10 Years Later

We're approaching the end of April and it just occurred to me that it has been a decade since I had made my suicide attempt. Hard to believe, because it doesn't seem *that* long ago. I was 17 at the time. I felt like I had absolutely no control over my life. My mind was constantly bombarded by doubt and self-loathing. Any hope of career aspirations or creative autonomy looked completely out of reach. Then the straw that broke the camel's back in the form of complete rejection and unrequited love. I was hospitalized from Tuesday evening to Friday afternoon. Good times.

It was pretty agonizing trying to recover from that ordeal. But with the help of treatment, faith, family, and a girl named Kayla, I was able to get through the year without any more incidents. I was very fortunate.

Hardships like these tend to open your eyes to certain things about yourself and the world around you. For example, my abandoned and comically inept attempt at suicide by garden hose. Play that scenario in your head for a few moments. Aspects of my humor are considerably darker and altogether different in their self-deprecation. I've never made light of anyone else's troubles with self-harm, but I can't help but laugh at how ridiculous mine was and has been. It does affect your perception of how others feel around you and makes you perhaps a little too sensitive toward others. There's a tennis game of raging pessimism and cynicism against idealistic Romanticism that's constantly going on in my soul. And yes, it is as verbose and convoluted in my head as it is in print. I make an effort to compartmentalize it to blogs, but it likes to bleed over onto facebook and some of my conversations. There's healing in being vulnerable and having candor. Solidarity has its benefits.

So there it is. Here's to a ten-year anniversary of a botched suicide attempt!

-L. Travis Hoffman

4/28/2015