The weekend was off to a fine start…
and then I got a message through Facebook’s “Messenger” app from someone whose name I did not know. I read the message and it simply asked if I was “the Kenny that used to be with Phil S”? Not clear to either of us at that time, the suicide of a past partner is discovered soon from a stranger’s continuing messages and the weekend shift begins. I felt I had to write to get this off my chest…
I knew immediately who this person was asking about. I’ve only had 2 long term relationships in my life. I’ve had 4 “relationships”, but two of those were less than a year in total each. “Phil S” was the first truly “long term”, and that ran from 1991-1996. Out of those 5 years, 2 were mostly happy, and the last 3 were spent trying to figure out how to end it, as I’d discovered cheating and lying among the regular sets of habits I did not care for too much. We did not end as enemies, but I can’t say we were truly great friends either in the long run. I met Ed two years later and we’ll celebrate 21 years together in November of this year, 2019. At 53 years of age, my time with Ed is nearly half my life with the same person.
Phil & I would touch base off & on over time, even after Ed & I’d moved to Austin. As with many people you meet in your life, there were personality quirks that were just inherently “Phil”, you either accepted them or you didn’t. I knew enough of him to know that he’d had some trouble in his past that he wasn’t super proud of but again, like most people, I think made a series of really bad choices for a variety of reasons and ended up in the worst possible place. Little did I know how true that statement would be in the long run.
After a few discussions online in the early 2010’s, I realized I did not desire the negativity he displayed in any kind of regular dose anymore, and that I found him to be very negative. So on social media, I blocked him. Every once in a while I’d remove his name from the block list and go see what I could see on his page, and noticed around 2016 or so that there was no new information. I had assumed that he either blocked me or had started a new page, knowing that the last time I’d talked with him he was still in the relationship he’d started after I left, and seemed to be up for a good move in his work life. I remember feeling a sense of gladness for him that things settled for him in one way or another.
My first discovery, the passing on….
But at some time, I believe in 2016, I did this search again, and I found his obituary. I discovered that he had passed away in October 2014. It was sad for me to hear, and of course, due to the nature of our relationship, I did have a curiosity as to what had happened. He’s seemed to always be in relatively good health. I could find nothing, and there were no common bonds with any of the people I’d known from his friends from when we ran around together. Over the few years, it got filed away as something that I thought I’d never find out about. Being relatively healthy and except for the known issues, I knew that nothing I was going through was able to be attributed to him or that time together.
I responded to the new post and after the common discussion regarding Phil’s passing, this gentleman asked if I’d known what caused his death. I told him I did not, and he discussed the thought of “digging deeper” on his own. And he did, and later that same night, I got word from him that through his inquiring to others attached to Phil’s name, he had found that Phil had actually committed suicide.
I was sitting at a counter at a dog client’s house and physically felt myself starting to reel…and told the writer that I had to get up for a few minutes.
I did, and walked around that room for several minutes, just trying to place all of this information into a sane place of reality… someone that I had spent that much time with and had been that close to had chosen to take their own life…and I could not put it all together at the time.
I have found out nothing else about it; the method, I don’t want to know, and I have my own theories as to how and probably why, and there are a million realities loose in my head upon hearing this news… and I was very sad to say that while I was shocked, I was not surprised in the long run.
It was sad to have the mental imagery of the person I knew ever getting to a place where they were so alone and without someone to talk to that they went to “that place”; because after having spent many hours in “that place” myself, I know what a lonely and scary station that is. I ended up with scenario after scenario in my head and it all led to sadness.
The plot thickens and true character still stays..
However the next few hours brought other information…. and my sadness lept to an angry place very quickly.
One of the *worst* of his habits was a devious and seemingly unending need to have a schuyster type character run a lot of his internal activities… patterns of using different names, never in a good place to be and deceit was a common practice for him. Without great detail, I’ll tell you it was enough that had landed him in prison prior to our meeting; something I didn’t know about until a good 6 months in. It was a pretty major theft of funds, and even though 10 months (of a 5-year sentence) was served, this was something he seemed to never get away from. Almost as if he couldn’t stop.
Over the course of the next day, the new friend and I started exchanging some information and it became very clear that the “little things” i looked past and away from during our time together were much bigger than I ever thought. Names and stories now suddenly clicked and even a person that I thought was a pure figment of his imagination turned out to be someone real – someone who’s name he used long after that particular relationship had ended.
The biggest bomb of this was as the new friend looked up addresses that were known to him to belong to Phil AFTER our time together had come to a stop now included MY name attached to his; a combination of my first name and his last name, which was the practice I’d seen him do several times before – a twisting of names and/or letters to create a new public record of a person…and I must tell you that any and all sympathies I had been feeling for him came to a screeching stop and were replaced by intense anger.
HOW could he do that to someone who’d given 5 years to him? How could he do that to anyone? And now, because of what he’d done to “leave”, there was no one to ask any questions to, no one to inquire anything about and no one to truly direct this anger to as well.
I have been experiencing some physical issues with my legs, ankles, and feet. Therapy seemed to be helping those issues out. However, this news sent wave after wave of stress and anger through my body. By Friday night, the lower half of my body seemed to feel as if it had been pulled into a wringer and was in worse pain than it had been in a good deal of time.
ΩThree days have passed now and I’m dealing with the information a bit better, but I’m still angry. I quell any thoughts of forgiveness or compassion at the immediate moment. I feel “better” about it tonight than I did 3 days ago, but its something that more than likely is going to stay with me for a bit…
Moving forward…
I realized that even in his death, he revealed more in his own selfishness of whatever the issues were than for regard of others. That is truly what broke us up in the beginning anyway; so why should it not be that way now? Ideally, in 24 years the facts should show we are better now, in both our treatment of ourselves and others. And while I know that anyone who is on the brink of suicide doesn’t think of these things rationally and that the feelings of others certainly is not paramount on your mind – it is regardless the lingering effect of the act.
I am sure the anger will pass in time, and I’m also sure that I will look into whatever I can to make sure that he did not obtain anything under my name or under a ruse of such. But I also hope that he is somehow at peace. And that is the difference between the two of us.
DON’T BE A STATISTIC
Help is available at any of these links:
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.or
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention/index.shtml