Suïcida: a Poem on Suicidal Ideation

Trigger-warning: this poëm and commentary are about suïcidal ideätion and attempted suïcide. Read no further if the subject-matter might cause the reader pain or injury!

*

Suïcida

Suïcida, I am crazy to love you

You make me lonely;

You make me blue.

My head is splitting

What am I going to do?

Look what you have done to me!

Depression engulfs my mind;

Happiness no longer can I find.

I want so to break free

From you, but also from me.

Suïcida, please let me be!

Insanity, Eternity closer to me loom.

I take the elixir in my empty room

I swallow more and more;

The Siren calls me from her distant shore

Oh, listen to that soporific call!

The Depths entrance me

I fall, I fall

Only to be embraced in Your life-giving love;

From Hell, I am lifted to Your kingdom above.

In my deepest despair

Lord, You were there,

For You are the One

Who will always care;

Whatever happens,

However I fair

I have no need to worry,

For You are eternally there.

*

I wrote this poëm in my late teenage-years, as such it is an example of juvenilia. At the time I repeatedly attempted to kill myself. Severe, serious & on-going abuse from both parents was seriously impacting my amour-propre. It did not help me that they constantly re-iterated that I should never amount to anything. (I eventually went to university - something they did their darnedest to prevent - and qualified to become the teacher, the vocation I had desired to pursue from my junior-school years.) They never did anything to inculcate self-worth; they never expressed love (storgē); with a couple of rare instances, they never publicly supported me. The folk who are supposed to love a child, did not; rather they actively hated me. I never had the predisposition, the energy nor compulsion to hate, but I certainly had no respect for those that begat me.

The style in which this poëm is written feels like an atavistic precursor to my current poëtic technique. Nevertheless, rather than tweak these verses to align with my current beliefs, I consider it best to leave this creätion as is.

I no longer believe in a theïstic G_d: in that sense I am an apostate. Were I to scribe these verses now, the final stanza would not even be a thought nor even a reflection upon my past self.

However, whilst this poëm is an amalgam of several suïcide-attempts, the one that comes to mind when I re-read it is when I spent a night throwing up after taking an overdose of any and every painkiller I could lay my hands upon in the familiar bathroom-cabinet. A couple of close friends only know that I saw an angel and he repeatedly punched my stomach so as I should vomit the sirenic concoction. I threw up until the dawn’s rays. Then I slept. I slept one of the calmest, most contented slumbers of my whole sentient life.

At the risk of sounding unhinged, I have seen angels (and ghosts and rarely dæmons) throughout my whole life since being a small boy. Angels have appeared at times when I have been crushed one way or another. But, of course, the existence of angelic beïngs does not support belief nor unbelief in a divine entity.

For many years I have described myself as a humanistic pantheïst. Pantheïsm in this sense is the belief that the divine permeätes the Cosmos. Many of the elements in our atoms were creäted in supernovæ prior to reaching Earth. Hence we are all part of, all one with the Universe. I also believe in mankind, hence the qualifier in respect to humanism. Man can be evil, but humankind also has the option to do Good. And, as a Quaker, I truly believe that the Good is worth believing in. We can all be better than we are, individually and collectively.

As a tonic to my anxiëty & depression, I have ended here with words of Hope.

I continue to battle my desire for oblivion…

The Little Prince: "La existencia abierta"

[Image description: the front cover with illustration of the Little Prince]

Regular readers of this blog will probably recall my list of favourite books and that my all-time most admired is The Little Prince/Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In Spanish the work is entitled El Principito. Like Alice in Wonderland, an ostensible children’s work, it can be argued that The Little Prince is in fact aimed squarely at adults. Antoine became exasperated that the themes of his novels were not being latched onto by their ‘grown-up’ readers, and so created one of literature’s most loved characters.

I have discovered two Castilian books referencing the latter: El Principito se pone la corbata: Una fábula sobre crecimiento personal para redescubrir lo que de verdad importa by Borja Vilaseca and La existencia abierta: Para lectores de El Principito by Rafael Tomás Caldera. The first I am only part-way through; but the second I have finished.

The title in English would be something like The Open Existence: For Readers of The Little Prince. The use of ‘the’ is very definitive and to an Englander’s ear ‘an’ would more likely be used. However, Rafael is very specific, in the just under one hundred pages, that life not open to new experiences, to otherness and to others is no life at all but merely survival.

Whilst I am not au fait with the nuances of the adjective ‘abierto’ in Spain, the term ‘open’ has multiple meanings in English: receptive; unlocked; ajar; untied; navigable; wide; free; vulnerable; honest; unreserved; transparent; manifest; moot; available;…… The list may not be quite endless, but no doubt the reader can think of many other synonyms. In most cases, I suspect Rafael would accept such descriptors as adding to what he is attempting to convey.

Whatever personality type we happen to be, Caldera iterates and re-iterates that no-one is an island living in isolation; we all need other individuals to aid us in our personal development. Above all, we need others in order to love - which is not to imply solely romantic love. Quite the opposite in fact, as Rafael in one chapter analyses the different loves Saint-Exupéry describes in The Little Prince and the rest of his œuvre.

Caldera’s work is backed up with occasional quotations from some of the aforesaid works along with those of other commentators on the subject matter. Whilst Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was raised a Roman Catholic, it his deep Humanism for which he is renowned. I am certain, however, that he would take no umbrage at works by religious voices being cited, as Rafael has been careful only to use quotations that help elucidate the issues.

Each chapter is very short. I found that I was reading one at a time and then contemplating the matters raised in a sort of meditation or at least cogitation. However, I was reading the book at a beach café-bar sitting in brilliant sunshine and enveloping warmth!

As with most printed works in Spain, the book comes with a pretty hefty price-tag; €10 for a very physically small, slim and lightweight edition. Nonetheless, for me it has been worth every penny… erm, cent. %)