The Spectrum

Dear Queens,

Now don't get me wrong, pain is relative. The amount of pain we're holding, sure it's on a spectrum. But you can't minimize it to me, and you know I won't let you. You can never minimize yourself to me, because you are all I know and we are everything.

What I am trying to say here, is that each time we find ourselves in crisis, I notice how we get out of it. We are always getting better at getting out of it. Each time we are falling, there's this little window, this little ledge that we can grab and then we are back. But we are not just back. We are better. We have all of our experiences added up and we are growing.

Today I got my first suicide note in the mail. From a stranger. He asked me to do some things for him, and told me not to worry about him, because by the time I got his letter, he would be gone. What could I do? I called Bret. He checked the website. Told me he didn't make it out. Told me the guy had been relocated to Graterford, probably some special needs mental health unit. I tried to take some comfort in that, but the problem is I know that it means nothing. I know that Secure Special Needs Unit means nothing and sometimes it means worse than nothing.

I wrote a letter to his brother cause he asked me to, then I wrote the guy back. And then I went downstairs to the photocopy machine and made a copy of my response. I wrote on the top of my letter "Sample Response to Suicide Note" so the next time someone says the words, "I just got a suicide note, like, I'm not sure how to respond", I will walk over to the file cabinet, and I will pull out my letter, and I will say, "here is what I did. Here is all I could think to do at the time but try to bring yourself to it, okay? Are you going to sign your name? If you don't think you can follow up with this person, try giving the letter to someone else or put it back in the mailbox. What do you think you should do? Do you have any ideas?"

It's hard to know. It's hard to know what to do when a stranger writes you a suicide note, and it feels insane to put my response in a file cabinet. Absolutely insane. As if we have a text book here. As if we have a process for this. But maybe the practice, the practice is what makes it all possible. For us to fall and then come back. We're getting so good at practicing falling and then coming back that it's impossible for me not to believe.

Love,
A