suicide

Seeking Quiet- Mental Health, Meditation, and How Phillip Marlowe Saved My Life

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CW: Talk about suicide, suicidal ideation, and depression.

Eight months ago, alone at work with a heavy to-do list and late in the afternoon, I wanted to end my life.

I was beyond exhausted and frustrated. It was shortly after Passover and I felt lonely, lost, and hopeless. I felt like my career was at a dead end, and I was burning myself out in an increasingly thankless, stressful, and miserable job for no gain. I was drinking too much. I was taking too much caffeine. My relationships with my family were suffering. I felt resentful of everything and everyone.

All my coping mechanisms that had carried me through so much- meditation, exercise, reading, even writing- were failing me. I was sore and exhausted and bored with exercise. My meditation was rote routine and fruitless. Reading was still good, but I had lost the ability to calm down enough to read a paperback. Audiobooks were just entertaining noise in my ears. I was always stressed about the next shift, the next week, the next month, and what new nightmares would be coming down the chute that I would- inevitably- have to handle.

I never had a plan for how I would off myself, but I did debate how to take care of Emily beforehand. How could I quietly empty my bank account into hers to cover as many expenses as possible? How could I redirect bills? Farther and farther, deeper and deeper as I stared into an abyss of tart shells and almond paste.

Then I thought “What the actual fuck am I doing? This is fucked up. I need to pull out of this fast. I need to put something else in my brain.” Fortunately, I had just finished downloading a new Raymond Chandler mystery novel on Libby. I plugged in headphones and finished my shift to the sound of Phillip Marlowe getting his ass kicked by Los Angeles mobsters.

The nadir of my mental health at that point took about ten minutes. I have been an EMT. I have been in car accidents, lost patients, been actively threatened and assaulted by patients, tended to grotesquely injured people, some of whom didn’t survive.

This was the most scared I have ever been in my professional life… and it was because my mind, body, and heart just couldn’t take it anymore.

A pair of bare feet on a narrow plank. Either side indicates the person is standing at a great height.
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What’s Another Eulogy? My Non-Review of Roadrunner

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Until about 5AM this morning, this week’s blog post was going to be about something completely different. I was going to write about taste, snobbishness, and keeping it in check.

But last night, Em and I decided to go to our first movie in a theater in over a year. It was a toss-up between Black Widow and Roadrunner, and Em decided she could see Black Widow another time. She wanted to see Roadrunner with me. We were both glad for that because in the back of the Laurelhurst Theater, over pizza, popcorn, and spilled beer, we both cried our eyes out.

I came home with mixed emotions and tried to write that blog post about snobbishness… but as of 5 am, aware of the discourse and controversies surrounding the movie, I knew I need to write this all out while it was still fresh in my mind. One of the problems with being a writer is that words vanish from your mind faster than feelings in your heart, so here we go.

One last story from my beloved doomed bastard of a hero, Uncle Tony.

Glad for the hat brim and lighting here- you cant see how red my eyes are.
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“How Far Yet To Go”- #BourdainDay, One Year Later, and Defining a Legacy

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Good evening, friends and neighbors.

Friendly warning- today’s post will be a bit heavy, and it’ll talk a bit about suicide/self harm- as well as the varied reactions to it.

June 8th, one year ago, one of my heroes died.

If you were to ask me, I don’t have too many heroes that aren’t fictional characters. Finding a person that- even indirectly- inspires one to live in emulation of them, to make certain life choices, or who’s work becomes a source of comfort and identity is pretty profound, and it happens to me rarely.

It’s one of the reasons that people who pipe in with “Jeez, they were just a celebrity, get over it/ why don’t we remember REAL heroes/ etc” piss me off. One has to wonder of these same people drive past funerals and scream “Who cares? It’s not like they cured cancer and walked on Mars!”

So when I say the death of Anthony Bourdain affected it me deeply, I’m not being hyperbolic. The fact that he died by his own hand unexpectedly doubled the tragedy, but for those who read Tony’s works and about his life, it was slightly less than surprisingly. Self-destruction and suicide were demons Tony had wrestled with before in his life- and they only ever had to win once.

One year later, in remembrance of his life and legacy, friends and fellow chefs Eric Ripert and Jose Andres established Bourdain Day on the 25th, and the Culinary Institute of America has established an Anthony Bourdain Legacy Scholarship in his memory.

One year later, all of us cooks get to sit down and think of his life and what we can learn.

Some of us, I think, spend their off-time driving past funerals.

Picture of Anthony Bourdain with quote “Perhaps wisdom, for me, means realizing how small I am, how unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

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A Wake Of Fire, Flour, Blood, Butter, and Ink- In Memoriam of Anthony Bourdain

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Around 8 years or so ago, I was staying in my girlfriend’s apartment for the weekend. We have just finished making some chocolate cookies for after dinner. At the time, I was still working as an EMT- my work weeks were pretty grueling, and I found relaxation in cooking and baking at home. Often, I would bring in the results of my work to the Rescue Squad- they were usually very thankful. The EMT diet tended to be odd things at odd hours, washed down with way too much caffeine, and getting something home-cooked and half-decent just delivered to you was a rarity.
    While the cookies were cooling, Amanda said, “You know, there’s this great show I’ve been watching recently on Travel Channel I think you’d like. This guy used to be a chef, and he just goes all over the world and talks about the food and culture and stuff. He just did a really funny episode about Prague. Hang on, I’ll pull it up.”
    I shrugged and crashed out next to her on the couch. It had a been a long day- a busy shift, and then driving the hour to get to her, I was eager to get as much sleep as possible on my days off.
    She pulled up the episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”- and my world tilted.
    In the weeks to come, I would start cooking and baking at home even more, trying out different recipes with Tony joking and laughing in the background from whatever corner of the world he was in. I would pick up “Kitchen Confidential,” and a number of his other books, devouring ALL of them. All the while, I’d bring in stuff for the squad- and I’d hear them say, “Matt, this is REALLY good. Why are you running on an ambulance? You should be doing this!”
    8 years and a few days ago, I was informed that I’d been accepted to culinary school.​

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