Meet Me in the Stacks One Last Time

My friend Dennis once interviewed me about suicide.  He was doing a zine about suicide attempts: If people had ever tried to commit suicide and, if they had survived and/or decided not to attempt it or attempt it again, why that had decided not to. 

It was probably one of the most intimate conversations I have ever had in my life.

There we were, two twenty something punks, sitting on a rooftop in the Midwest, eating a plate full of broccoli and fried tofu covered in a steaming garlic peanut sauce, discussing our relationship to suicide.

I’ll never forget that conversation. 

I barely knew him, and it was our first time hanging out. 

Leave it to the punk kids to decide that this was the appropriate notion for a first hang out. 

The trees hung heavy and green all around us up there on the rooftop: a confessional tree house to keep our secrets that afternoon. To keep our stories.

(pause)

That same year, I met Travis- a punk from the South who was a librarian, wrote zines, was in bands, and was generally all that I aspired to be in the realm of the adult world.  He and I started writing letters. Became pen pals long after “pen pals” were obsolete.  The intimacy of letters: we would write out and share all that we thought and dreamed and wondered and created.  He would stay with me in the various houses in the various states I lived in over the years.  I would randomly show up in his library in Florida, sometimes, and there he would be, behind the reference desk. We would walk around the streets of Gainesville talking about needs and wants and dreams. About life.

The last photograph taken of Travis while he was in my city was a Polaroid, taken just a while ago, long after Polaroids, too, were obsolete. Travis and a group of other beautiful hearts had stayed with me. I left early in the morning for work, and left them all a note to read on their trip to the next town of their various destinations.  They took a photograph of themselves to leave with a thank you.  All of them crammed in and smiling to fit within the small white square of the Polaroid’s borders. 

It was sitting on the wood table close to the large window in my living room when I came home; my spare apartment key had been slid under the door after they left.

(pause)

Sometimes, people say that if you are feeling sad, to just hold on for one more day and things will feel different.  Or eat some protein. Or do ten jumping jacks. Or take a bath.  Breathe deep. Meditate. Everyone has their sworn-by remedies. 

For me, I turn to the library. 

People who work in libraries have a particular experience that is different from those who use them, or from people who have no interest or relationship to libraries.  I have written about this before, and I am certain that I will write about it again.  Any time I find myself lacking faith, lacking belief, lacking knowledge, or just feeling a general lack of anything- I turn to the library. 

In depression, I lose myself in the ideas and words of others- to search for anything to change my mind.  Change my perspective.  A million perspectives, a million tales, a million realities, a million histories- all to change, or at least distract.  

(pause)

Travis killed himself almost three weeks ago, now.  

One of the hardest things was going into my library after I found out.  It was a reminder that the library had failed him, somehow. That he couldn’t find something to help. Maybe he hadn’t tried. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to.

I keep thinking of what and how the library failed him.

It’s an unsettling feeling to feel such a connection to someone- a writer, a punk, a librarian- and to know that the answer, for him, was to end his life:

What does it mean when someone you look up to commits suicide?

(pause)

I quoted him in a post back in 2009.  I’ll leave you all with that same quote.  Somehow, today, it takes on a different meaning.  A different depth.

Rest in peace, old friend. May you be among all of your favorite books you ever read, and among all of those you hadn’t had time to read.

"In the meantime, let's act like what we do matters".      

Be well; be loved,

k. 

(photo credit: Birds / Jack Barnosky via Gacougnol Tumblr)