a word on suicidality.

a prayer for the black dog + the birthing of the third thing

it’s become clearer to me over time that i am here to be a researcher. there have always been elements of this in my personality/skillsets/inherent-ness, since i was a kid. but/and, to be asked by the Wordless to Make Words. to Make Words about what there are No Words For. to write from inside the violence, the bleakness. to report back, to pass through. that is what the Angel; for wrestling is about. what, Apparently, whether i like it or not, whether i think i can survive it or not— I, am about.

if you’ve been through hell and back make sure you get back to tell your story.

this is the video i edited for my 2016 (and first ever) art installation, go slowly, see miracles. it is a precious artifact of the beginning of my ‘mental health’ journey— that life-changing winter of my first Descent, 2015 into 2016, into spring— the places and people and images and Feelings that were a part of it. that whole installation was really about that— and it’s jumping in here because of that quote i scrawled in sharpie over the entrance-way about getting back to tell your story. i’ve said many times, i think, at this point— i like to think, 10 years out from those days, that I Am Recovered. // rather, i’ve needed to make new meanings and associations of what recovery, what aliveness, what health/wellness, mean to someone like me.

suicidality is incredibly Personal. this is My Own conception of it. it’s few and far between you fall into those cracks in which people recognize suicidality as the alchemical coincidentia oppositorum, the tension of seemingly irreconcilable opposites that carries the potentiality to birth The Third Thing. in this past round of this feeling returning to me, i decided to be more vocal about it than maybe i ever have— txting a bunch of different people, and even divulging it on an email chain associated with an event i’m co-facilitating, today. // how do people receive this information? it’s something so big and so disturbing. i’m not mentioning it for dramatic effect; i’m mentioning it because it’s True.

and if there’s another thing i feel like i’m Here to do // it’s to make visible these sediments of the underground river. the river that moves in me no matter where i go and what i do. this is not a mistake, this is not a misfiring of brain chemicals, this is not my ‘disorder’ or ‘disease,’ this is not my family inheritance. this is an ecosystemical response that requires my Attention. this is contextual. this is Of the landscape. this is— for a person who has So Much Challenge in recognizing when enough is enough— this is, with once-and-for-all-ness— Enough.

suicidality is alchemical, shamanic. it is a feeling that, if we could Work with it— can tell us things we wouldn’t otherwise know. it isn’t inherently wrong. it isn’t Anti-Life, necessarily. it is actually, paradoxically, a movement Towards life— through and via something that needs to die, in order for us to Live. i’ve said over and over— we concretize the metaphor. we think that We need to die. our selfhood, our body, our entirety. but it is holding that alchemical tension long enough to listen to what is Under— to find out what is speaking to you Through this feeling. to find what needs Listening to. to find what needs Help.

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all fucking easier said than done. easier said than done. one year ago, later this month, one of my most cherished friends, an incredibly talented poet, community-gatherer, peer supporter and mental health advocate— chose to exit this world.

suicidality is not about being loved, or knowing you are loved. he was one of the most loved and loving people i have ever encountered. that was one of the reasons why i couldn’t, ultimately, attend his wake, even though i was spreading information about it to all of our old and far-reaching friends. i recognized it would be like attending my own funeral— the one i often visualized when i contemplated ending my life. it would be All Of Those People— who love me so fucking much— and that’s as far as i could go. that’s as far as i got. //

suicidality is not about not being loved. for me, At Least. //

it’s about entrapment.

it’s about the way these rhizomes of grief move and web and connect to each other. it’s the way that webbing pins us in the feeling of, truly, No Escape. it is not something to think out of— for me, it makes it so much worse. i am so cerebral, i spin and spin and spin in my head. and All The Ways Out seem impossible; here Again, is context— how could this Ever be, just about ‘brain chemicals,’ about ‘mental illness’? when we are living in places that deeply trigger us. when we have the same emotional occurrences happening over and over. when we are struck and hacked down by shame. when we lack the resources to change our situation and have tried before and have no idea what could possibly work this time— when we are exhausted from trying. the walls close in, the world becomes, as i wrote in my early twenties— ‘a room with four walls and no exit;’ the Extremity of the feeling is echoed by an Extremity of response. dying is the only solution to entrapment so pervasive. perhaps that is what it has Become for me, now— not just about Pain— the pain that it was about, before—

the things that seem to Help it— are allowing yourself to be dropped into a different context. and not fucking thinking about it; honestly.

back then, in late winter/early spring 2016, it was my ex i had been seeking shelter with pushing me to go and do the babysitting gig i had no idea how i was going to navigate or handle. 2 children? and i can’t even take care of myself? and yet, There I Was. and i remember, after that span of hours i was with the children— i felt like a person again. for the first time in so many, many weeks.

it is similar to how i felt yesterday. though i felt like i was going to puke on the way there; almost decided to go home after i first arrived— i allowed myself to drop in as a fill-in guest for IRL rehearsal with my old theatre company. and for that span of hours, i was just Existing. i was a Person. i remembered the passion play i had been in from 2019-2021. i sang the songs. i took the directions. i laughed. i ate. i reminisced. i was a Person. i was a Person.

is my living or financial situation resolved? am i closer to knowing what ‘the next step’ is? do i feel differently about the squeezepoints of living so energetically close to my parents, to the pressures of my brother’s visit, the liltings around my dad’s birthday? something has changed; intangibly, Tangible.

the morning after the black dog sat with me i chose to dump myself into one visible-making thing after another. the complete opposite of how i would usually retract in shame-spiral in meeting these feelings. i had changed the quality of the net, the webbing— i had let A Lot of people know, instead of just an ex or one close friend. i went to yoga, in person. my tagline: i had a horrible night last night; so that’s why i’m here. then i went to the school of mythopoetics council space and spoke directly into what was going on, and cried. then i went to the wild matryoshka’s story space— which of course aligned with it being the story of persephone, my god— got to write, and cry, and receive.

the black dog Exists. i don’t want to make him Not exist.

he is a messenger. not unlike my black wolf; bringing underworld-consciousness; my guide.

yet he is Sharper. more anubis-like. the jackal engraved on the smooth dark pebble i chose for myself as a kid, upstate. i still have it, along with the other one i chose, somehow scrying my later fate(s)— the labyrinth. or a triple goddess spiral. who’s to say?

for a person like me who has Deep Challenge in knowing when Enough Is Enough— how can my experience of suicidality be a harbinger of that? be a threshold guardian, be a dark herald? how can i Notice This— Receive the information— and instead of being struck down by Shame, and spiralling into retreat, and more hopelessness, and more dead-ended stories, and rooms with four walls and no door— how can i recognize the force of the Violence— not direct it at those around me— not direct it at myself— not channel it into some compulsive or intense reaction like bingeing food or walking in dangerous places or continuing to ruminate, cerebralize, punish, flow in ways with this hard-edged frenetic energy— how can i Recognize the reasons why folks in crisis are given Containment— containment so often in Harmful ways— how can i recognize i need a night in my tent, or sleeping on the floor, or in a nest of blankets, back to basics— bringing all my sacred things around to watch over me, running my fingers over different textures, focusing on sensation, focusing on the smoothness of the little blue ceramic bird or the stone or the stick or the earth and letting my mind just drop out of the picture entirely? …

It Helps To Have People Who Can Hold This With You. who will not sound the alarms. who will Trust you. who will not over-care for you. who understand the Complexity of the factors, of the alchemy, of the landscape, of the potentiality of the Birthing of the third thing. it is not just Helpful it is Life-Saving. Life-Giving. to have spaces you can go to just Be. to not have to explain what is happening. to not even have to think about what is happening. to be Visible. be Seen. to move your body. to cry. to Receive. this is why it is so important to hold space. to familiarize yourself with where space is being held. recognize those people and places with which you feel Safe; know where they are.

after choosing not to be vax’d in 2021 and having my entire city of origin close towards me, in 2025 i am still uncovering the emotional repercussions of betrayal and broken Trust. many friends left NYC. i no longer am doing the work i used to be doing. by necessity i folded inward to my immediate family, to my exes, to my one friend on-the-ground, here. and i leaned in, Hard, to the people who could be with my depth, my sensitivity, my emotional roilings, my mythic sensibility— online.

we all know it is hard to make new friends as an adult. especially an adult with neurodivergence or high sensitivity or trauma-history or Fear or distrust or strange body realities. the Courage it takes to put yourself in Any kind of room, with strangers— online or in-person. but for me, Remembering how to do that, in person. has been very Present with me. it is not about abandoning my online works, my online communities. but bringing more of the IRL into balance. when it comes to crisis moments in which i literally need to get out of this house in order to live another day— i need more options of places to go. couches or floors to sleep on. safe places to go.

i think so much about respite houses and wanting to Be that, for people. wishing that someday This physical house that is my family home could Be that, for people. and in the meantime leaning into the tabernacling of it. a safe place that folds out and then folds in.

i think so much about these pain-points arising in me of Not Being Able To Continue In The Way I Have Been Living— and how it’s not about killing myself; it’s about listening for that third thing. if i am a person Staying Here and Staying Alive in order to be a tender shepherd for a new-old culture— i need to lean into the pain-points that are actually leading me further into that culture. showing me that letting my fear ‘win’ isn’t going to work. that ending my story impoverished and isolated in my family home out of guilt and hopelessness isn’t going to work.

if i want to live into new-old ways of community. if i want to continue giving myself A Chance. if i love myself enough to lean into my fears instead of Die.

this is what the black dog is bringing.

this is what the black dog is about.

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thanks for reading.

and please know— if you are struggling with suicidality or crisis, i am always a place you can come to, to be Held and Witnessed. just get in touch. no questions asked.

fotos from sometime 2015 into 2016.

edit///// as an afterthought while just txting a friend about this piece:

the ‘death in service to life’ energy can Also definitely be co-opted by malevolent forces, so discernment is crucial, and discernment comes Over Time (knowing who/what you Are, and who/what you Are Not). ie: if the black dog is telling you emphatically to jump off a bridge or grab that knife-handle, it’s probably not actually the black dog. it’s Something Else. (see my post on the predator energy.) […] it’s Real out here, y’all.