chapter 1

 Five years ago, I was standing in my kitchen, laptop open to facebook when I saw the message come in.  A friend's son had taken his own life - after struggling for years with mental health and sexual identity while navigating unleashed potential for singing, dancing, and acting.  

At the funeral, his brother floated the idea that we were all sharing in his brother's pain, instead of his brother carrying it all - a message I reflect on five years later.  Is that what suicide is - a dividing of the pain to relieve the person carrying it?  Do I believe this, or does it just make me feel better?  Despite the best of religious upbringing and doctrination, I didn't know if I believed suicide was wrong, or a waste, or selfish, or (what I more deeply suspected) a judgement on us all for not protecting those around us.

Five years ago, this young man's dad was married to his second wife - in a marriage that I thought had its ups and downs, tangled as we all were in blended families - and navigated his grief alongside her and the boy's mother.  I often marvelled at his practicality admist so much pain.  I imagined my pain, in a similar situation, more like the mother's  - ugly and messy and pulsating - while he stoically and practically navigated his grief.  Or like the step-mother's - tray after tray of food, moving into servitude to find a role for herself, all the while questioning and grieving differently, but just as whole heartedly, as his biological parents.  I thought of my own step-son, still a mess of drug addiction and mental health issues, and worried.

Five years ago, I was still attending church.  I knew the songs I was singing were stupid and nonsensical and I was struggling with my faith in a way that made me uncomfortable in the building.  I rolled my eyes during communal prayer and often double checked verses used against me in some controlling way.  The young man who died grew up in a church, too, and was failed by us.  His name, pulled from a Bible story about a young man who resisted, made me wonder if any of us have a fighting chance.  I wanted so badly for God to be a real thing.