WHAT IS HOLDING UP YOUR SUICIDE?

I had a “great” idea this week.

Like so many of my great ideas, it came to me in that early morning hour. Right before the sun comes up. Where darkness tries to hold on for just a few more minutes.

I was going to start protesting in front of the Catholic Church that I blame so many of my difficulties of trying to shelter homeless people. It’s such a simple and beautiful plan.

I stand with a sign or maybe not a sign right before their Saturday service. And I bring the pièce de résistance: my bullhorn. I hold my own church service on the devil strip. I greet the elderly parishioners before they enter the church. I give a lively sermon throughout their boring service they are holding inside. And then I send them off with a nice fire and brimstone message as they file out.

I dedicate my Saturday afternoons to destroying their church.

I was so excited about my new plan. I told my wife as soon as she got up.

She hated the idea. My wife is not known for beating around the bush. She tells it like she sees it.

Part of her disdain for this plan is that she doesn’t like the blowback she gets when I do things like this. People text her, call her and corner her at various places to express their shock at whatever random rant I have going on.

But the bigger issue at hand is making a conscious decision about who I want to be. Do I want to be a force of destruction or a force of construction?

Of course a person can be both. But not typically in the eyes of society. Unless you overthrow the current ruling party you will be seen as a loose cannon that is dangerous and anti authoritarian. They just won’t work with you. That’s fine if you just want to break things. But if you want to build things then you have to seriously think about the consequences of your actions.

You see… I am filled with excitement about the new Shammas Malik administration that is coming to Akron in January.

This will be a clearly different administration than what we have now. It will be from the perspective of a young intellectual. It will still be fairly moderate for my taste. And it will likely be incremental in the vein of Barack Obama.

But make no mistake. It will be new and different.

I feel like I can take everything I’ve learned during the current administration and apply that to this new administration.

And rightfully, my wife has also cautioned me on expectating any change at all. She watches me fail over and over again. She worries about my mental wellbeing.

Shammas Malik has a lot of issues to deal with on his plate. A handful of mentally ill drug addicts scrounging around in the dirt of his city might be the least of his worries.

But this is what hope looks like. Hope and faith and love only really matter in the face of hopelessness and despair and exhaustion.

Which brings me to the title of this post.

A major reason I rage and relish the idea of taking down a small Catholic Church on the East Side of Akron is because it’s a shield.

It’s a black shield of hate and rage that protects me from what is sitting just underneath it all. Deep sorrow. Deep sadness. Existential hopelessness.

Rage is the last protector I have. I quit drinking and smoking cigarettes 20 years ago. I use no other drugs like marijuana. I give myself 40 mg of citalopram to level off the edges. Other than that, I am straight edge and have been for 2 decades.

I live in the real world 24/7. There is no mind altering escape through drugs. (That’s primarily because I will just move into that intoxicated world full time. The pain of existence is so exposed and sharp for me.)

So I just sit here exposed to my truest, darkest feelings. A comedian has a great line: “What is holding up your suicide?”

It’s the ultimate philosophical question. “Why don’t you kill yourself already?”

For me, Albert Camus drives my existence. If you can’t find a god to believe in then you make your own god. You create your own meaning.

I have a long list of reasons not to kill myself. It literally starts with: “Chances are there won’t be any Taco Bell where I’m going after this.” (I find it amusing to think how processed pseudo Mexican food is a primary driver for keeping me sticking around on this godforsaken rock as long as I humanly can. But it’s true. I love Taco Bell that much… and countless other things. In an absurdist existence I find it hilarious to hitch my life line to the Value Menu at Taco Bell.)

I feel like I’ve been asking this ultimate question more of myself recently than any other time in my life that I can recall.

My journey of helping homeless people has brought me to a very barren desert. The sadness and depression I have felt since the murder of Hermaine on our property and then the subsequent closing of our house has profoundly wounded me.

It’s just been a month of fantasizing about binge drinking and different ways to off myself.

But I have a goal. I want change for the homeless people of our American cities. That’s all I want. I want everyone who is allowed to be in society to have a place in society. All I ask is for a place, ANY PLACE, where our outcast citizens can call home. At this point I’ll take anything. A sewer pipe. A toxic waste dump. Anything. We can’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough. We must put in place a shelf to stop their freefall.

Shammas Malik highly values being respectful. So I will do everything in my power to be respectful. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect. My power animal is a pitbull. I am mostly sweet. But sometimes I can’t help myself and I just have to clamp on and shake my head violently.

But I’m really going to try. I’m quite disciplined. I think I can do it. I have to try.

To that end you are just going to have to get used to me talking about my spiritual journey. If you don’t like it, you aren’t alone. Most of my closest friends find my spiritual musings childish and tedious. But I have to give myself some peace. Sooner or later, if you are honest with yourself, you need to make amends with god if you are to have any hope of internal peace.

I have taken myself to a spiritual desert. I reside in the valley of the shadow of death. That’s where my homeless friends live. So that’s where I am called to be. I’m not going to be another person who abandons them in their hell on Earth.

I truly believe that there is only one way out of a living death. That’s through finding something bigger than yourself.

Taco Bell might keep me alive. But the Spiritual, Universal Connectedness is what will bring us all peace from the suffering of the circle of life.