Darkness and, maybe, a little hope

Some comments, from the distance of years, on my previous post:

Yes, I wrote that in the midst of shock and pain and sorrow.

And that sorrow was compounded two weeks later, when the boy's father also killed himself.

I've known this family since I was a teenager, and I'm still friends with them. I saw what these actions did to them -- brothers/uncles, sister/aunt, mother/grandmother.


As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife (or judgment/reward/punishment), so I have no solace that suicide brings peace, only an ending. But it produces so much more pain in those left behind. Did we cause this? Did we not love him enough? What did we do wrong? How could we have stopped him?

The boy's father probably asked himself all these questions and more. And whatever answers he came up with, they weren't enough to cut through the grief. He felt the only thing he could do was join his son in death.

I've had good discussions with people on suicide since then. I'm pretty sure most of the people I know have gone through the valleys of true depression. Some show it; some don't. The Spalding Grays vs. the Robin Williams types.

Am I more forgiving now? Maybe.

Does suicide still cut me like a knife? Yep.

Do I really believe that if you fight through it, it actually does get better? Yes. Yes, I do.

When I moved to California in 1990 and first saw the amazing sweep of light and detail in the Southwest deserts, I thought, if only Van Gogh had pushed through those hard years and made it to this amazing landscape, he might have been OK.

But at the same time, I was fighting through my own depression. I found friends there, and interesting work, and great food, and challenging college courses, and the desert, and the ocean. Ah, the ocean. Yet the darkness was always with me.

I hung on, lived my time in the sun, moved back home to be with my ailing mother, lived another 20 years there, and developed a new set of friends. Some of those friends also knew the darkness. And they encouraged me to try antidepressants again, despite a bad experience with them a couple of decades ago (very rare allergic reaction). I did. And ... it changed my life. It saved my life.

So thank you, those who are willing to talk about the darkness, and to be there, and to love.

I hope I can be one of you. I hope baring all this brokenness in this tiny blog might help somebody.

It's a cliche, but yes, it does get better. Hold on. Talk. Listen. Try medication, meditation, therapy; and keep trying. There is something there for you, and we're all better off with you in the world. Really.

Real nerds don't kill themselves

After a year's hiatus, you'd expect a nice update post, some banter about being an ex-nerd fast approaching 50 ... but this won't be that post.

See, it's been a sucky day.

A 16-year-old kid, the son of the little brother of a guy I graduated with, killed himself this morning. On the day after Mother's Day.

Selfish little bastard. I don't care how bad his pain was, there's no excuse for putting his mother and grandmother through that pain. They'll never be able to celebrate Mother's Day again without this hanging over it.

They said he got picked on at school. Tough. We all did. That's no excuse.

He had friends. I know he did. I know what they're posting on Facebook now. RIP and all that -- hell, no, I say. They're being much nicer than I think is warranted. He betrayed them, too. But I think they're afraid to say they're mad at him. There is a lot of social pressure in that group to be kind, loving, understanding ... even if that's not what you really are at the moment.

Funny thing is, I've been through it -- depression, being the weird one, not "getting" people, relationships breaking up, hating being a woman because of the physical pain, hating being alive because of the psychic pain -- and it doesn't make me more sympathetic.

Exactly the opposite. If I could survive it, then I feel like anyone who doesn't is an idiot and a coward.

Nerds know pain. And nerds are just stubborn and self-centered enough to figure the rest of the world has to put up with us the way we are, so there, nyah nyah nyah.

I do not feel sorry for healthy people who commit suicide. However bad it is, it always gets better. Always.

Wait it out. And if it doesn't get better by the time you're, say, 80 or 90, then go ahead and off yourself.

"Ugly" Betties

Take a beautiful actress and make her ugly for a role. What techniques or props do you use?

1. Glasses
2. Frizzy or very straight hair (whichever is least in style)
3. Shirts with collars, a couple of sizes too big
4. Braces on teeth
5. Flat shoes
6. Makeup that looks like no makeup, or bad makeup
7. Orders NOT to smile

Then a magical transformation occurs somewhere in the movie, and the girl is suddenly beautiful. She has:

1. Ditched the glasses (usually for contacts)
2. Gotten her hair straightened, curled, or otherwise made the opposite of what it was
3. Put on something low-cut, slinky and/or sparkly
4. Gotten her braces off
5. Put on heels
6. Had her makeup professionally done
7. Smiled

You know what? Number 7 is probably the biggest transforming element in the whole package.

I look back at my school pictures, all 13 years, and I am not really smiling in any of them. I look wistful, sad, angry, detached, anxious ... never actually happy. And generally not a person you'd want to be near.

Then I see other pictures in which I'm smiling (even when it's forced), and by golly, skinny as I am, I have a double chin, which is the first thing I notice. But there's another thing: The girl in those pictures is more attractive. Even with the glasses and the lapels and the frizzy hair.

OK, sermon is over for today. Not even sure what got me onto that train of thought. Unless it was seeing those webcam images on my new netbook ... (involuntary shiver) Yep, that was it.

I caught myself looking back at me from the screen, and I'll tell you, if I didn't know me, I wouldn't have approached me! So I played with it for a bit, making goofy faces for the camera.

Some people have a knack for looking good even when nobody is looking at them. Some don't. Nerds have a hard enough time looking even socially acceptable, much less good. I wish I had known decades ago what a difference a smile makes.

Even a goofy smile.

I :heart: nerds -- sort of

Somebody loves us!

Well, one of us. Wait a minute -- as I read it more closely, the object of her affection is more of a geek than a nerd. All that computer and electronic gear. Sigh ... hopes dashed again.

Then there was this site for "Cool Nerd Shirts." Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Let's look. Ummm ... downloading ... lots of images ... downloading ... OK, it's still downloading.

See, I'm on 24K dialup. If I was a geek, I'd have satellite at the very least, or maybe I'd just plain refuse to live in an area without high-speed Internet access.

But I'm a nerd.

We all stay up very, very late

Before there were geeks, there were nerds. Geeks didn't take long to get cool, largely due to the computer factor. Nerds were the epitome of uncool.

Nerds LIKED math and science and spelling tests, HATED gym class, wore glasses, had no social skills and wore odd clothes.

Imagine if Steve Urkel was really in your class at school, only not funny and without the freakish voice. That's a nerd.

We're the ones who were late for the bus because we stayed up late to watch (the original) Star Trek. We're the ones whose pants and sleeves were always too short or too long. We're the ones with the funny haircuts and the tentative smiles in the school photos.

The interesting thing is, most of us nerds grew up to be regular people. You might not be able to pick us out of a crowd now. (Especially if we're in a crowd of geeks. Hint: We'd be the ones without the pocket protectors.)

We mostly learned to blend in, to dress more normally, to talk to people, to be more comfortable in our own skins. That last one was the hardest.

Because inside, we still see ourselves as nerds. We feel like Miss Jane and Urkel when we really wanted to be Elly May and Will Smith. Even if we look more like Elly May and Will these days, we know what we were.

So here's to the triumph of the spirit, the wisdom of age, the benediction of experience. Here's to being nerds incognito.