Stronger Than Your Pain (eBook)

Chapter 0

Shirley and the Wolfe

There I was, yet again. Standing in my room by myself, contemplating my existence. This time was different, though. The contemplation had expanded beyond thought and into action - into life. The irony was that with the life I was giving to the thoughts was leading to the death of me.

I stared into a mirror I had shattered days, maybe weeks prior. At this point I had lost track of time - same crap, different day mentality. As I stared into the mirror, I realized how well it was doing its job. Its shattered and splintered appearance reflected my shattered and splintered soul. I stared and wondered how much more I was going to take, how much more I could take, how much more hell could I continue to live through.

Like I said, the irony of giving life to my thoughts as action was that the action was to take my life. That action was me testing the boundaries, finding out just how far I could take it and if I could, in fact, do it. Looking into the shattered mirror that so closely resembled the inner workings of what was left of me, I could see my left arm cut, blood dripping down my forearm and off my fingers. I could see the knife in my right hand that had given life to the thoughts I had so frequently over the last year or so. I was passing my test - could I do it? I was well on my way as I started up at the top of my forearm, slowly cutting deeper and lower on my arm to push myself. The physical pain of cutting had provided me with a temporary release of the emotional and spiritual pain I had been dealing with for what seemed like a lifetime. And for once, I finally felt like I was in control of something - my life and the ending of it. Until now, everything felt out of control. Nothing made sense, nothing seemed to matter. But finally, with a knife in hand, I had the control to do something, something that finally made sense - a sweet release from this painful life that I was forced into.

I looked back into the fragmented mirror - “How did I get here? How has this happened to me?” This is not what I thought life was supposed to be like. This was certainly not the life that I saw for myself. This was not even the trajectory I was on! Just two years ago, life was great! I was a freshman in high school and in with the popular kids. I was the guy that the other guys wanted to be - I made varsity lacrosse my freshman year and was the only freshman to do it that year. Of course, that made me cooler than anything (at least I felt that way). I was getting older girls, hanging out with the older guys, and going to all the parties. To top it off, I had a 4.0 my first year in and was expecting to do the same my sophomore year. My life felt like a movie and I was the star. But in life, you can be a shooting star or a falling star, and I turned out to be the latter.

As I continued to put blade to flesh for the sake of feeling something more than emotional absence, my girlfriend walked in. Even with the look of absolute horror on her face, she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes on - my guardian angel. This is why she was the one who could get me to do anything or stop me from doing anything. It was this love for her and the realization of the pain I was inflicting on her through this horrific act of self harm that got me to stop. I think it’s safe to say that it was around this time that I had hit rock bottom.

About two years prior to me acting on the idea and temptation of taking my life, the life of my grandmother was taken. She died of cancer, the four-letter word that too many of us are all too familiar with. Cancer is a cruel mistress. She sneaks up on you. She doesn’t care about your situation, your life plans, or your ambitions. She attacks, sometimes without a trace, until you find her living in every corner of your body, literally sucking the life out of you. She looks you dead in the eye, brings you in for a warm embrace, only to stab you in the gut with a dull rusty blade, slowly twisting the knife until you can no longer stand the pain. Then she watches you while you bleed out on the loved ones trying to save you. This is how I felt watching my grandmother slowly slip into the hands of death. It was this painful experience of watching the life of someone I loved, cherished, and adored be ripped from me without sympathy that sent me spiraling downward into a personal hell I almost didn’t escape. But, as you can tell from my name on this book, I did. I’m one of the fortunate ones.

My grandmother, Shirley, was a saint in my eyes. That’s actually why, after her passing, I immortalized her in my first tattoo, represented by the Mother Mary. Mother Mary was pure, kind, chosen, and gave life to beauty. That was my grandmother to me. She represented those things and more. She was a beautiful warrior who lived up to her maiden name, Wolfe. She led her pack with ferocity and love. Above Mary on my tattoo, however, is the Grim Reaper, which, of course, represents death. He hovers over the top of Mary to remind me that no matter who you are, how pure you are, how much good you do, death will always find you - always reap when it’s his time. At least, that’s what it used to mean…

Shirley had been in my life since I could remember. Even now when we watch old family videos, she’s there. She’s pushing me on swings, putting together my Christmas toys, and helping me play with her dogs. In my memories, she’s there teaching me how to sew, how to cook (all I remember how to cook is her “scrud” as we would call it), and how to lead. She was fiery, and when she wanted to get something done, you better get out of her way because she was coming for it and there was nothing that was going to stop her. Like I said, she lived up to the Wolfe name (both in the German ferocity and that of the wild dog). My dad got that quality from her. I like to think that I did too. It’s those things that we inherit from others that help us immortalize them after they’ve gone.

Shirley meant a lot to me. And that meaning continued to grow as I did. When I was about 10, my dad moved her (his mom) and his dad out to California from Texas so that he could be closer to them as they aged. My dad is a sweet man like that, especially with his family. With them closer, we saw them all the time. They ended up moving just 10 minutes away from us. We saw them almost every weekend, did family trips, and really made them feel less like an extension of our family and more like our direct family. At least that’s how it felt to me. Maybe that’s part of why it hurt me so badly when she died.

The happy life I was living up to this point, which was until I was 16, was about to come to an abrupt halt. My family was having a gathering of some sort and all the kids were playing in the backyard. As my grandparents pulled up, I went out to greet them and say hello. When I did, I noticed my grandmother had a Band-Aid on her right shoulder. When I asked what it was, she told me it was nothing and urged me to go back to playing, which, of course, I did. I was 16. How was I supposed to know that something as simple as a bandaid could mean something as urgent as cancer? But, unfortunately, that’s exactly what it meant. And it wasn’t just cancer, it was stage four melanoma. I was about to find out real quick just what that meant. My playing days were ending.

I should mention that death has always been hard for me to handle. When I was eight, my babysitter, who lived down the street from us, died. One morning, she just didn’t wake up. I remember them initially thinking that she had suffocated in her pillow. It was the last time I used a pillow until they found the actual source of her passing - a blood clot in her brain. My mom and I were in Spain at the time visiting her sister. I can still see us in our hotel, hear my mom on the phone with my dad as he told her the news, and feel her sadness as she broke down into tears. I had no idea what to do, but I remember holding her and telling her she was in a better place. Why I said that - I do not know. I was eight and knew nothing about what happened after we died. Maybe I said it because I had just finished my “first communion.” I put that in quotations because we definitely were not religious. Perhaps I felt like a religious answer might comfort my mom. But it was then that death first started consuming my thoughts. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Where do we go when we die? I was only eight, but my search for purpose in and of life began here.

The intrigue of death continued as I went through elementary school. I never forgot about my babysitter and how she just up and died. It alarmed me that we could all up and die just the same. I couldn’t comprehend how one could go to bed one night “perfectly fine” and just not wake up. It fascinated and tormented me at the same time.

Then 9/11 happened. I can remember exactly where I was, who was with me, and how I felt. I know the entire world felt that way. What shocked me though, was that people were having to decide to be burned alive or jump to their death. Those decisions were something that I couldn’t comprehend. I still can’t. It seared the image of the falling man into my brain. The sounds of people hitting the buildings around the news casters is something I can still hear, and I wasn’t even there. The world will never forget the impact of 9/11, and it certainly left a lasting impression on me.

Then, when I was 11, our fifth-grade teacher gave us an assignment to write something we were passionate about. Some of my fellow students wrote about their dogs, the ocean, or the majestic animals they loved. Not me. I wrote about death. I actually entitled it DEATH....