Dear ____,


What happens when a habitually suicidal man attempts to take his life by carbon monoxide poisoning and incurs damage to the area of his brain responsible for feeling pleasure? This is the question posed by my memoir, entitled “Ideation.”The answer is a complicated and very spiritual one. I have lived my life in two separate realities; the first being the world of a selfish, sometimes spoiled, self-centered young man who becomes obsessed with his personal appearance. The obsession becomes so overwhelming that I attempt to to kill myself twice before the age of eighteen by overdosing on my dad’s high-blood pressure medication. The stories leading up to these first two attempts are in-depth studies of a mind in turmoil. My third suicide attempt is the poisoning, and after emerging from a coma after four days, it completely turns my universe inside-out, back-to-front, upside-down, all the way round.I learn to walk, talk, eat, bathe, etc… all over again. It is by the grace of God that I complete college at the age of twenty-three, graduating with a GPA of 3.42. After four long years of searching, I finally find gainful employment. Then, I find the love of my life in a very strong, confident woman of another race. We marry, and she gives birth to a healthy daughter. However, along the way, I lose my job, and my wife becomes the sole bread winner. This leaves me as primary care-taker for the infant girl. Subsequent questions of my ability to care for her lead to two more overdoses, the last one resulting in another coma and near brain death.I am forty-two years old, and am happy to say have been suicide free for eight years. I have never been published before, but am very confident in my work. I know that mine is a story that needs to be told. The underlying theme to my life story is that suicide is a foul and stubborn spirit, and once you open the door for it, it will keep coming back to see if it is still ajar. The completed work is about 47,000 words. I am positive that there isn’t anything else like it in today’s literature.

 

 

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