When There is No Hope

The depths of despair that cause one to contemplate suicide is something you have to experience to understand.

Consolidation loans? What if your credit rating does not allow this? Home equity? Sure, unless the IRS and past litigants have liens on your house.

And then there are the phone calls. All hours of the day until about 10:00 pm. From dinner time to bed time there will be 30 calls. The dialing is automatic, just a computer doing its job. Then a machine will leave a message. The next morning there will be dozens of new messages. All the same: "please call us."

Every ring is a reminder of your situation. Every ring destroys your hope, ruins your marriage and fuels your fear: What if I can't get out from underneath this?

Like I said, all you have to do is make it look like an accident. You "lose control" on the highway going a little too fast. And insurance money comes and saves the day.

Lose their Daddy? What if they have "lost" their Daddy already? Years of living under pressure have changed Daddy, made him into something he is not. You have ceased being a Daddy, husband, son, brother, whatever. You look in the mirror and wonder what has happened to you.

And if everything is suddenly made right, it will be years before he can return to normal...whatever "normal" is now.

Thew, life is complicated. And sometimes it traps you. It is easy to say, you can do this or that, but sometimes you can't. You can't turn to friends or family tell them how things really are. You can't look to your wife for support becuase she is looking to you to solve the problem. You maintain a brave and solid exterior and die slowly inside.

At some point, I can understand that someone finally believes they are dead, but for the dying.

At that point, the dying part is easy.