December 18, 2003

Sometimes I write things that make people want to kill themselves. My close friend called me this evening from the psychiatric ward of the Grand River hospital where he was escorted this morning full of yearnings for death. Last night I made him hurt. Something I wrote pulverized his reality and made him want to exterminate all conscious thought in some dreadfully efficient way.

I inadvertently seem to hurt those people I care deeply about. Two years ago, in a fit of cruelty, I used words as knifes to shatter a girl’s mind, and I never forgave myself when she died. But after all this time, I still haven’t learned that people are bundles of vulnerability and that I can break something inside them.

Johnny Cash’s Hurt is rambling through my brain. I listened to it quite a few times today and each time it offered some new insight: “I will let you down … I will make you hurt.” At times I can be obscenely insensitive, my cruelty barely disguised by a veneer of friendliness. The inner beast I keep on a leash is not well behaved and often escapes into words and rips people’s hearts out of their sockets.

My friend’s telephone call reminded me that I have a huge impact on the lives of the people around me even without intending to. Lives are connected to other lives, and ripples of pain easily travel through this network of being. Too often I find myself at the epicentre of pain, with all my friends attempting suicide.

My friend sounded relaxed and energetic at the other end of the line. “It’s not you, it’s me,” he said. He told me about the interesting people he meet in the ward, and that he will be released in a day or two pumped full of antidepressants. I’m going by to visit him tomorrow and I’ll try to make amends for plunging him deeper into despair. Maybe I’ll bring him some sweets.