A Christmas dog

Every Christmas, for as long as I can remember, I have wished and wished to die. Some years it’s just a series of thoughts as I do vaguely seasonal things: gift-wrapping, unnecessarily large amounts of cooking. I draw the line at excessive house-cleaning. I just did that for Divali. Not doing it again this soon.

When I was younger it was far sharper. Debilitating, even. Mostly, I wanted to die because I simply could not face being alive in a place where everyone was delighted by everything and each other and I was miserable. No one had done anything to make me unhappy, but I was.

It’s not my idea of a great joke to write a Christmas column about suicidal tendencies. Once upon a time, there was a belief that suicide rates peaked at Christmas. This seemed perfectly natural to me. If I was thinking about it year after year, then other people might well be acting on it.

It turns out a lot of people are not, were not, may not be acting on the impulse for the same reason. The Christmas Suicide Myth, a 2016 article in Scientific American, said it best: “Some people may postpone their planned suicide so that their families and friends can enjoy Christmas.” And “selfish” is still a word that people think of when they think of suicide.

The new year, I hear, is when it all really happens. But I don’t know if I have the heart to write this again next week. So, before I go on, let me just say this here, now: if you need to talk to someone today or in the next week or during the short Carnival season, or, you know, ever, please do. Today, if possible. I swear, if I thought I could be of any use to you, I’d tell you to call me.

But back to wanting to die at Christmas. Or next week, at the new year. For many of us, it’s a desperate, no-good, miserable time. While some can see the fullness of their glasses, others feel like we’re swallowing glass. Loneliness. Alienation. Loss of all kinds. Or sometimes, just an inability to see where we fit in the bigger picture.

I got a dog when I was 11. Not for Christmas. For one of the few things bigger than Christmas in our world: SEA (or Common Entrance, as it was in the days of yore). Yes, I got a dog. He was no mere dog. He was an event. Everyone knew about him because everyone knew my father had no truck with dogs. I was the runt of the litter and now I had my very own dog.

Every year for years I gave him (dog, not father) the same thing for Christmas: a foam ball the size of a football. There they were, a dog and his new ball, a pair of smallish round things rolling madly around the yard. It was a beautiful thing. Then came the unceremonious killing of the ball. He shredded it with his growing puppy teeth. I picked foam off the grass for days, even though the ball lasted less than a day.

I was in my teens when I was coming to terms with therapy, diagnoses and meds. I had exams. I was bad at physics. I was absurd at sports. No one would ever think I was pretty. The usual.

But I had a couple friends and excellent music at hand. And I had this dog. And he was so much.

Sometimes – much of the time – what you need is very serious help.

And sometimes you need a very uncomplicated sort of love. You need to feel it and to give it. The dog I got when I was 11 was there when I came home from my first therapist. He was there after every different doctor and every visit until he died, when I was 20.

This all seems terribly obvious now. The way we all wished things were different. That parents or friends or siblings were more there or more understanding. That they knew how to cope with the selves we were or still are.

But they didn’t. Or it wasn’t enough.

I have fairly strong feelings about how I lived through my teens, and many of them involve a dog. I was less alone in the world with him, and what’s more, he helped me to focus on the living part of life. On the doing parts. On the get-up-and-try parts.

Find that. Find that and you’re part way to holding on. And I highly recommend foam balls, rolling around and running.

Around mid-month, Dr Gabrielle Hosein wrote a deeply sensitive piece on the loss of a friend– https://newsday.co.tt/2023/12/13/reflections-on-saying-goodbye/

She suggests looking at FindCareTT.com and
www.preventsuicidett.com
if you need help.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.