I was reading about the Revolutionary War to my kids one night when a man slammed his girlfriend’s Toyota Something-or-Other into the back of my truck. I was shocked to learn that he wasn’t drunk—he’d gone into a diabetic…coma, I believe.
My oldest boy reminded me of that the other night. He swears that I was reading about “bombs bursting in air” when one went off below our bay window.
I admit it: I prayed that it wasn’t my truck, which means that I was really praying for it to be my neighbor’s truck. Then I said a little prayer of repentance for such self-absorption, but then split the difference and prayed that my neighbor would quickly find reasonable auto body repair shop. #compromise
It was my truck, though. The left-rear quadrant looked like a crumpled up wad of paper. The driver who hit me was in rough shape—he was slumped over the airbag, groggy, rambling, incoherent, already bruising up and down his face and forearms. The airbag saved his life, but it cost him.
The cops breathalyzed him. No booze. His mom and girlfriend showed up and confirmed that he was diabetic and could go into a coma if he didn’t get his meds on time.
He wasn’t drunk, but he also wasn’t insured. Neither was his girlfriend. He was driving her car.
My deductible was well over what the repairs would have been, but it still would have cost me almost $2,000. I’d have to try to extract restitution out of him based on his sense of responsibility and basic human decency.
I tried to do that a few weeks later after numerous unreturned calls to him, his mom, his girlfriend, and even the officer who took our info at the scene of the crash (i.e. my driveway). I knew he was living with his mother just down the street and around the corner, so one day before work I went over there ready for a confrontation. I had a SPEECH and everything. But when I got to his mom’s house, I knew this was going nowhere before I even got out of the truck.
The dude was sitting on the front porch in 40-degree weather, surrounded by far too many beer bottles to have been emptied that morning. He was hunched over, either passed out or passing out, draped in a Redskins hoodie-blanket garment.
I tried talking to him, but he was out of it. It wasn’t a diabetic coma this time. I’d say there was an excellent chance that the 10-15 beer bottles around him were recently emptied. It was maybe 8:00 in the morning. If the guy was over 30, I’d be shocked.
He tried to apologize. One of the few coherent phrases I got out of him was, “I’m shorry...” That, and, “I can’t find a job.” The rest was excuses, stories relevant only to him, and incoherent babble. It wasn’t just the diabetes plaguing him—it was the story he was telling himself: “My life is over and it’s not my fault.”
I stared at the top of his head as he slowly folded over again as though he found something really, really interesting between his shoes. I said, “Just let me know when you can kick me a couple of bucks for the damages. You know where I live.” I didn’t expect to hear from him again, and I never did.
I often think of that guy because I’ve met few people so obviously at the end of their ropes. As a call center drone for a bank, I talk to quite a few people going through their own crucibles, but very, very few emanate such a presence of hopelessness and loss as that guy. Most of us, I think, don’t have a sense of the passing of time until we’re well into middle age, our kids turn into whole other people, and our friends begin dying out. Or, when you meet someone whose inertia is so complete that you feel a sort of psychic whiplash when you pass by them.
This guy was done. His medical problems were no doubt significant, but they weren’t insurmountable (he could complete a beer run to 7-Eleven, after all). Nonetheless, he broadcast hopelessness and despair as an aura I could feel from the curb.
I always think of this guy when times get tough. As hard as they may get, mine are nothing compared to others, but I have the same temptation that he did. We all do. It’s the temptation to tell ourselves stories that exonerate us from any culpability for our lives. To give in to one after another, story after story, that results in bad choice after bad choice, until the accumulated mass of them exerts a gravity that leads inexorably to a inescapable black hole of despair.
Here’s the horrible realization I got from this guy—we might even be aware of what’s happening, but at some point there is literally no way out. You might be able to see options—different futures and possibilities that all lead back to the same place far beyond your last chance. At that point, it’s not even a black void in which you can hope for blessed annihilation. It’s a place of pure, concentrated despair where, if there is any comfort at all, it’s that choice is no longer an option for you.
I always think of the “event horizon,” that zone between a black hole and, well, freedom. If you’re not familiar with it, the event horizon is that line where, once crossed, there is no escaping the pull of the black hole.
I’ve had some black moments, but I have always stayed beyond the event horizon of that nightmare. Glory be to God for that one.
I always think about what I should have told that guy, or any guy, in the same position. The need to find those encouraging words comes up with alarming regularity and increasing frequency. I should probably have an anti-suicide elevator speech ready. It would probably go something like this:
You know that so-called inescapable pull of the dark singularity? That thing that drags you down to the Nothingness? You don’t need an equal and opposite reaction to escape it. You can simply…choose. You can choose Other. That choice might be one of a million different directions—new job, new love (not recommended, but it’s a choice), or simply going for a walk around the neighborhood. You do not have to consent to it. It doesn’t even have to take a lot of energy. You can simply look into the abyss and say, “Nah. Not today.”
Most people in that position wouldn’t believe it, though. That was the horrifying thing about this guy’s “aura.” All the optimism, all the slogans, all the positive vibes wouldn’t have done a damn thing for him. He was gone in the way that some people have described the vacuity in a serial killer’s eyes. All you can do is pray for mercy for them.
As gross as a lot of the personal improvement/positive vibes ideology of our age can be, at least it’s an attempt to rage against the dying of the light. It might derive from nihilistic vacuity, “manifesting” as as syrupy sweet sentimentality, but at least it’s something. “I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, dude, but at least it’s an ethos.”
I guess what I’d tell these guys is decide. Get off your porch, shave your face, and get into the fight. Or…don’t.
"Most of us, I think, don’t have a sense of the passing of time until we’re well into middle age, our kids turn into whole other people, and our friends begin dying out." - WOW, this is so true! 😖
“All you can do is pray for mercy for them.” And ultimately, that’s everything. That simple prayer can be, for them, eternal life. Kyrie eleison.