Tony Bourdain Is Dead

That's what my husband said that got me out of bed yesterday morning.  I'm sure you have all posted your opinion, your feelings on the subject.  Some may already have Tony Bourdain fatigue, while others may still be in shock and trying to understand.  The weird thing is, we had just finished watching season 2 of "13 Reasons Why" the night before.  Coupled with the suicide by hanging of Kate Spade just a few days before, it was a suicide themed week.

I won't go on a diatribe (I feel like he used that word often) about how Tony Bourdain let me down.  Or about how he was a coward, or about how it's bullshit that a hero who influenced my life could do this to me.  I'm not going to say how selfish he was.  His life was still his life to share or not to share. There seems to be an element of being a public figure that is very unselfish.

I don't understand.  No one can understand.  But maybe some can empathize.  I think about death all the time.  Maybe I think about death even more since both of my parents are gone.  When I think about death, I don't fear the end of my life.  I fear how that might come about.  I don't want a hideous horrible violent death. Most people don't.  I talk about death a lot.  For some it's a heavy topics, but for me, I don't find the topic disturbing.

I've thought about suicide.

I've had dark nights where I felt like my emotions were weighing me down so much that I would never be able to climb out of my emotional pit.  Sometimes I didn't want to climb out of that pit.  I just wanted to wallow in my ugly emotion. Sometimes I didn't want that pain to end... I wanted to hold on to it.

Sometimes, I wanted the pain to end.

I've contemplated how I would want to end my life at my own hand.  I never came up with a solution I was "happy" with.  Which way would be the least painless, the least messy, the least shocking for someone to find?  I never organized my thoughts to write a suicide note.  Surely if I were to kill myself, I would have to write a NOTE, since writing is kinda my thing, right?  I also knew that no matter how awful I felt that night, it would always be better the next day.  I knew that it might not be ok in the morning, but it would be at least incrementally better.  But it's not easy to make it to morning.  Sometimes we don't want to make it through the night.  Sometimes we don't want that human contact, that one gesture that will bring us back to society.  Maybe sometimes its the luck of the draw - having just enough time alone with our awful thoughts.  I really don't know.

I know that famous people carry a burden that non famous people can't understand and often envy.  Non famous people can also carry a burden that others can't understand.  I've been told I'm lucky, or I've had it easy, I have my shit together, I seem so stable and even keeled.  Sometimes it is true.  Sometimes it couldn't be farther than the truth.  Just because I've built an almost impenetrable wall around my deepest secrets, doesn't mean they don't exist, or that they don't affect my everyday life.  I don't have any deep revelations.  We just have to remember that in the words of Michael Stipe... everybody hurts And in the words of Elliot Wolf... be nice.  LOL - its good for you. 😘