freezing to death in the richest, most Christian country in the world? A country, btw, that LOVES war probably more than any other country.
- Why are we just watching the polar ice caps melt without thinking that might be a big fucking deal?
- Why are cops still murdering Black men with impunity?
- Why are we walking around without asking ourselves, “What the hell are we doing here, anyway?”
I don’t recommend my approach. I am living in a decades-long sober stretch of my life because I take my philosophical/spiritual journey VERY seriously. I’m not going to allow myself to escape the journey by going off-planet in some drugged haze. (I also can’t be high while I’m testing the theory of to-suicide or to-not-suicide with a loaded gun in my life.) But I’m not going to lie, this path takes me to some VERY dark places.
Louis C.K. has a super funny bit about suicide:
”The whole world is just full of people who didn’t kill themselves today. The whole world is just made of people who went, ‘Fuck it, I’ll keep doing it.’
And Doug Stanhope says: “Life is like animal porn, it’s not for everyone.”
February 2016:
MarShawn McCarrel II, 23, fatally shot himself with a handgun on the exterior steps of the complex shortly before 6 p.m.
McCarrel was the founder of a local community organization, Pursuing Our Dreams, which launched an effort to feed Columbus’ homeless. McCarrel was homeless for several months after graduating high school.
McCarrel was also named a Radio One Hometown Champion and traveled to Los Angeles for the NAACP Image Awards on Friday, the organization he founded said.
We waste so much time not loving each other. —MarShawn McCarrel on Twitter, Feb. 6, 2016
I could write thousands of words about activists who kill themselves because, in my opinion, they looked under the rug and saw that it’s dirt and shit all the way down. There is no bottom.
In April of this year (2024), Akron’s Citizens’ Police Oversight Board and its independent auditor Anthony Finnell Akron recommended disciplinary actions for police officer Thomas Shoemaker who threw a young Black woman face-first to the ground while trying to handcuff her after responding to a call that involved a heated family argument.
The mayor and the Akron Police’s Office of Professional Standards and Accountability had determined Shoemaker’s conduct was “not only justified but reserved.”
After all this. After all the protests and work and determination, not one god-damned thing has changed.
Oh… and don’t forget: September 2024 was reportedly the worst month for relief efforts since the Gaza war began a year ago. The UN said that Israel also blocked all food aid from entering north Gaza between October 1st and October 14th, with food, medicine, and even water running out.
The fact that as few people kill themselves that do is really the amazing part of it all.
Do you know how little progress I’ve made in nearly 10 years trying to help homeless people in Akron? While maybe I’ve raised some awareness, I think an honest person would say I’ve made ZERO progress in 10 years of extreme dedication and work to get these American citizens a place to live. ZERO. PROGRESS.
How do I keep going? Why don’t I add myself to the list of activists that either set themselves on fire or shoot themselves in the head?
That’s what I want to talk about today.
Part of what keeps me alive is my rage and anger. It acts like a shield. Me staying alive and giving a big fuck-you middle finger to the system is highly gratifying. My hate for them makes me happy.
But I’m trying to let that go. I’m tired of being angry all the time. And, plus, I learned that lesson. Yes. Anger and rage can keep you going. But I don’t want to be a force of destruction. I want to be a force of construction. I am on a journey. I don’t want to die like Darth Vader, full of regret.
That then sends me into another dark place. If my rage was keeping me alive, once I get rid of that, all I have left is sadness. That’s all rage ever is… a coping mechanism for deep sadness. Again, just look at Darth Vader’s life. He was just mortally sad at his loss and his failures. (there should be a Joseph Campbell-esque anti-hero journey archetype. You’d probably find me walking that path.)
For some reason for me, sadness is easier than rage. I can live in sadness. Maybe I’ve always been sad and it’s like going home for me. Maybe I’ll go listen to some of that old whiney Morrissey crap from the 90s after I write this.
The truth I’ve come to realize is that nothing changes. Human nature is human nature. We blame our problems on groups of other people without looking in the mirror and then genocide them either through passive genocidal techniques like abandonment or active genocidal techniques like ethnic cleansing. Americans are great at it. Hitler was very impressed with our work with Jim Crow laws. Hitler admired how the United States had codified racial inequality, especially through laws that disenfranchised and segregated Black Americans.
Just look in the mirror. We ALL consciously and unconsciously exemplify some of the worst traits humans have ever exhibited. Look at all the mental gymnastics we do to justify buying all the cheap bullshit from Amazon, Wal-mart and Target. We exploit untold millions of people so that we can get $49 flights to Florida, ice-cold air conditioning and same-day Amazon Prime shipping. All of that stuff has a cost that we are not paying. Poor people are paying the cost. Welcome to the fundamental requirements of Capitalism. Someone must pay and it’s never the rich people.
Maybe at this point you’re wondering what is holding up my suicide. How do I live with this weight and keep going on every day, especially as that cold black metal semi-automatic offers an easy answer to all my problems.
This is how I’ve done it.
First, I don’t respect suicide. I think it’s a cheap cheat. Your game will be over soon enough. Figure it out, asshole.
If you don’t like to suffer, go to the beach or get a dog or eat some yummy food or take a nap or do some drugs. Become a Buddhist, for god’s sake.
If you want to find some “meaning” in life, figure it out, asshole.
Find God, plant a tree, feed the poor, help a disabled kid, pick up some trash.
If you like experiencing things, figure it out, asshole.
Go camping. Walk the Appalachain Trail. Climb a mountain. Become homeless. (Dont’ tell me you don’t have the money. That’s a total cop out. Rock climbers aren’t called “dirtbags” for nothing. They live out of vans or tents and climb rocks every day.)
As I write this, I guess my great Camus Make-Your-Own-Meaning conclusion is: FIGURE IT OUT, ASSHOLE!
Camus was much more literary about the whole thing. Camus concludes that one should reject suicide and instead embrace life, finding meaning through rebellion against the absurd. AKA: “FIGURE IT OUT, ASSHOLE.”
I think if one path becomes too much then start thinking about another path.
My personal escape pod with this whole homeless thing is: If it gets to be too much I’ll just stop. If I can’t witness man’s inhumanity to man one more minute, I’ll walk away. I’ll just go to the beach. Humans are blessed with a really poor memory. The feelings will fade as I drown my sorrows in the endless buffets of the resort I’ll be staying in.
I think knowing that I have an escape pod like that helps me to keep going.
I also am very careful to dose out my homeless time in structured increments. I hang out with my houseless friends every Friday and Sunday. I could handle more. But that’s the amount of time I have available right now. I never let them come to my house. I always go to them. That’s a big secret to not burning out on the whole situation.
My “FIGURE IT OUT, ASSHOLE” anti-suicide philosophy is probably not the answer to people with long-term, incurable depression or physical pain. I can’t speak to those situations and I don’t want to demean them. Those are not my experiences, thank God. But my hope for those people is that they try experimenting with traditional and non-traditional treatments before they move to the final solution.
I also deeply hope that a person tries sobriety before they kill themselves. Addiction IS something I know a great deal about and it can feel like it’s insurmoutable and never ending. But that’s not true. Addiction can always be overcome, eventually, if it’s becoming too much to take.
My father-in-law would say: “Suicide is a long-term solution to a short-term problem.” It think that is often the case. It’s so easy to become completely consumed in the quicksand of our current situation. We feel like we are drowning and we can’t get out. But in reality, we can walk out of that quicksand any time we want. Just do it. (The problem is, we think the quicksand is our home and trying something different is actually a worse fate that just offing ourselves. It’s not. Just walk out.)
For me, my path is intense, meaning-laden and filled with embarrassing self-importance and dreams of legacy. I’m trying to be a god. I hate admitting that. It’s mortifying. But whatever. It keeps me going.
(If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, please call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit the National Institute of Mental Health online at nimh.nih.gov. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is open 24 hours a day. Call 1-800-273-8255.)