Dead men Talking

I was up late last night watching MSNB “Dead men Talking.” It’s a show about autopsies when people die under mysterious terms. I guess if you’re found dead somewhere, in the gutter, John Doe, overdoses, or something that looks like foul play, you are automatically given an autopsy. It got me to start thinking about my own death. I guess I was disturbed by the nineteen year old who committed suicide. He hung himself in his father garage. I watched as the Doctor examined his young body. How they looked for scars of past self injuries. How they checked his brain for natural diseases. How they explained that he was a very healthy person and it was such a waste. The kid was attractive. He just felt like a failure. He seemed to never get anything in his life right. He had many run-ins with the law, a strong criminal past, tried to get into the military but they wouldn’t let him join. I guess at nineteen he woke up and thought he had screwed up his life. Yet, he was only nineteen. I mean anything is possible when you are nineteen years old.

I understand suicide in a way. It’s a horrible mental affliction. The need to check out permanently. It’s a truly selfish act. Yet, it’s not rationale.

Sometimes life gets very dark and hard. Suicide is like giving God or the Universe the middle finger. It’s a belief that God or the Universe hates you. That your birth was an abomination. No one who commits suicide think that they are going to Heaven. Yes, in certain situations like what happened on 911 the people jumping out of the window so they could avoid a horrible burning death, maybe God forgives. Yet, I’m sure some religious fanatics would love to disagree.
Who knows what God wants? I mean there is the bible and self-righteous preachers but God really is a private relationship. God is selfish. We are said we are made in God’s image. I always say nobody can teach God, they can yell, they can threatened, they can beat you over the head with a Bible, but when I lay down at night, my relationship with God has nothing to do with what I know but what I feel.

When I was a kid in Church I never felt that God. I went to Sunday school, had so many unanswered questions that refused answers. Also, the God of my childhood seemed like the biggest hypocrite. I guess his followers were a bunch of evil bastards. The most evil I would see in my life. If my example of a God who teachers stole, lied, abused, but on Sunday decided to act holy than thou of course my perception of God would be extremely warped. I was also gay, so that really messed my mind up. I knew what I felt but was told how I should feel. I couldn’t understand why a God would make life so damn complicated for no sane reason. I eventually figured all the people around me were the problem. So I gave up on my childhood god.

I believe giving up on God or an idea of a God sent me into spiritual nightmare. I had suffered so much growing up, so I felt God or the universe hated me. If God hated me, I really hated me. And someone would say to themselves, how can anyone believe God hates them. Well there are many religions that teach God hates certain groups of people. They even stand outside their funerals and claim he or she who didn’t live by their rules is going to hell.

Why would there be a hell? Why would God bring a person into the world for such a short life and then punish them for eternity. That’s just sounds crazy and sardonic.
I believe my journey in this life is my challenge of a God. Sometimes I give up when it’s convenient. Sometimes I hate when I don’t get my way. Sometimes I feel like a spoil child with God. I just know there is a death. I guess God in a way is Death and the need to have some meaning to it.

As I watched “Dean men talking” I thought about each individual journey to it. There was a Muslim guy, a teenage girl murdered back in the 70s and her body found over twenty years later. There was a woman who suffered from mental illness and a young wannabe solider who committed suicide. In the end, how you go there is the same.

I also thought about the ninety something woman who died in her sleep. She had been married to her husband for over sixty years. He seemed floored and confused. They say when old lovers die, the other one is not too far behind. I guess life stop having meaning. God changes.
Funny to think that every single person on this planet has a different relationship with a different god. I mean we go to church for community but when I pray I’m not praying to John McCain’s god. When I pray I’m not even praying to my mother’s God. I pray to what I feel will help me. Sometimes it’s the devil. God can be so manipulative. Yet, I know I can’t hide anything from God. I can hide it from my neighbors and friends and family but not God. God is not a liar. God is the truth no matter how brutal.

My journey in this life is towards my own truth. Yes, sometimes that truth wasn’t so pretty so I considered killing myself. Sometimes the truth can be so difficult to accept that I find myself cutting myself in the bathroom drunk at five in the morning. Sometimes my journey is very angry and resentful. Yet, I always somehow learn to forgive myself.

I had a friend who once told me that I shouldn’t always accept everything about myself. I think not accepting yourself is Hell. I know it’s a struggle to accept my weight, height, eye color, job or stale life or sobriety, but it’s the challenge that makes me accept God. I mean, Death is real. It doesn’t matter if I die five hundred pounds over weight or anorexic, it’s the same outcome.
My God now is recovery. I have to wake everyday and pray to Buddha for piece of mind. I guess I messed up again this week, fell off the wagon, started the cutting again, did hardcore drugs and almost drank myself into a stupor. It’s funny, sometimes when I think I finally recovered I screw up again. The never ending battle. Yet, I understand why. I went out to a place I hadn’t gone in almost two years. Funny how the past seem to remember everything. I had to face me again. I didn’t like it. I was trying to explain to an old drinking buddy how I had changed. He started telling me that I used to be a mess. That I was evil and often hurtful. I started to feel insecure. So I drank. And then drank some more.

God I wish I would’ve never gone through the hell I created. Nobody liked that person, not even me. Yet, I was him. I got to accept him and all his flaws. I guess that’s what I liked about AA. I could go there and talk and not worry about being judged. I listen to everyone else’s story but refuse to listen to my own. My journey to God has become that of recovery. Sometimes I don’t know if I am ever going to make it or truly succeed. I see myself on “Dead me talking” having died of a stupid overdose or drank myself to death like that guy who died at 36 years old of serious liver damage. I know some people who say to themselves, shake their heads, and think the guy was a waste of human existence. I pray that he finally got peace. He had a reason to be here. The fact that I saw his story on TV, someone I don’t know, probably gave me another ten years on my life. Even him, the drunk, had a purpose. Even the kid who committed suicide had a purpose. Even the psychotic woman who overdosed on her mental medication had a purpose. Even the woman who live into her nineties and died in her sleep had a purpose. Even the teenage girl who was murdered and buried for twenty years had a purpose. It’s the story.
I know from what I’ve seen in life that there are four types of deaths. People either day heroes, villains, victims or survivors. I came pretty damn close to dying a victim. I was going to allow childhood abuse, molestation and abandonment lead to me to an early grave. That wasn’t until I decided to fight back. Of course I thought fighting back meant getting angry, cursing, fighting, becoming an asshole or whatever. Yet, the anger made me even more of a victim. The anger told me to close off relationship with anyone I thought I loved, admired or respected; even myself. I know that now. The anger is still there.

I know one thing for sure, I will not a die a victim but that takes recovering.
Even I the gay recovering alcoholic, sex and drug addict have a purpose. My purpose is that I tell the story as honest as I can like a spiritual autopsy. Death is the only truth. How we get there is the only truth. God is the journey. I’m not saying it’s easy. Most days I just want to drink, get high and have a bunch of sex. Yet, I sacrifice the temptation to be a better lover, friend, family member, writer, and human being. Today is a good day. I woke up sober, in my own bed, going to the gym, wrote this blog, will clean the apartment and be happy. It’s the good days that mean the most to me. I want to remember as many good days when I die as possible, that’s all I can ask from God.