Returning to the World After Attempting Suicide

The Years Following Have Been the Best of My Life

Photo by Nathalie Gaines

I knew three weeks ahead of time I was going to commit suicide. My daily routine was walking three-and-a-half miles from my home to Lake Apopka. I felt a sense of serenity looking across the water. The lake was teeming with life: fish, turtles, snakes, and alligators at the right time of day if you looked closely enough. I went to the lake several times, praying to God to give me a sign that ending it all wasn’t what I was supposed to do. In retrospect, there were multiple signs; I just wasn’t in a place where I could interpret them.

One day, just when I got to the lake. A sun shower appeared from nowhere. It wasn’t enough to soak me, just enough to dampen my shirt. I looked over the lake and saw the brightest rainbow I’d ever seen. A woman passed and remarked, “I’ve never seen a rainbow so bright!” That was a sign, but I ignored it and sunk back into my depression.

Everything in my life prepared me to be successful, while nothing prepared me to fail. I received an award as the school’s best athlete in high school, having played football, basketball, baseball, and track. I aced the college prep exams and was a National Merit Semi-finalist. I received hundreds of letters and brochures from colleges and universities nationwide. It seems that in the 70s, intelligent Black kids were in vogue. Affirmative action hadn’t then been tainted as it is now; schools recognized they had a past they needed to make up for.

Because I had parents and grandparents with a greater sense of the world, I passed on the colleges I’d seen on television playing football and basketball. I almost attended the University of Minnesota, two blocks from my high school campus. Family and advisors got me to attend Fisk University, a historically Black school in Nashville, TN. My mother took me down to Fisk. We spent the night before registration at a hotel in nearby Madison. The waitress at the Denny’s, where we had breakfast, walked up and smiled. She said, “Can I help y’all?” The only Southern accents I’d heard before were on television, and hers seemed scarily exaggerated. I wondered what I had done coming this far from my friends.

A month later, I was homesick and convinced my mother to pay for a flight home for a weekend. I caught up with my friends doing the same things they were before we graduated. They were hanging out at Loring Park, shooting pool, playing basketball, drinking beer, and talking about girls. My new friends at Fisk were focusing on their futures and studying; they were preparing to make something of their lives. I spent the rest of my weekend with my grandparents, mother, and brothers. I never got homesick again.

Life at Fisk was probably the time of my life when I had the most fun and least responsibility. I learned to love learning. I’d played four sports in high school but now limited myself to basketball and track. I got to travel with those teams across the South, seeing other HBCU campuses and picking up a little history along the way. It was on a trip to Fort Valley, GA, where I first saw a cotton field. I felt uneasy, forced to relate to a past that seemed at the time to have little to do with my present. My late teen years were full of hope and optimism. I believed I could become anything despite whatever challenges might lie ahead.

I kept putting off the date I would kill myself, still looking for some sign that would divert me from the path I’d decided on. My youngest daughter, in her mid-twenties, was temporarily living with my second wife and me. We had always been close, rarely arguing about anything. Yet we got into an argument where she shouted at me and left the house to stay with her mother. I had waited too long. I was aware my suicide would hurt others, but staying alive for other people wasn’t reason enough. I was in anguish, and nobody else seemed to notice.

Real estate was my third major career. After college, I went into outside sales. I’d had a glimmer of hope of playing professional sports. I was a good basketball player, making All-Conference twice and being ranked in the nation in rebounding. I wasn’t flashy but fundamentally sound and a good scorer. A wannabe professional scout gave me his business card with “athletes” spelled wrong. That wasn’t a good sign. One day, I was in my dorm room when someone knocked and said a scout from the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers wanted to see me. I jogged to the football field, talked to the scout, and ran some pass patterns. I have good hands and caught everything thrown at me. He asked if I’d heard from Dallas (no) and told me to hang tight and that I would hear from him after the draft in two months. I graduated, went home, and started running to stay in shape. The draft came and went, and I never heard from the scout again, nor did he answer my calls. That wasn’t one of my careers; it was just a dream I quickly recovered from.

After a summer internship with Procter & Gamble, I was offered a job in Jacksonville. The girl I was dating at Fisk still had a year and a half left before she graduated. I asked her to marry me, and we planned a wedding a year later. She was an education major, and I used newfound connections to arrange for her to do her final semester of student teaching in Jacksonville after a Christmastime wedding. I changed jobs and went to work for Southern Bell in outside sales. Their sales force had been mainly taking orders, and they were trying to professionalize. My P&G experience served me well, and I was making good money. When the Bell System split up, I went with AT&T and got transferred to Orlando. A later career move took me to a regional long-distance company where I managed the major account salespeople. I also formed my own business with a partner, selling novelty merchandise at special events like concerts and sporting events like Super Bowls and the US Open Tennis. Life was good until it wasn’t.

The ending of my first two careers was life-changing but not devastating. I phased from outside sales into my own business. The ability to meet the demands of corporate culture and run my business, which often required my physical presence, was waning. A major arena concert required I arrive to check-in the merchandise as early as mid-morning, and we would get out around 1–3 AM after returning all the unsold merchandise and distributing the funds. It was often exhilarating, and I traveled to major events across the nation, like the World Cup when held in the US and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. I went to New York every summer for about six weeks for the US Open. I ran the merchandise for buildings in Orlando, Daytona Beach, Richmond, VA, and Fayetteville, NC. I was one of the best in the country at what I did.

When two planes intentionally struck the World Trade Center in New York, I was in Queens at the National Tennis Center cleaning up after the US Open, which ended two days earlier. I thought the chaos would be over when I arrived home in Orlando several days later. I didn’t realize that artists would stop touring and concerts, which were the bulk of my business, would be canceled or rescheduled. I was a business owner but basically unemployed—my next career was real estate.

To be successful in real estate, you need to find a direction. I stumbled upon mine, which was helping first-time homebuyers using government-based down payment assistance find their homes. I viewed it as a ministry. I had developed expertise, spoke at the HUD-approved seminars buyers were required to attend, and, as a result, had more leads for buyers than I could work with. I led my firm with 14 sales offices in units sold for two consecutive years. I recruited team members and made money off of their sales as well. Life was good again until it wasn’t.

The real estate market crashed. Most sales were of foreclosures and short sales, but I was still doing well. Suddenly, the State of Florida abruptly canceled the down payment assistance programs my buyers depended on: no thirty-day notice or grandfather clauses. Several pending closings were canceled because the buyers could no longer pay for their homes. In some cases, they lost money they’d spent on inspections and appraisals. I lost my entire stream of income. I had a job and a title but was no longer gainfully employed.

Life is full of ups and downs, and I usually recover from them. I was on my second marriage, my second wife was an entertainer, and her gigs also disappeared. I found myself unable to provide for my family. There was a constant tension in the air during the day that was exacerbated when my wife and I went to bed at night. We were going to lose our home like many other people, and every solution I could think of didn’t work out. I don’t know when the first thought of suicide entered my brain. But once there, it never went away.

I didn’t own a gun. I was always a little wary that someone would use it on me one day. I am 6'6", a former athlete, and I always felt sure of my ability to defend myself. I decided slitting my wrist would be the best option. The day after my daughter left, I decided there was no longer a need to put things off. I picked a date and used the two remaining days to plan.

Some people write a suicide note; I wrote seven. I was worried my youngest daughter would think she was somehow responsible. My decision was made long before our fight, and I told her so and asked her to deliver a message to my eldest daughter. I said goodbye to my son. I shared my concern that he, too, kept his feelings to himself and encouraged him to talk more to others. My wife got a letter. I was angry about things, but I mentioned none of them; my goal wasn’t to punish but instead end my pain. My real estate broker got a letter, along with an agent I had a pending deal with. I wanted to be sure my wife got whatever money I had coming. I don’t recall who the other two went to. They were all on my computer and in the letter I wrote my wife I told her where to look. I planned to send hers while she was at her job. She didn’t check her email while at work and wouldn’t get it until coming home.

On the final day, I watched my wife head to work at the job she had taken. There was no kiss goodbye; we were long past that. I got a few knives from the kitchen and headed upstairs to the bathroom tub. I took some aspirin to thin my blood and ease any pain. I knew enough not to cut across my wrist but to open my veins lengthwise. I waited an hour for the aspirins to work, ran some hot water in the tub, sent my wife the final email, and got in the tub.

I’d never paid attention to the veins in my arms before. When I looked for where I would cut, there were none visible. I tried in vain to find a good spot, poking and probing without success. I got a little blood out but hardly worth discussing. I moved up to my inner right elbow and basically sawed across my arm until I struck a vein or artery. Suddenly, a flow of blood streamed into the air. I said to myself, “this is it!” I placed my arm into the water and watched it turning red. I didn’t feel light-headed or anything. After a few minutes, I pulled out my arm and looked at it. The blood had stopped flowing. I tried cutting my left arm in the same manner until a small geyser erupted. It, too, stopped in a few minutes. The tub was bright red with my blood, but I was hardly dying. I got out of the tub, put on some clothes, and went out for a walk.

There would be no stopping people from finding out what I’d attempted. The email to my wife was irreversibly sent. I bandaged my arms before leaving home, but I'd be scarred for life. Still, the depression was gone, and I was feeling something like euphoria. I was excited about being alive and appreciated the things and people that made life worth living. My phone had started to ring; my wife had apparently seen my email well before coming home. My youngest daughter called, and my son. I didn’t answer any of them; I wasn’t ready. From the bench I’d perched myself on, I saw my wife’s car pass and increased police activity, which I assumed was about me. It had been drizzling steadily, which kept the dogs I later found they used from finding me. I sat there another half-hour before picking myself up and walking home.

There were three patrol cars in front of the house when I returned. The two-car garage faced the street, and the door was open. An officer saw me first, verified my name, and had me sit on a stool in the garage, where he handcuffed me. Several people were there: my daughter and ex-wife, son and daughter-in-law, and my wife as well. Most of them took turns coming out to talk to me. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Not so much to treat my wounds but to hold me for a psych evaluation. I was supposed to be Baker Acted and sent to a facility for a 72-hour hold, but no beds were available. After a couple of days, they sent me home, thankfully no longer with a desire to kill myself. It was time to rebuild.

My wife tried to be supportive, but she eventually left. I told one of my brothers while I was in the hospital that she wouldn’t stay. Her leaving wasn’t a setback but a prediction come true. We eventually got back together briefly; it was enough to convince both of us we had no future. I had reached a level of complacency with the life I was now living. I didn’t expect that love and marriage was in my future. I satisfied myself with relationships with my children, grandchildren, and women, not looking for any more than I was. Life wasn’t great, but it was okay.

Years passed, and I had settled into a routine. I met some people along the way who confided to me that they had attempted suicide. The scary thing they had in common was that they said the thoughts never disappeared. I’ve never considered it again in the decade since I tried. I had found purpose in my life, whether it be my research and writing or doing what I could for my children and grandchildren. I worked a blue-collar job for eight years, which allowed me to see better the issues and stress faced by others. I had relationships, sometimes with people that wanted more, but they weren’t what I wanted, what I thought I would never find. At this point in my life, I had enough baggage, including a suicide attempt, that it was easier to keep it shallow and safe.

I met a few people online to whom I owe a great debt. One I never met but did have a few long phone conversations with. I shared once that I can readily accept things others have done but fear they won’t accept things in my past. She asked, “Is that healthy?” That one question caused me to reconsider several things. It wasn’t healthy to keep everything inside. A second person encouraged my writing and assured me of the magic still out there if I let it happen. Another whom I met a few times gave me hope that love was still possible. The distance was too much of a barrier, so a relationship never developed. We each eventually went in different directions on the best of terms and remained friends.

A year ago, I found the one worth the risk of starting all over. The day we met, we briefly discussed marriage in the abstract. I said, “I had nothing against the institution but definitely didn’t want to get divorced again.” She expressed similar sentiments, almost resigned to seeking companionship, though I’ve learned casual isn’t really in her DNA. We agreed that we would bring the subject back up in a year as a check to see if either of us was feeling differently. It was I that brought it back up after about four months.

There was a distance of 100 miles between us, but it didn’t keep us apart. I’ve reinvented my life to be with her and am happy to do so. I retired from that blue-collar job and am going back into real estate. I write when moved to do so, which is another source of income. I moved that 100 miles because it made the most sense, but I am close enough to most of my children and grandchildren to see them as much as before. My family loves my new wife, and she feels the same way about them. While dating, she asked, “Is there anything else I need to know about you?” It was then I shared my suicide attempt with her. My fear of not being accepted was totally unwarranted.

I hope someone might gain from this story that many of the things that keep us from happiness are self-imposed. Life is a series of falling and getting back up. I have fallen many times and, every time, eventually reached new heights. I’m in a better place now than ever before, not only because of a wonderful relationship but because I’m not detached from anything that brings me joy. I have friends, satisfying work, a wonderful family, and a wife that keeps me on my toes. She’s probably more intelligent than me, but don’t let her know that she might get the big head.

The other message is the importance of mental health issues. Depression is a real thing, and there are people all around you experiencing it. If you know someone is withdrawing into themselves, reach out to them and let them know you see them. If you are overwhelmed, find someone you can talk to. There is a stigma against seeking professional help that needs to be overcome. Having left my self-exile, I have been blessed to have reentered the world and live a fulfilling life. I realized I deserve happiness, as do we all. There are enough obstacles out there without us creating our own. Talking to a stranger can be easier than with a friend you have to see again. Suppose you need someone and have no one else. Try me!

“ This guy’s walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep, he can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, “Hey you, can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up “Father, I’m down in this hole, can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.” — Leo McGarry -The West Wing