Something Else to Cry About
Three Dead in One Semester at Berkeley Coops
Here is some reality at a substance free home, the largest housing coop in North America.
High acclaim for its sober residents, an overdose of history in the making so it’s hard to look back. Eyes glued to the screen, another modern massacre shakes us; we know we are connected.
There is something going on, a string of suicides at UC Berkeley… is it such a surprise? I remember hearing jokes about how this was a depression friendly environment, that students are more likely to end it all here than at other colleges.
Here is my theory, my ponderings and thoughts, unsolicited opinions writ in the dark, sent to the void to die with the rest of me.
Ok enough of that.
Brain Splitting
No I am not going to reinvent the wheel here, smarterer writers have already created names and definitions for phenomena which I may describe. I read political thrillers and poetry, not psychoanalytical theory. Bite me.
I think if you see the horrible news everyday, even if you don’t, in a place like Berkeley it’s hard to get away. There’s protests, official emails with official statements, propaganda everywhere, you would be hard pressed to get to your math class untouched and unbothered.
Say you do make it to class, is it easy to focus when the world outside is on your mind? You center yourself, breathe, in this moment you focus on class, it ends, you’ve learned.
You step back outside, campus is still there, the swarms of people are still there, the news is not new, and the world still burns. What were you doing for the last hour? Was it worth it? Will it be worth it? The degree, the job, will I have a future? Climate change, fascism, what do these words mean? Am I studying the right thing? Do I want to help people or make my own living… living for what? How far up the chopping block do I lay to die before my time is up? What of my children? In this world? Is that ethical?
Walking, heading towards another class, again, do it again, then work, the same, but different. Boss makes a dollar, I make a cent, inflation is going up and has led to revolutions that installed the likes of mustachioed men with scary ideas about the world. Then you get home, perhaps you ate, or you forgot to eat. Where’s the food come from? Are our growers and farmers surviving? The plight of the migrant workers as the middle east lay dying. How long has this gone on for, how long can it last? Is this the end?
For some, it is. For some, they hang in their rooms, jump off roofs, overdose. Life finds a way.
San Francisco is the home of dying in the streets, stepping over a motionless body on the way to work. He could be sleeping, I tell myself, that what I am doing is more important than his life. That what I am doing could help more people, that my potential success is tied to the success of dozens, hundreds, nay thousands and more in my communities. Isn’t this trickle down Reaganomics with Neo-liberal paint on it? I have been at the level to open my heart and help each person I saw, and I could not sustain it. I would soon join them, and as I was asking for help, I was stepped over. It is a hollow and grueling feeling. Here I grovel when once I stood and fought, once I tried to end the suffering in the world, and now I suffer for my misdeeds.
Don’t die, try drugs.
Say so the for-profit pharmaceutical industry, but here go the crazies that really need help. We have real pills that do something for that. We also have not managed to decrease the suicide rate for decades, so we haven’t quite figured it out. Plus the opioid epidemic and stigma stays strong. Drug incarcerations are racist, and the police and drug dealers both benefit from the suffering of the addict. Politicians in the pockets of cartel leaders, and orders come all the way from the top to infiltrate and destroy foreign democracies unsympathetic to our way of life.
Personally I would rather get killed, it’s taken out of my hands and not a question to ponder anymore. If I manage to make it so old it sucks to live I’ll reconsider suicide. Life has plenty beauties, complexities, and misery in it.
Be Cooperative!
So back to Cloyne, it is substance free, which means you can’t talk about your problems, because it threatens your housing. That’s the culture. So get help! But not from us… and not like that! And be cool! But not that cool. And socialize! But no one wants to socialize, not with the weird tranny.
We have only gathered as strangers over these couple deaths in the coops. That’s the culture. We remember John for his heroic overdose in the coops. We ignore the dying in our walls, on our block, across the ocean, and remember the dead when they’re gone. We look away, perhaps for dignity’s sake. I would rather we get a face full of truth, but that’s in bad taste.
When I go, will hundreds of strangers gather and pretend to have known me? Maybe we have shared one or two conversations, maybe you have seen me outside, or heard some gossip. Don’t show up to my wake, my funeral, don’t gather over the fleeting thoughts you had of me.
It is embarrassing to call this a community. Of course, I’m just bitter and lonely, ever so helpless in distress. Whenever will I be saved by a big strong man, with long hair and a mustache, with richer skin than I?
To a select few at Cloyne: fuck you!!
