The World's Longest Suicide Note (Part 1) 5/3/2010

 [Here I prove the fallibility of memory: I thought this came earlier in my pretrial detention journal. Not finding it earlier, I concluded it was lost. Here it is. I am breaking this into parts. It is too long to drop in one post. Bear with me, please. sch 10/17/22.]

That was my intent when I began this series of writings back in April. My plan was to write and then kill myself. Why? Suicide had been my plan for the better part of a year in varying degrees of urgency, only work and clients and a certain broken leg modulated the urgency. That plan got sidetracked also got sidetracked by laughter and rapt attention during the female curling championship. Unfortunately for all concerned, that night was only the calm before the storm and not a new beginning. So, it was back to the old plan.

I hoped friends would put what I wrote into a blog, create a readership, and then bound these notes up in book form with the hope of generating funds for the ex-wife. That turned out no better than my personal suicide pact. That it failed might not have been a bad thing. I learned one of my stepsons threatened to kill himself over my arrest. I was shocked and hurt. I never thought he would be negatively affected - he seemed most happy about the separation of his mother and myself. I have written an apology to him and to his mother, but I have no idea if it has been published or not. [This must be in the missing papers; it is not in what I have had to type. sch 10/17/22.] I asked myself if my arrest troubled him so much, what would my suicide do to him and his little brother?

Now, not bent on suicide, I began to think again. A friend added an idea for me to chew over - I was here for a purpose.

I also learned that some people (some who should have known better) thought since I had pictures, that was attacking children. I had never done so, never had any interest in doing so. If I had, what I had seen would have killed any such interest. Let me put it this way: The captain of the Canadian women's Olympic curling team is to my taste, not what I saw online or had on my computer.

So why did I have it? At first, when I ran into it, I got rid of the stuff. Shocked, but not interested. Then I met people who were trading teenage pics just as I was looking for bondage stuff for people I was chatting with. One was a woman from Columbus, OH who I thought I might inveigle into meeting me. Then it was fun trading for the sake of breaking taboos. It got easy to rationalize what I was doing as trading in pixels and not people. Videos made rationalization impossible, but that was when I went from Yahoo to Giga-Tribe. The people on Yahoo did not have videos. Did I spend time in front of the office computer viewing this material, getting myself stimulated? No, but it did confirm my self-opinion that I was a bad person. By this time, I knew that getting caught with this crap would leave me no alternative other than suicide.

I did have another way: getting caught in a Muncie crack house. Death had already motivated me in that direction. Simply put, I was hell-bent on self-destruction for the last half of 2009. Looking back, I do have two wishes: 1) I had sought mental health care; or 2) if I was going to get busted, that it had been on state charges - a state court would have released me on bail and I would have gone home and put the car in the garage and I would have been in that car long enough for the carbon monoxide to do its business.

Well, `that gives you two of the three big themes of what I have been writing here. The first theme explains why mental healthcare is a Good Thing, and what will happen if you do not take care of these problems. Secondly, I wanted to better explain what happens under federal law to people who commit the crimes I committed with the hope they will stop. Last, but actually interwoven throughout my writing here, is an atonement to my friends and family and community for the shock and damage done. I certainly could not have atoned if I were dead. Although, I did think - do think - suicide would have been a form of atonement. I decided complete honesty was both possible and desirable. Having been stripped bare publicly, I had nothing about myself to conceal. Embarrassing others is a different matter. And about them, I have tried to be discreet. I have tried to be accurate without being gratuitously offensive

[To be continued.]

sch

Narrative Therapy

Writing has been my therapy for almost 12 years now. I started writing these notes while in pretrial detention first as an apology to family and friends for the behaviors that led to my arrest. When I saw the spot I put myself by not completing my suicide plans, by having to endure what I conceived of as the unendurable, I wrote to find way of living. Prison offered no counseling, but I kept on writing to make sense of myself in this world. 

My PO seems to believe wholly that there has been no change in me from 2010. The supervised release order he is assigned to enforce requires counseling for me being a sex offender but I have not heard of her since November. I assume she is investigating the 2010 pysch evaluation finding I was not a pedophile. She did suggest regular counseling, I did that intake interview last week, and await an appointment. I would like to have someone to talk to besides myself as I keep on writing.

I think writing has kept me lucid and helped me manage my anxieties and anger. 

For these reasons, I found reassurance and justification in How Narrative Therapy Can Help Us Take Ownership of Our Stories by Veronica Esposito. I guess I hit on a real method.

Narrative Therapy is straight out of Derrida in that it sees the world as dominated by various systems, with language being the system par excellence. Because language is so essential to our world, Narrative Therapy construes everybody as inherent storytellers who—consciously or not—are crafting the narratives of our lives. It holds that these stories are crucial, as is the language that we use to tell them.

***

Narrative Therapy sought to ameliorate the effects of these power structures; instead of telling clients who that they were diseased individuals in need of fixing, it empowering clients to define themselves on their own terms. It insisted that clients were the best experts on themselves, and it saw the job of the therapist as supporting clients as they authored their stories. It chose not to see anyone as inherently diseased or wrong but rather to focus on an individual’s strengths and to separate people from their problems.

Write, then. Keep a journal. Yes, the Zoloft helps but it is more of a negative aid. It protects without giving a means of growth. Get therapy. Do not think you can deal with depression on your own.

sch

2/12/22

Depression: Bibliotherapy

At one time I thought I had my depression under control. I did not. My depression had control of me and it pushed me towards self-destructive behaviors. Getting arrested by the federal government ruined me as planned but was also an unplanned save.  

I do recommend my example. Take action. Reading Bibliotherapy: The 8 Best Books For Managing Depression:

“Bibliotherapy” refers to reading books to help alleviate mental health issues. And the research suggests it can be an effective form of treatment for mild and moderate depression.

Check out the books recommended. 

I will also offer my own favorite book on depression: Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Acedia. I learned much that has helped stay on steady path.

sch

2/11/22

Change Your Ways

 I confess to a fault on these notes by my starting not with my 2010 notes but with more current notes. I made a point of this early on and feel it needs done again. The public service notes were all done early in my journal. They declined the longer I was in prison, the more I thought my notes would not see the light of day. Faced now with a ban on my internet access, I need to address the pornography issue. I hope anyone reading this or my other public service messages, passes them throughout the internet.

First, get rid of your pornography - legal or illegal - it demeans you and it demeans those depicted. Time to grow up.

Second, those with child porn - and that is whatever depicts anyone under 18 years of age - get rid of it and destroy the hard drive. You can go to prison for what is in your browser cache. Do you want to go to prison (and federal law will put you in prison regardless of your criminal record!) for years and years, and then be required to register as a sex offender for a decade or more, and be restricted in jobs and living places? And the federal system puts you under the supervision of a probation officer AFTER serving your prison term. You really want this?

Third, you cannot stop viewing illegal porn? Get some help. The government - federal or state - will NOT help you. They will punish only. They will lock you up rather than deal with any underlying cause of your illegal activities. And do NOT tell your mental health counselor about the porn. They will report you and you will goto prison.

Lastly, if you are underage and putting either images of yourself or another teenager online then you are producing child porn. The federal government punishes that crime with a minimum of 15 years in prison. You will get treated the same as an adult.

Sch