I feel so much more relieved today . . . and at the same time so unsettled.

I'm just glad I didn't have to visit my friend in the hospital (or worse). I don't think I would have been able to handle that . . .

I called her yesterday and today (and emailed her several times) to check up on her. I'm sure she probably thinks it's annoying (and somewhat parental) of me--and maybe it is--but since I (again, for lack of a more stable frame of mind with which to express things in a civilized way) didn't fucking hear about this until a day after it happened, I feel I'm entitled to a little parental behavior just to make sure my friend is not on the verge of taking her own life anymore . . .

(What makes it worse is that I know that she, like me, is a very good actor, and is not above pretending things are okay for the benefit of others.)

This weekend (for obvious reasons), I have been flashing back to my own suicide attempt a few short months ago. It was right after my church (which I've mentioned in previous posts) disbanded and closed its doors, and I was on a razor-thin edge. The trigger for me was a rejection that I received at the hands of a girl I worked with at TCU (and was fond of)--it was the last straw of a pile of last straws, and I decided that since (in my mind) I was a beautiful person trapped in a shell of ugliness and unapproachableness, I was going to take a knife or a gun (or some other means of lethality) to that shell and murder it once and for all.

I didn't tell anyone about this, even people I knew on the internet (who were going through similar things), because I wanted it over. I didn't want to be helped or to be talked out of it--I just wanted to die.

I kept saying over and over, "This is going to be the last week of my life" because I needed to work myself up to actually doing it--and I made sure that everyone I talked to in real life saw a person in distress (because everyone knew about my church situation) but also a person who did not give off the telltale signs of someone thinking about committing suicide.

(It scares me to know how effective I was--no one knew what was going on until I started telling people months later.)

My preference was to get a gun and shoot myself in the head--unfortunately, as I realized, I needed to buy one first, and getting all the necessary paperwork and waiting the 10 days was too excruciating, in my opinion.

I tried (for several days straight) slitting my wrists with the only sharp knife I had--but my survival instinct kept kicking in, and not allowing me to break the surface of the skin. (I'm sure my neighbors kept wondering why I was shouting "Damn it!" in my apartment that week--if they only knew . . . )

I finally hit on the idea of drinking the bottles of Windex and dishwashing detergent I had in my kitchen.

How the hell I survived that week, I don't know, but I made it to Sunday, fully determined to get things over with by the end of the day.

I walked into my new church, having only attended for 1 or 2 Sundays, and sat down for what I was sure was going to be a completely irrelevant experience. I didn't want God to help me, and I actually told him, "Butt out--don't even try to give me a reason to live today."

During that service, the pastor (damn him, damn him, damn him) had a word from God about 2 or 3 people in the service (I was one of approximately 500 people there) who were at the end of their rope and on the edge of calling it quits. (I knew he was talking about suicide--there was no possible reason he would have said "2 or 3 people" if he were talking about a general exasperation with life.) He said he felt God wanted to say something special and individual to each of us who fit this description, and he invited each of us to stand while the congregation (and he) stayed silent, because he felt like God wanted to talk to us in person--no pastoral mediation, no music, and no well-meaning fellow Christian's opinions getting in the way.

I had "talked" with God before--I had felt his presence. But in that moment, as I stood, what I had experienced before, those pale moments of inspiration that had dotted my previous 6 years as a Christian . . . faded into complete obliteration.

The only way I can describe it (and this does not do what I experienced justice) is to say that, for the first time, I felt God residing inside of me. There was a love, an intense passion and joy, and a peace inside of my being that at once felt alien, electrifyingly powerful, and alive. God spoke to me--it was a clear message, and it was very specific in nature.

I wrote it down, barely listening to the pastor as he began speaking again, telling us that whatever God had said to us, we needed to hold onto it as a personal lifeline, and we would see what he said come to pass in our lives. I wrote the words God spoke into me down, and memorized them, and made sure never to tell anyone else what they were--I felt that what God said to me was between him and me alone, and not for anyone else to hear.

Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of what God said to me that day is on the verge of coming to pass--I didn't spend that morning listening to God in vain (I say this to myself a lot lately, more in stunned disbelief than anything else).

I wish I could say my experience was common or that it was something everyone in my position could relate to. In some ways, it is a very unusual story, with very unusual consequences.

However, in the wake of this experience, I have come to understand, more deeply than I ever have, the need for all human beings to experience the touch of someone who loves them.