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0 By Kyle Silk
Ten years ago I decided to kill myself. It was not the first time I had had suicidal thoughts – I can remember as far back as junior high school fantasizing about the release of death – but this was different. I made explicit plans. I knew when I would do it, I knew where I would park my parents’ car, and I knew which cliff I would throw myself off of. It was all decided, and yet, here I am, ten years later. So what happened? I was saved by superheroes.
First some background: I had just turned twenty. I was living in Toronto. I was unemployed. My lifestyle was unhealthy in just about every way it could be. I barely ate. When I did, it was fast food. I drank too much, I smoked too much pot and I never exercised. I kept odd hours.
Slowly, subtly, my mental state began to deteriorate. Looking back, there were signs of what was coming. I stopped sleeping almost entirely, stopped wearing shoes and became obsessed with occult rituals and black magic. Then things started getting worse: I began to talk to the TV, began talking to empty rooms, and was plagued by delusions of grandeur and persecution. I would wander the city – barefoot – and try to climb the outside of buildings; at one point I tried to gain access to a stranger’s home. In the end, my roommates had to call the police, as I had become impossible to control. They thought I was high on LSD, a drug I had previously had a lengthy relationship with (I may have encouraged this notion intentionally, for reasons that are hard to explain, but in truth it had been over a year since my last LSD experience).
I could have been shot
I had sprinted away from our house, and two of my friends had to physically drag me back to the waiting officers. As the crowd of uniformed police and my stoner friends stood around trying to determine what was wrong with me, I became bored, so to move things along (and without any fear of consequence, believing as I did that this was all some kind of elaborate ruse), I dove for a cop’s gun. If I had been more physically imposing, I very likely would have been shot.
As it was, I was put in shackles, and thrown into the back of a cruiser. Again I became bored of waiting around, so I attempted to kick out the glass of the driver’s side window. When this failed, I waited patiently to be taken wherever I was to be taken, which turned out to be the Emergency Crisis Ward at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Erratic thoughts and behavior
By this point, time had become meaningless to me. I could have been at St. Joe’s for one night or for six months for all it mattered to me, but in reality it was about a week. During that time my behavior was… erratic. I was obsessed with escape. I was sure that I was being tested. That somehow, this “hospital” was a cover for some clandestine organization which had been monitoring me, perhaps for my entire life.
I remember nights spent in restraints. I remember whispering strange and incendiary things to other patients. Rearranging furniture in the hopes that doing so would unlock some secret passage to freedom. I believed I was transforming into some kind of super-being or monster. I was told that I would be moved to the psychiatric ward once a room opened up, a proposition which excited me, as I thought it was code for something else… what, I can no longer say. But in the end I was never transferred.
My father rescued me
In a moment of clarity I remembered my parent’s phone number in Osoyoos, B.C. and suddenly my father arrived to rescue me. Before my release I was interviewed by a doctor named Shiva (the Hindu god of destruction and transformation, it occurred to me), and, as per my father’s instructions, I told Shiva everything he wanted to hear to ensure my discharge, including that I had taken drugs the night the cops brought me in. It worked, and soon I was on a plane to B.C. at my father’s side. I was still delusional when I arrived at my parent’s home in Osoyoos.
It would be easy to blame my father for coaching me to lie to the doctor so I would be released, or to blame the hospital staff for releasing me without a proper diagnosis, or even my friends for telling the police that I was on LSD when I was not, but all involved were doing their best with the resources available to them.
An answer?
In any case, I was without a clue of what had happened to me by the time my mind began to clear, about a week after arriving at my parent’s house. My parents were content with the idea that it had been drug induced, and to be honest, I heard that so many times that I began to internalize it. At least it was an answer.
The paranoid part of me even began to suspect that I had been dosed with LSD without my knowledge – a prank that had gone terribly wrong. But even this explanation offered little solace, as I knew the confused mental state I had experienced had lasted far longer than any LSD trip I had ever heard of. Something else was wrong with me, that much was clear, but I had no idea what.
Trying to get my life back
In Osoyoos I took steps to try and get my life back on track; I met with a counselor – only once, as he too seemed determined to convince me that my only issue was with drugs; I took up jogging, thinking that the adrenaline rush would replace the substance use which I was told was the root of my problems, but that only lasted a few days; and I registered for adult learning classes with the intention of getting my high-school diploma. It was the last of these which proved the greatest challenge.
I had never been a good student, had been diagnosed with ADD as a child but never medicated, at my father’s insistence, and when I finished grade twelve without nearly enough credits to graduate, I never looked back. That is, until I reached Osoyoos. Graduating seemed a natural goal for someone in my position, but when I met with an academic adviser at the Adult Learning Centre, I couldn’t articulate why.
I couldn’t imagine a future
She asked me what type of job or college program I wanted to pursue, and I came up blank, so she enrolled me in some general interest classes. One of these was a career planning course, and the very first assignment should have been a breeze: answer the question, in whatever way you chose, “Where will you be in five years.” It paralyzed me. Five years? I couldn’t begin to imagine five years into the future. I looked forward to nothing, wanted nothing, had no plans, and no goals. I’d left every dream and ambition behind in Toronto, and I could see no way of getting them back.
My father told me to write something, anything, just to pass the assignment, but the question left me so shaken that I simply could not. So I never went back to class. I never went back to any of the classes. When my parents thought I was going to class, sometimes I would hide in the garage, sometimes under my bed, and sometimes I would just wander the streets. My solution to the problem was to avoid it. I managed this for a few weeks until my father spotted me walking around town one day on his way to the golf course. He was furious that I had lied. I was devastated to have been caught. It was a disaster, and the atmosphere in the house took a decidedly toxic turn.
Withdrawal and isolation
So I withdrew, became increasingly isolated and cut ties with all my old friends. I hardly got out of bed except to eat, sometimes, and shower, sometimes, and go to the bathroom, and I don’t think I left the house for weeks. I spent many hours crying into my pillow. My parents didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what was happening.
Recently my mother told me that, at the time, the apparent solution to her was for me to get out of bed, get moving, simple as that. None of us were equipped to deal with severe depression, and in hindsight there is no question that that is what I was experiencing. There was no end in sight, no hope to be found, and seemingly no-one who understood. So I came up with a solution: I would end my life.
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I started to picture myself falling
This was not the first time I had entertained the notion of suicide. In the past though, the prospect of inflicting that level of pain on my mother had kept me from acting. This time, I felt things were different. It would be an act of kindness – I was a burden on everyone around me – there would be pain, sure, but in time it would pass, whereas the pain I was inflicting now was going nowhere.
I started to fantasize about the cliffs, about a half hour’s drive north of Osoyoos. Started to picture myself falling, the rush of exhilaration that would come with the knowledge that all of life’s suffering was behind me.
I made up my mind, I picked a day. I knew where I would park my parents’ car. I’d leave the keys in it. I’d be found by a stranger, which seemed the kindest way. There was a clarity in the decision – it was a light at the end of a dark tunnel. But then something occurred to me, and my plans changed.
Something to live for
A little more background: I’m a geek. Specifically a geek for Star Wars, Seinfeld, and most of all, superheroes. On top of that, I’m a bit of a cinephile. My greatest ambitions, previous to my breakdown in Toronto, were to be a comic book creator or filmmaker. Preferably both. I had dismissed these as pipe dreams by the time I reached Osoyoos, but there was a lingering fascination in the back of my mind.
This was the year 2008. One of the last films I saw in Toronto before my breakdown was “Iron Man” (directed by Jon Favreau and starring Robert Downey Jr.) and one of the first films I saw upon arriving in B.C. was “The Incredible Hulk” (directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Edward Norton). Both title characters were created by Stan “The Man” Lee. Both films had absolutely blown me away, both as a superhero geek and a cinephile. The most interesting thing about both films, though, had come after the credits rolled: bonus scenes which tied the two films together and hinted at a larger crossover to come: “The Avengers.”
I amended my plan
Why did this pique my interest and curiosity when literally nothing else would? I can’t say. I just remember laying face down on my bed and realizing that, if I killed myself as planned, I would never see if they could pull off the most ambitious crossover in the histories of both superheroes and cinema. This was unacceptable, so I amended my plan. To be clear, I still fully intended to take my own life. All that had changed was the “when” of it. I would wait until after the eventual release of “The Avengers” (which at that time didn’t even have a director attached), and the next day I would kill myself. The waiting would be difficult, but I had made it twenty years already, what was a few more?
So before I could kill myself, I had to kill some time. I got a job, I traveled India for six months, where I made new friends, I reconnected with old friends. I moved to Edmonton, I reconnected with my extended family, I got a better job, I made more new friends, I celebrated holidays, I went to bars, I went to concerts, I bought a vehicle. In short, I lived my life. Four years passed. 2012, the year some reckoned the world would end, brought with it the release of “The Avengers” (directed by Joss Whedon and starring… everybody). I bought a t-shirt for the occasion, emblazoned with the “A” logo of the team of superheroes.
A perfect movie!
On opening night, I was near the front of the line. I got prime seats, and waited for my friend and his father with a great deal of excitement. My friend arrived wearing the same t-shirt, but his grin wasn’t as big as mine. My excitement was unmatchable. Later my friend would comment to my cousin, his fiance, that he had never seen me looking quite as good as when he met me in that theatre – I assume he meant happy and healthy, although the t-shirt looked quite good on me as well.
The lights dimmed and the movie started, and I remember wondering, can this really live up to my expectations? Well, it most certainly did, and in fact exceeded them in most every way. It was an amazing experience. On social media, riding the high of the screening, I described it as a “perfect movie”. But the really amazing thing happened the next day: I didn’t kill myself. I hadn’t forgotten my plan, it just didn’t seem pressing anymore. There were other things in my life more important, and besides, the post-credit scene on “The Avengers” had promised even more exciting things to come.
Escaping the valley of depression
Superhero movies didn’t cure me of mental illness. I would, and do, continue to have extreme lows at times. I’ve contemplated suicide more times than I care to count, and likely will in the future as well. I had a second breakdown three years ago, but this time was lucky enough to find proper treatment and receive a diagnosis (Bipolar Disorder with Psychosis). I have been under a psychiatrist’s care ever since. Superhero movies didn’t cure me, but they did save me, and I say without hyperbole that were it not for Stan Lee, and his creation of “The Avengers”, I would not be here today. I wear my Avengers t-shirt proudly to this day, as a reminder that there are always more exciting things to come.
Finally, let me just say that I know superheroes aren’t for everyone. What worked for me perhaps won’t work for you. Maybe you’re a sports fan, maybe your thing is music, maybe you like My Little Pony. Whatever, the specifics do not matter. My advice is simply this: sometimes in life you will find yourself in a valley. It might be dark and you may fear there’s no escape. Pick a point on the horizon – any point – and strike out towards it. The path may be difficult, there may be switchbacks and obstacles. At times it may seem like the point is too far away to reach, but remain focused. By the time you reach it, you may find you are no longer in the valley.
“Excelsior!” -Stan Lee
Reproduced with permission, originally posted on superiormentalhealth
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