I am re-posting this entry because we’re rounding into the holiday season. Many of us associate the holidays with seasonal songs and foods, silver bells and merriment. But there are also a lot people out there suffering. And what they don’t know is that they needn’t suffer alone. Our attachment to how we believe things should be is what creates so much of our suffering, and we can feel like prisoners of our own thoughts. There is relief if you find the right support. Asking for help is what strong people do.

Reach out. Show affection. And spread the word. “988” is the three-digit, nationwide phone number to connect directly to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. By calling or texting 988, you’ll connect with mental health professionals with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. No one should suffer alone.

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No one has drowned. There aren’t even sorrows worthy of drowning. I can’t remember the last time I had a sip of alcohol. It was probably last September, and the lack of alcohol wasn’t even a decision I made. I guess when you’re just trying to eat healthier and wake with energy, the alcohol just doesn’t seem worth it. I wrote a shit ton more when I drank.

The only reason I wanted to post a blog entry right now is so I’ll have proof. Not 40-proof, not proof that I’ve gone without liquor, but I needed to go on record now that I just spent 40 minutes hunting down the name of that movie that has haunted me since I was a child.

I don’t know how old I was, but it was the 80s, and I was home watching a movie on “Home Box Office.” All I could recall was summarized in tonight’s search queries:

Teacher swimming cave drown
Teacher swimming hole
Drowning movies

I needed to write this post because I will undoubtedly forget the name of the movie, and I don’t want to spend another 40 minutes needing to know the name, as if by just knowing it, I can exhale and life may continue. It’s that one solid thing that if I can capture it, all is somehow okay, and my brain can get back to the living.

FORTRESS (1985)
“An Australian school teacher and her students are kidnapped. She and the children fight for their lives and try to escape from their captors.”

You have to understand that I was a student. I was a child. This seemed a possible scenario. I was so terrified of drowning that I had to change the channel mid-movie. I couldn’t watch what happened next, and having never watched it again, it has stayed with me all these years. That need for air and the panic when you can’t break the surface of the water, when you’re blocked under rocks, it’s unbearable to me. I had to look away, and even doing so, I was never able to really look away. Instead I look for it, decades later, searching to see what happens next.

This was the exact scene that has haunted me: https://youtu.be/e5xnyClQ_kk?t=41m30s

Now, without getting political, there is the news. The news of suicides, Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, these tragic preventable stories. In my life, I’ve personally known 3 people who have committed suicide. 1) My 2nd cousin. 2) One of my best friends from college, through all four years of school and afterward. 3) Ned Vizzini, a fellow writer and friend who spent days sleeping in my home when I invited him to be on a panel with me for SXSW. 4) One of Phil’s friends, whom I’d met and spent a weekend with in Rhode Island. 5) There is also the husband of a close friend, but I’d never known him. These are the personal ways my own life has been touched by suicide.

I also remember growing up that my best friend’s mother worked a suicide-prevention hotline, where she’d spend hours counseling people. And I remember her once saying that she’d spent the whole night talking to someone only to find out that it was a prank call. It’s strange the things we remember.

One thing I want to remember in all this is how to love and how to prioritize. While I want my children to do well in school, what I really truly want, is for them to be happy. Not anxious, not worried about test scores or cliques or who was invited or wasn’t invited, none of it. I just want them to know they are loved, just as they are, without having to accomplish or achieve. They are important and invaluable.

Douglas Klein: August 3, 1976 – June 28, 1999 (Age 22)
Jessica Gordon: December 29, 1974 – April 2006 (Age 32)
Ned Vizzini: April 4, 1981 – December 19, 2013 (Age 32)
Heather B. Armstrong: July 19, 1975 – May 9, 2023 (Age 47)