The Roulette Wheel

So I think I mentioned in my last post that things have really gone to shit around here.  That remains true and for me, it continues to get worse.  Someone else has been having a worse summer it seems and somehow I missed it.

Last Tuesday around 10pm, Jordan cut his wrists with the intent of killing himself in my bathroom.  Luckily we were having our regular Tuesday Night Social Club over here.  This is the first time we've ever had it at my place so he got lucky when he passed out and started calling my name half conscious.  Someone at the party heard him as he called for me.  My friend assumed it was just him needing toilet paper.  Obviously it wasn't.  After checking out what I was dealing with I went back into the front room to tell people to either help or quickly leave.  Cat jumped in and helped out. Cory took his wife home and caught up later.  I wrapped his arm up in a towel and helped him to the car.  He was really woozy from passing out at the sight of his own blood coming out of him. 

We got him silently to the hospital as quick as we could.  When we sat him down in the emergency room, he just seemed really defeated.  I filled out all his paperwork and they took him back. He was in the emergency room for about three hours.  All three of us were there the whole time.  We never left him till there just wasn't a reason for us to be there anymore.  He felt really stupid for failing to kill himself and for all the decisions he's made in the last couple months and most of his life.  He had fallen off the wagon. He was helpless and hopeless.  And he had low potassium it seems.

It was a really long and difficult night for everyone.  All three of us took it differently.  Cat went home and bawled her eyes out, Cory didn't get out of bed till lunch, and I, well, I had already had enough this summer.  It seems I was already at all limits.  My limit for stress, for anger, for disappointment.  For everything. Let me explain better: It's like when it's 105 outside.  105 sucks.  It's super hot.  You don't want to do anything.  You're sweating like crazy.  Then it's 110 and you stop giving a shit.  It still sucks.  It's still super hot.  You still don't want to do anything and you're still sweating like crazy.  That's kind of the idea I was trying to get across.    So all-in-all about this Jordan thing: It seems I'm doing pretty fucking well under the circumstances.  Probably shouldn't be I guess.  It's possible I'm still in emergency mode and it's also possible that what I stated earlier is true.  I just don't have anything left.

Yesterday his mom went to visit him and called me today.  As of Wednesday he was still reporting that he would finish the job as soon as they released him.  He is on medication.  Today (Thursday) when Ed and I went to visit him they had reported that he was going to be released tomorrow.  He was responding better to the medication and generally he seemed better.  They are looking at doing outpatient work with him and possibly someone to manage his finances.

As anyone would in my situation, I really don't want him to move back in.  As a friend, I don't have a choice.  As me, I don't have a choice.  He'll be back to living here when he gets out.  I have a feeling I'll have to draw a line sometime soon for my own mental and emotional safety.  Not looking forward to that.

Also not looking forward to my surgery in the next couple weeks but that's a story for another time.

I know this might seem like it's not something one should share publicly.  Jordan's right's to privacy and all that.  I have thought about that.  Considering he did this in such a public fashion and a lot of you guys really care about him, I decided this needed to be something I shared.  I hope that's something that makes sense. 

There's really nothing anyone can do to help but if you're the praying sort, pray for Jordan.  Pray for all my friends down here that are having to deal with this.  After all that, if you have any credit left over with god, go ahead and put one in for me too.  I can use all the help I can get these days.

If you have any questions or you just need/want to talk about this, just call me.  It's a lot easier to answer questions over the phone.  And it's ok if you want to call and talk just for yourself.  All kinds of people have all kinds of reactions to stuff like this.  Hell...my fucking dad was crying when I told him about it.  He didn't realize I had essentially done this a dozen times already when I was working in Oak Cliff.  Not to this degree, of course, but I HAD taken about a client a month to the hospital because they would have killed themselves otherwise.  I don't think he quite understood how I could do that for a year and a half and it overwhelmed him.  Anyway...if you need to call or talk to someone, might as well be me.  :)

Thanks for being on the other side of all this crazy crap I spew out every month or so.  Sorry it's been so bad lately.  Not all that much I can do about it.

Tommy "Nothing else to say" Schubert

So the last couple years I have been slowly building something awesome.  An awesome job, an awesome time with AFFD, and I had just put in the final piece: an awesome girlfriend.  In the last three months all of those things have been crumbled before my eyes.  That's not the worst of it.  It gets better.  Each of them has been been rubbed in my face in the last week.  With ire. 

You all know about what happened with Melanie, how important she was to me, and how much it hurt.  No need to go over that one again.  But the rub in the face?  About an hour ago I got a call from a good friend warning me about a text I was about to get.  She is seeing someone else already.  Ahhh.  Gotta love how that shit works.  No matter what they say, you just can't trust someone doing the breaking up.  All they're saying is something to make you feel better no matter how futile the effort is.  You're just not good enough for them.  Gotta love it.  They don't actually care as much as you thought they did.

AFFD was pretty awesome this year but completely exhausting.  Completely.  During the festival I had all kinds of unavailable women enjoying my humor and company only to reveal after the festival itself was over that they were unavailable.  Festival had a bit of a cloudy lining, wasn't expecting that and it left a sour taste in my mouth.  Otherwise though, it went flawlessly.  Here's the face rub:  Just a couple days ago the programmer of the festival rage quit in a two thousand word email.  I know a lot of you guys don't quite know what that means.  Essentially it just caused such huge waves that the festival will probably never be the same again.  Might not even have one next year.  Just got my portion of the festival right where I want it, and then all this shit.

So you already knew work was getting fucked up when mom quit.  That was a pretty big deal and, in case you missed the timing, the final decision happened within a week of the breakup.  Well...yes, within a week of getting my face rubbed in the break up, I got my face rubbed in my new situation at work.  It is going to be fucked up even more than I was thinking.  I just got the word that they hired the one person I specifically suggested them not to hire.  This means we'll have a technical theatre teacher who literally knows nothing about technical theatre.  A kid is going to get hurt and probably hurt bad.  Not only that, the guy is completely wrapped around the bitch that started all this's finger.  It's going to be hard for me to actually go to work now, let alone enjoy my job.  People are so pissed around there (not just me) that we have parents quitting their booster positions and already had our fine arts vice principal transfer. 

Anyway.  Yeah.  Things have really been going to shit around here.  Right now I feel like nothing is going to go my way and probably won't for a while.  I'm in a constant state of choked up in the last couple days and I'm surprised the text from Mel I got a couple hours ago didn't break me.  I will not let this bullshit break me.  I've been stronger than everything else that's come before and no matter how many things life throws at me or how much they hurt, none of this will beat me.  None of it.

Tommy "be strong you little fuck, be strong" Schubert