Pure dark humor with sprinkles of a personal neurodivergent story
This article is not for everyone. It is only for those people who feel comfortable making jokes at the darkest of truths about our existence. This is going to be pure dark humor with sprinkles of a personal neurodivergent story. You have been warned. The mention of suicide could be triggering for some readers.
This story is not about me but I can only process things around me through my own experiences and feelings, so here it is.
Carpe diem
I was an unusual (neurodivergent in 2023 lingo) child: Unapologetically honest even when lying was warranted, annoyingly curious, way too creative for a person with no lived experiences to get inspired from, and open to quirky and nerdy interests. I felt like an adult who just gets stuff. I had friends but most of them didn’t get my true personality. “Shy” was the best word most people could come up with to describe me (holds even today). But there was one person who totally got all of this all through my childhood and teenagehood: My dad’s best friend (D.).
D. was a high school teacher of German, a chess master (or almost a master), and a football strategy fan, obsessed with images of wild cats in all shapes and forms. Quirky enough? Even though he was the age of my parents, he wasn’t any of my parents! So, talking to him every time he visited felt like talking to a friend who understood and shared all of my curiosity about languages, geography, brainiac games, etc. Our friendship started when I replied to one of the postcards he would send out regularly to our family (yes, he lived in the same city but this was also one of his quirks).
We started writing and chatting about literally anything that happened to us or any new trivia we came across that week. Whenever he visited, D. would also teach me some random facts about the world. One day, we were all playing Monopoly and he said “Did you know Mayfair is one of the most expensive and fanciest neighborhoods in London?” “Really?” I was probably around 10 at this point and I remember trying to imagine the most expensive neighborhood possible and all I could imagine were a bunch of buildings, so I asked “What makes it so expensive? Big buildings?” I think his reply was “A lot of rich people live there, so…”
I don’t know if my question sounded dumb to him, but he continued to have faith in me and he would send books and small trivia exercises my way…he treated me like an adult who gets stuff. And I really respected him for that, I can hardly think of any adult in my childhood that took my interests as seriously as he did, or was able to participate in them in the way he did.
Some time in my high school, everything stopped. D. was admitted to a psychiatric hospital during an extreme depressive episode. He stayed in the hospital for a long time, but was eventually released. I saw him soon after in the café Carpe Diem.
He used to come to Carpe Diem regularly to meet my dad. “He is back in his café, he must be doing better,” I thought. But when I saw him, it was clear this was not the D. I knew. He looked at me and barely said “hi”. I felt like I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. The quirky professor with a love for wild cats, languages, geography, chess, and football was nowhere to be found. I tried to talk to him but I don’t even remember if he replied.
My dad blamed it on the meds: “He is not himself from all the sedatives and bullshit.” “So, you think he would be better off without the meds?” I said. “No, he needs the meds to function, he is depressed!” was the confusing reply from my dad. I honestly didn’t get adults.
Time passed and D. was back in the hospital. This time there was more bad news. He tried to convince my dad to bring him literal poison to the hospital so he could kill himself. After my dad refused, D. decided to attempt this in a different way. He swallowed a large coin in hopes of…I guess suffocating with it? However, he was “unlucky” in that he successfully swallowed the coin and the doctors were waiting to find it in his stool.
“He swallowed a coin?” I asked my dad. “Yes, he tried to kill himself. The doctors are treating this very seriously, he is on suicide watch.” “Over a coin? Can a coin really kill you?” I didn’t believe it, “I don’t think he wanted to kill himself, he just swallowed a coin!”
D. was released from the hospital once again and he wasn’t doing any better. My parents were worried about him to what I said: “Well, if he is not on suicide watch, that means he is good now, right?” “Well, no, not really, they just released him. They can’t hold him in the hospital forever.” “What kind of a useless hospital is that then?” It’s ok, he doesn’t really want to kill himself, he just wanted to make a joke with the coin. If he really wanted it, he would’ve put more effort into it. But he didn’t, which means he won’t, he’ll be fine. This is kind of what I thought to myself.
Unfortunately, he did put more effort into it. At first, D. went missing. After a month, a body was found in the river. It was him.
Even here my brain went “So, can’t he swim? How do rivers even kill people, why is that even a thing?” D., can you answer this for me? Stupid river, maybe coins also kill people…the hell if I know!
I was 17 when he died and I remember talking about this whole story to my friend at the time and he said: “Why are you telling me all this?” I learned that suicide stories tend to get this kind of response, directly or indirectly (why? I have many theories but I don’t really know).
John Cleese and me
I went to see John Cleese in Berlin in 2018. He had a tour “Last Time to See Me Before I Die” and he talked a lot about death, made a lot of jokes about it, and enumerated all these different ways to die. “One of them is suicide” (paraphrasing from memory), he said, “a certain number of you here in the audience will die from suicide and all of you here know who you are! Because it’s your decision, get it?” Hahaha.
Everyone laughed. I don’t remember if I laughed but I remember being terrified. Did he mean me? Is it going to be me? I even looked around.
You see, between high school and 2018, I had my share of depressive episodes and the emptiness I once saw in D.’s eyes had occasionally crossed my mind too. It never lingered for too long but it was familiar, and scary. Scary is good, as long as it’s scary is good. I’m good.
Since 2018 I’ve progressed quite a lot and I don’t think I would be so terrified by this joke anymore. Now I would laugh in its face…in the face of the joke…and depression. So, here is a comic laughing at the most ludicrous things that sometimes cross my mind.
It’s ok, get a tax consultant to do it, or literally anyone else!!! (Note to self: This kind of solution can be applied to all problems in life.)
Again
It has happened again. Someone I knew died by suicide. I wasn’t able to write anything meaningful about it yet, so I decided to write about D., and myself, and make a stupid comic. I don’t know if it helps, but it helps to cry and laugh at the same time, and that’s what I needed.
Take-home message and note to self: You can only laugh and cry simultaneously if you are alive, one of the perks of living if you will. Remember that, kids.