Prosecuting The Victim, Gender Biases, and The Psychological Impact of Injustice

Chapter 1: Suicide Awareness and the End of Hope

I kept thinking about the loss of hope for me. It was December 11, 2019, when suicide became the only idea that was on my mind. As Anne Sexton said in 'Wanting to Die,' 

"But suicides speak in a special language
Like carpenters, they want to know which tools
They never ask why build." 

I was no longer asking why build. I had the clearest sense of purpose in my life. I didn't want anyone to know what I was going to do. The tools were pills... either that or a slip noose that I would have to hang somewhere. On this particular night, my planning was not clear. I had started drinking rum, a good enough alcoholic beverage to help me get the nerve up to do this. 

"There is nothing that can be done now," they said. It seemed like they were speaking about my fate and all my hopes and dreams. My thinking wasn't entirely clear but I heard that there was nothing that could be done. 

Dear reader, do you care to know what it is for which nothing can be done? Do you care? As I write this my mind drifts back to these moments on December 11, 2019. I have not met some of my current friends. So, my perception of the world during this time is that it is exceedingly dark, cold, and devoid of human compassion. 

This is the true story that an editor for a horror magazine didn't want me to write. The editor thought I was giving a green light to suicide and so I was encouraged to write something different. 

To be honest, people are still wanting me to write something different. Or they want me to think and do things differently. They make arguments that they cannot defend because they are not me and they have not seen what I have seen. It seems that they would prefer not to look and that is fine. Yet, do you want to cheer me up or persuade me without listening to me?

Anyway, it's December 11 and I am now taking the pills. 

Oh, I need to tell my ex-wife how sorry I am for inviting her to come to America. She was going to be a doctor and would have been a doctor and perhaps living a happy life in Iran. 

Let's see if I can explain to Elee how bad I feel. I begin the text with an apology for what she gave up to be with me.  I am explaining how she will find out that I am not alive any longer. 

She won't find this out until after I am dead. 

My planning was not so good as I did this. Before I knew it I heard a knock at the door. It was the police. I rambled on a bit about what had happened to me many years ago and how it wasn't possible now that anything can be done to remedy this problem. This isn't the best strategy if one really wants to die. Maybe I was ambivalent. 

Maybe part of me wanted to believe that something could be done. 

This was before I saw the TV movie about Ted Bundy entitled "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile." Maybe you, dear reader, will understand in the reading of this story that what Ana did to me was extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile. For to destroy the life, the hopes and dreams of someone for as long as they will live is an act that is evil beyond imagination. 

I had been victimized by Ana who physically attacked me in a brutal and bloody assault years ago but her greatest and most vile deed was to lie and tell the police that I attacked her. My belief was that no one understood this deed to be vile and shockingly evil and that is why I was suicidal. 

The feeling of not being understood made me want to die. That might seem strange but a child will experience a failure to thrive and can die if there is no human connection. I was feeling these same things before and for a while after my failed suicide attempt. 

I sat in the Emergency Department thinking of things that I would tell the people from the psychiatry department when they come. I had worked in this capacity myself years ago. I had been asked to evaluate if a person is indeed an ongoing suicide risk. So, I knew how to persuade them that I was not suicidal. 

If people keep finding out that I am suicidal they will keep trying to stop me. That won't work so well. Hanging myself would have been more certain to achieve my goal. I wasn't sure how to pull that off, though. 

When the lady spoke to me, a psychiatric resident, I said that what I took would not kill me. It wasn't a lethal dose. I wasn't explaining the part that I hadn't yet gotten to that point. I was reasoning that someone like me would know what a lethal dose was and that she would know that what they discovered in my blood was not a lethal dose. 

So, we can just send me home, right?

Nope. She announced the words I had used years earlier. I hadn't wanted anyone I met in the Emergency Room to die. I had believed that there was always hope and that I could help with emotional distress. 

This was before the entire incident in 2004 when I was victimized and then told year after year for the next 15 years that nothing could be done.

Nothing can be done. Deal with it! That's what I was doing. Part of me wanted to ask someone if they would understand why I was doing this and wouldn't it be an act of mercy to let me die? 

I understand this is a hard sell. But if nothing can be done? Don't you get it? The injustice affects every aspect of my life. And it's not I that will bring up the topic. Should I seek volunteer opportunities and jobs, they will do a background check and it will appear that I was the perpetrator when in fact I was the victim.

And nothing can be done. 

By Friday evening, I was being checked into the Neuroscience Unit of the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill. 

I had a mixture of feelings. I remember restlessness. I was pacing constantly. I was shy and didn't want to stand out and get the attention of others or to be noticed. It was just embarrassing to be walking past the nursing station or using the hallways on the unit for pacing/exercise to try to cope with the anxiety and restlessness that I was feeling.

No, exercise was not a sign that I had hopes and plans for a healthy future. It was the weekend and not much in the way of activities were ongoing over the weekend. They had some groups and there were times when all the patients came out and socialized. 

I would come to realize later that I was more sociable than I had imagined. 

When I met with the doctors over the weekend, I didn't try to offer them an excuse as to why I should be released right away. 

The darkness of my mind began to take hold of my thoughts. I couldn't sleep. I was too restless. I was sitting in front of the nurse's station at one of the tables where the people sit for any of the three daily meals. 

Whatever flicker of hope might have crossed my mind over the weekend was fading. I was thinking "no one can change my situation." 

No one can help me. 

My ex-wife, Elee was the one who called 911. She didn't want me to die and she had been angry that I did what I did. She understood why I did it, though, or why I was feeling the way that I was feeling. I had explained that a lawyer had conveyed that no lawyer could possibly help me. That nothing could be done. 

Nothing could be done. This is why I was there! This is why I was suicidal. Because nothing could be done and very few people understood what this meant to me and for me. Some have had the gall to suggest that there are more evil forms of injustice and those people don't ever get justice. To this day some people will make that same argument that demonstrates a lack of understanding about how I got to where I was in the first place. 

Getting back to my story, it's Monday morning as the hour has just past midnight. I am contemplating suicide. 

This is what was going through my mind when this girl comes out. I had seen her before and she seemed nice and friendly. 

"You can't sleep either?" she asked me and then she took a seat next to me. Something strange was about to happen. 

So much healing was going to happen but it's hard to know if it has been enough. It's hard to know if anyone truly understands.