After 10 Years

Ten years ago, my life changed dramatically, reshaped by events – suicide attempt, loss of job, home, and marriage. During that time, I lost a sense of myself and why my life mattered. Each of these events, affected me deeply, and had profoundly bewildering and terrifying effects. To survive, I had to resist the impulse for oblivion; to thrive I had to write thoughtfully and reflectively. It was my healing imagination that gave focus to my life. I write to capture the nuances of my human experiences. Writing is the medium of my healing and creative work.

The tragic nature of what I initially dubbed The Catastrophe brought urgency to the question of my human identity. Suspended in time and social space, my old self died, as my new self, struggled to be born. I identified with the writer Matthew Arnold who said, “I was wondering between two worlds, one dead/the other powerless to be born.” I was in “limbo”, an in-between space or threshold, where I entered one person and came out another. Acknowledging I was in “limbo” allowed me time to conceive of a future that would eventually feel more meaningful and purposeful.

As a survivor of suicide, I chose to bear witness. My testimony is rooted in the strong need to understand and be understood. For me, surviving and bearing witness came together in memoir writing, a calling I couldn’t refuse or ignore. The task of writing and bearing faithful witness have become essential aspects of my identity. Had I died in 2013, it would have been others who would have had the last word on the meaning of my life. It has been said that you cannot have a testimony without a test. I had to go through a cleansing fire to rise from the ashes.

Over time, I’ve come to see my struggles in 2013 as setbacks that were temporary, not permanent; tragic, but not catastrophic. Yet, I no longer regret anything that happened, especially when I consider who I have become. A life story can be revised, but not relived. My reflections on distinct experiences are ever-evolving. This is an ongoing process with a yet to be determined ending. The knowledge and experiential understanding I’ve accumulated over the last ten years has given me the opportunity to grow in wisdom and compassion. The years after my suicide attempt has been the most meaningful decade of my life.

The ability to change and adapt after a series of life threatening and life altering circumstances is my greatest accomplishment. I could not “side-step” or “go around” all the ways a life is hard. I didn’t look for, nor did I find, cheap grace. The dismal state of my life, and my inability to die by my own hand, jolted me out of a sense of complacency. My desperate quest for meaning began in the very moments my life was most devoid of it.

Initially, I was not happy to be alive. Brought low by all that happened, I came to a turn in the road where everything known and secure abruptly left me. I had no ability to tolerate much less understand the feelings I was having. For the first couple of years, I was apprehensive about my ability to change and adapt to new living circumstances. No longer being a married homeowner dramatically changed my identity, and my life. The fear that I was damaged goods dominated my life. The kind of upheaval I experienced was life-threatening and life-altering.

I have always felt a great need to understand the antecedents and the consequences of my suicide attempt, not necessarily its causes. All that happened ten years ago profoundly re-ordered the course of my life. While it is not true that time itself heals all wounds, the passing of time has been an opportunity to re-orient myself to an ever-changing reality. Things have worked out for me, but not in any way I expected or could have predicted. I could not “get over” what I had to “go through.” I needed to die as the person I was to become the person I am. This death/rebirth process was both terrifying and exhilarating. It also has ancient roots in the wisdom literature.

I think of my suicide attempt as an event in time, that has ongoing and ever-evolving consequences. While my story provides evidence of the life-threatening effects of suicidal despair, it also reflects the life-affirming resilience that resides in my soul. Both realities must be recognized and appreciated. This is an example of what is called the tension of opposites. While I am grateful for my continued life, I don’t wish to imply that any aspects of my trauma were benign or easily forgotten. I am who I am not despite what I’ve been through, but because of it.

As I continue to write/live my story, I feel the changes in my mind and body that creative writing inspires. Writing has been as important to me as breathing itself. When I have trouble finding the right words, it’s like not being able to catch my breath. My writing is an expression of a new and evolving perspective that could not have been attained without wrestling with my angels. Writing creates new pathways in my brain, allowing me a new relationship with the pain of the past. With distance, but not detachment, I can observe, describe, and accept all of my emotional reactions. As I write, I am constantly moving in new directions, following paths not anticipated, revisiting paths forsaken. It is delightful to become gripped by an idea, thought, or feeling that inspires me to find the words adequate to describe what I experienced.

Instead of looking back with shame and guilt, I now understand my past behavior in the context of my evolving story. I have moved from self-loathing to self-acceptance. I like the person I am becoming. I am grateful, appreciative, and thankful for all that’s been happening. My sorrows have been softened, not eliminated. I am wiser, but still growing in wisdom. The heartbeat of my story is in its aftermath, how I recovered from life-threatening despair. What happened then will always be part of who I am now. I’ve transformed memories of loss to memories of meaning.

As I lived past my suicide attempt, I realized that things I’ve gone through cannot be reconciled by pretending that they were anything other than what they were. My healing story cannot avoid the awfulness of what went before. Focusing on my experience from the perspective of the protagonist (author) has allowed me the “temporal distance” to create my healing and transformative story. I write in the ever-evolving present about what happened then. Time has softened the sorrows I carry within.

Eventually, I reconciled to the paradox; that my confrontation with death was life transforming and life affirming. I fall to my knees in awe and gratitude when I ponder how far I’ve come. I have crossed many thresholds to find meaning in my suffering. I am struck by how awful, awe-full and awesome this journey has been. To feel awe is to fully accept the inherent paradoxes, contradictions, ambiguities and absurdities of human existence. As Johannes von Goethe (Faust, Part II) wrote, “Awe is the first portion of mankind; How scarce the world may make this sense – In awe one feels profoundly the universe.”

At the time, I had no idea how I could transcend my fate, self-preservation being a task I had yet to master. I was alive, but the life I’d known ended abruptly. It would take years to return to any semblance of homeostasis. In retrospect, adversity summoned courage and resilience I didn’t know I had. It would have been easier to give up, but I imagined that would have resulted in living the rest of my life in subsidized housing for mental impaired residents. That, or sitting on a bar stool for the rest of my life, would have been a fate worse than death.

From what psychologists call a retrospective bias, I learned that memories of my past experiences can be profoundly influenced by my current beliefs, living situation, and future aspirations. The interweaving of the past, present, and future is told in my story. As I reread what I wrote before, I look at myself “looking back”. What I see now has evolved from what I saw before. From the perch of hindsight, I look at my former self with more compassion. The person I was three years ago, five years ago, nine years ago is endlessly evolving. Borrowing from C.S. Lewis, my story is about a “grief observed.”

The depth of the anguish I felt is inherently difficult to convey. I continue writing to clarify intended meaning. Finding the right phrasing is a pain-staking process – both delightful and excruciating. When I write a good sentence or two, it is as if I learned something new about my felt experience that I hitherto was unable to put into words. My story draws upon my memory and imagination. The discovery of the right word or phrase gives significance to my life. I write about the past to seek inspiration, insight, and understanding about how I got to be where I am. I needed to survive to tell my story, but I also needed to write my story in order to thrive. For me, writing is as necessary as breathing itself.

After ten years, I’ve been able to process a lot of what happened by re-telling it, re-writing it, and pondering its evolving meaning. I can’t “get rid” of some unwanted aspect of my experience without first understanding it. This is what is called learning from experience. And it is with understanding, that I put these experiences in perspective. I seek increased consciousness, not forgetfulness, for all that happened. I have found that following my path of creative introspection has provided me numerous and endless opportunities for deepening awareness. I feel confident that I am on course, ready to face whatever needs to be faced. When I die, I want it said that Michael Robin was a good man – imperfect - but one who lived a life worth living.

I’ve learned so far, that when I “look back” at the past, my present problems seem much less troubling. The self I was is not the self I am now. My old identity died, even though I did not experience a corporeal death. Through therapy and writing, I’ve made sense of what I felt then, to soothe the sorrows that linger in my soul. Therapeutic writing has allowed me to change my view of myself and my place in the world. My story is constantly changing and evolving as it is being revised and updated. What I feel now about my suicide attempt is vastly different from what I felt while it was happening. It took years to realize that I was capable of dramatically transforming my life.

My story has changed and evolved as it has been revised and updated. Each insight pulls me higher, serving as a step-ladder, to my higher self. What I feel now about The Catastrophe is vastly different from what I felt while it was happening. My autobiographical memory is not a precise reflection of reality but a re-presentation of what happened then. In sharing my story, I seek to build bridges of understanding and compassion. I hope others will find resonance in my story and, in the process, recognize the significance of their own lives, and the sacredness of life itself. Writing my story in my senior years has been a source of comfort and solace. Words build bridges of understanding, within and without. My healing imagination continues to guide and nurture me.

Writing itself has had a calming, meditative effect. Pleasure and a sense of satisfaction comes to me when I write a good sentence or two. The words I write re-present the passage of time, how I feel now about what happened then. The deliberative practice of writing has creatively inspired me to pursue spiritual awareness, the lived experience of what the late mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive.”

As a writer, I both live in and stand outside of my experience. I write to reveal the depth and breadth of the story I am living. A life story can best be appreciated in reflective contemplation. I find direction for the future by learning and gaining insight from the past. I create an arc of cohesion by linking a random collection of scenes into a meaningful narrative that grips my heart and captures my soul.

As my identity adapts and changes, so does my view of the past. Job loss, marital dissolution, and a suicide attempt had to be integrated into my view of myself as a whole person. In describing my past life, I gained a new perspective on the reality of impermanence. I have had to reconceive my identity and how I present myself to the world. I have found pleasure in moments of flow, an expansion of awareness, that leads to a more refined consciousness. Recovery from a suicide attempt has no standard trajectory. The experience and its significance for a person’s life must be continuously re-examined. I will continue to look forward to the future while simultaneously reflecting on the past. This is what I call being thoughtful and self-reflective.

In my writing, I seek transformation and transcendence, a sense of insight and awareness about what is of ultimate significance. As I do so, I encounter the sacred realm which is the transition point between endings and new beginnings. Writing is a medium of surrender to what was, what is, and what might be. It’s been a time of “crossing over” from despair to hope. It is as if my words are pulling my soul into new realms of existence. I have needed to explain to myself and others why it has been a good thing that I didn’t die before my time had come. I am writing myself out of the deep hole that I once found myself in. This is the spiritual power of transformative writing. I found light by peering into the darkness.

All of this has been a humbling experience. What I’ve come to realize is that there is nothing wrong with being vulnerable, sensitive, and fragile. The voice of experience tells me I am much stronger than I ever imagined. I take a lot of pride in the belief that I have of myself, that all things considered, I am a good, kind, and loving person. As my therapist has long said, “It’s a good thing to be connected to Michael Robin.” It would not be possible for me to live the life I have now, without having once wrestled with suicidal despair. When I die, I want my friends and loved ones to say a hearty and eternal Amen!