Preventing suicide 45 years later

I came across someone the other day with whom I attended a certain highfalutin but compromised in so many ways Catholic Prep School many decades ago.

Back in the day, if I remember correctly, he was thrown into a tizzy by an IQ test we had to take. He had a most rare super-intelligence. He hated that for the reason that he knew enough to know that he had no idea about the most basic questions of human existence, about God, about our fallen human nature, about those who ought to know better being so freakishly corrupt. He wasn’t one to escape this realization like everyone else. His inability to escape and the overeagerness of others to escape both quite destroyed him. He was at a low point. He was scared. He had some suicidal ideation, which he found repulsive.

Mind you, he wasn’t exactly a loner. He was very, how to say, plugged in, situationally aware of people’s motivations. He didn’t know how to interact much because every situation would bring up innumerable questions. He was ruthlessly direct, so you couldn’t mistake any meaning, although entirely polite. But so many of the students, faculty, admin were so shallow, so self-referential. He himself was anything but self-absorbed. He was just terribly hungry for the truth. Who was going to provide answers for him?

I remember the scene. Of all inept people in the universe, he had targeted me, waiting for me near my locker in the corridor outside “The Seniors Room”, at the window, before the tunnel (circled in red above). There was no escape for me. He locked me into a conversation eyeball to eyeball where I had to count on my guardian angel for guidance. This was all about the spiritual life, theology, the meaning of life, every “why?”. He opened up about his struggles. He was superb at spilling his guts in mere minutes, with precise logic, with impossible conundrums, with interruptions from me. All between classes.

I’m quite sure he didn’t approach me because I was anything special or had anything figured out. It’s just that I wasn’t suicidal, and that, I think, amazed him. That’s what he wanted to know about.

Fuller picture: Some rumors about me that had spread throughout the school at the speed of light. I only know about those because of very many students asking me how I was doing, and that they were praying for me. They were all trying to be super tactful, all with great concern, some adding that they had heard about “it”, but that they really weren’t supposed to talk about “it.” I don’t know how “it” got out, whatever “it” was. I had been shot at almost uncountable times, bullets whizzing by my head, but I was never hit… so, whatever. Could that be “it”? Whatever… But that attitude of “Whatever…” was what this smart student wanted to know about. Instead of sympathizing with me about something for which I wasn’t seeking sympathy, he wanted to benefit from whatever was going on with me that provided a strength he wanted.

Now that I think about it, I’ve had discussions with uncountable suiciders over the decades, who didn’t go through with it, thanks be to God, or, years later, a couple of them did so. So sad.

This guy, I’m happy to report, is a world-class good-guy, as I think he always was. For years he’s been helping in his own way to reach into the darkest of the dark side and do lots of what ends up being suicide prevention because of preventing so very much evil from being perpetrated in the first place.

I’m not going to claim that I was able to help this guy back in the day, even as a mere sounding board. Dunno. But, whatever my ‘arguments’ were at the time, surely that’s not what he sought from me. I think he was just looking for someone who was willing to go on in life because of faith in the midst of adversity: someone is doing that… so why not me too? Something like that. Hope might seem elusive, the ol’ hoping against hope, or a thread of hope, but the thing about hope is that it’s actually a harness that’s really difficult to escape.

I think that kind of witnessing is something all of us can do, and I bet we do that much more than we might think. Guardian angels are good friends, helping to set up just such encounters in the first place. We don’t have to be smart. And however weak we might otherwise be, we just have to be faithful.