I Want To Help You OD

"Overcome Despair," that is...

I know a guy who is doing everything his priest, church, friends and all of his spiritual books tell him to do, but his wife hates his guts and his career is going nowhere. (No, this isn’t actually me - we just have the same club membership). He has several kids, lots of bills, and he believes he’s pretty much all he’ll ever be. He takes some classes online from time to time, but he’s beginning to panic. On the surface - at work or at church - he’s cheerful, affable, and often hilarious. 

He said he’s had suicidal thoughts for the last couple of years.

I know another guy who gave up decades ago. He’s about 51 or so. He’s morbidly obese and can barely arrange a ride to the doctor’s office so that they can keep him alive for a couple more years. He prays and nothing ever changes. He’s dying and making peace with it. It’s “his cross.”

The husband of a friend recently bailed on his large family to shack up with another woman. He was, or so everyone thought, a man of active, living faith. A Catholic. So, either he was faking it all this time, or he instantly lost his faith one day, or - and this is evil at work right before our eyes - he consciously chose a path that he knew would lead to his well-deserved damnation. Here’s the thing - I suspect it was the last thing, but he’s found a measure of “peace” in it. It’s his living suicide.

A few years ago, my high school buddy Kevin drove into the woods and ended his life. No one saw it coming. He left three kids and a wife behind.I could spend the next 365 days telling you similar stories. These are stories of men I know or who are maybe two degrees removed - friends of friends.

I had a chat with a man I’m very close to the other day who articulated his version of what I’ve heard so many guys say: “Sure, I’ve thought about pulling the trigger, but that’s just, you know, like a pressure release valve.” He wasn’t talking about a metaphorical trigger. I realized, when he told me that, that I’ve been mentally preparing for bad news about him for years…