Okay, this should be the fifth blog post you read, not the first just because it may be on the top. You needed to begin with the title that begins 1.(read me first). I don't mean to be bossy, but this blog is written to be read in the numbered order of the posts, just like any story begins with an opening page or chapter and the plot unfolds from there. Yes, I am certifiably crazy, but there is a method to my madness. Frankly, if you were to read this post first you would quickly get depressed and stop reading. Hence the need for reading the numbered posts in order, at least these first five posts, after which you can read them in whatever order floats your boat. If you have read the first four numbered posts, good for you; You have passed basic training and are now ready to parachute behind the lines into my emotional war zone.

Trust me. You needed the preamble before this leap into darkness, because it's about to get real ugly, as I did. You've been forewarned that my emotional wheels would eventually come off, immersing me in a deep depression and an overpowering desire for my life to be over.

To briefly recap: my massive stroke wiped out half my brain and wrecked half my body in June of 1916. I was initially optimistic that I could adapt to my new reality, but within three and a half years I had been sucked deeply into the abyss. Some of it was simple frustration and unwillingness to deal with all the stroke had taken from me.

But more than that, this newly negative me began seeing Rhonda's watchful caring for me as being an invasive, control-freak thing, as if she just enjoyed giving me a hard time instead of what it was, which was her watching out for her handicapped husband. We began to argue a lot, usually because my unhappiness over my new reality caused me to be belligerent and defensive. Understandably, she resented the hell out of me for that behavior and this absolutely understandable reaction contributed to our incessant arguing.

And every time we argued, I would do that defensive belligerence thing and decide that she was pulling her love away from me, which made me flail into what I realize now was even more insane behavior, But then, when Rhonda would rightly say "You are not in your right mind," I would take that as her being accusatory.

The idea that she was pulling her love from me was ridiculous when closer to the truth was that I was pushing her away like a petulant teenager demanding unwarranted autonomy from his parents and shouting, "I'm outta here!" I know I'm doing a piss-poor job here of putting that period of time into words, and reading back over this section makes my (and probably your) eyes glaze over. Sorry.

To accurately describe that time period in a way that makes sense is very difficult because (1) my half-brain memory and (2) very little of it made sense anyway. But God forbid the two of us disagree over how something had transpired and who said what when, because Rhonda might say "Well, since I'm the only one here with a fully functioning brain, I'll just stick with my memory version of what happened" and I would get mad because, well, MY precious version had been summarily dismissed. In my state of porcupine-like prickly defensiveness, I was miserable and so was Rhonda.

I knew I was making her even more miserable by the day, by the argument, and I began going to that "She'd be better off if I was gone" place. I already couldn't stand the idea of a protracted life without being able to enjoy so many of the things I could no longer do. I couldn't even turn to writing as an escape mechanism because I couldn't type as I previously could. As a working journalist I had typed 150 words per minute, as you have to if you want to quote sources accurately in telephone interviews -- something I did every day, usually more than once.

150 words per minute is the speed at which the average American speaks, so that's how fast I typed. That typing speed had simplified the process of writing my one published novel, A Difference in the Blood, in the two years before my stroke. But now, with my left hand out of the picture, my one-handed hunt-and-peck was probably in the 10-to-15 wpm pace. No way was I going to write another novel at that glacial pace. And when I tried two different voice-to-text apps, I might as welll have been speaking in ancient Aramaic, because what each app printed out was nothing close to what I said. The only time either app ever seemed to get anything right was when I began shouting in exasperation things like THIS EFFING THING SUCKS! GIVE ME AN EFFING BREAK! I WANT TO STAB MYSELF IN THE THROAT! Yeah, that part it might get right. But me trying to write by regularly yelling into the voice-to-text app wasn't going to be an option, even with my office door closed, because Rhonda's five senses are supernaturally acute and anything loud can hurt her ear. Cause actual pain. I swear, she could hear --and probably smell --a gnat fart at thirty yards.

So, anyway, there we were, each getting more miserable by the day, and me feeling unwanted, unloved and unnecessary, angry at God and begging nightly that He let me die in my bed before morning, God wasn't having it, so every morning I would climb out of bed angry at him all over again. And, of course, being angry at Rhonda for resenting me. Jeez, who wouldn't resent me? Here she was, having stayed with this increasingly morose man against her friends' advice, safeguarding his well-being, feeding him and busting her ass doing every damn thing that needed doing around the house, while her grouchy stroke survivor of a husband drinks margaritas and watches college sports on TV. Hell, I resent him myself and I AM him. It probably sounds to you like my feeling suicidal in those circumstances was the height of self-centered selfishness. Well, isn't that precisely what suicide is? the most selfish act of all? And the most asinine, let's not forget that. To believe everything will be better if you end your life is absolutely the stupidest and cruelest thought a person could ever have. Think it through, Bozo. You cause immeasurable pain to those who least deserve it, the people who care about you, and you don't solve jackshit. All you do is turn off the noise. How is your life going to be better when it's no longer life? You'll never again smile, love, enjoy a tasty bite or a great song. Excellent plan, Exlax. There's only one of you. There's no instant replay in this deal. No second chances. On top of that, it's in any guy's male DNA to want to be brave and heroic, not gutless. And suicide is not an act of courage. It's pure cowardice. It says I can't hack it, I'm going to run away. The courageous act for any guy contemplating suicide would be to get up every day and keep digging his way out of the abyss he's fallen into.

Clearly, I was a coward who couldn't cut it. Guilty as charged. I had gotten to a point at which I couldn't imagine anything getting better. I believed I was doomed to being miserable every day as long as I lived. I was in a tunnel with NO light at the end of it.

For that matter, with no end, period. It was going to be like that forever.

I tried to imagine things that might make me happy, like my Texas Longhorns winning the national championship in college football or my old novel suddenly becoming a national bestseller, and decided that in any imaginable case I would still want my life to be over. My abyss was just that deep and dark.

I won't go into the various ways I tried to end it all, but suffice it to say I was the clown prince of suicide. My physical and mental limitations made it difficult and I did not have access to the one thing that might have made it simple. Even foolproof, except that anyone using that one thing in that way would clearly be a fool. A gutless, cruel fool.

So I went through my Keystone Kops suicide attempts and, thankfully, failed miserably. At some point I had an epiphany of sorts, if something that should be painfully obvious can qualify as an epiphany. I finally grasped the reality that regardless of how much emotional pain I was in, taking my own life would unleash even more pain upon the people I loved and who loved me. Basically, if I were to continue trying to end my life and actually succeed, it would mean that the last action of my life had been to hurt the people who mattered the most to me. Pretty pathetic way to go out. Now I realize that what I had considered failed suicide attempts at the time were actually enormous successes. They were God watching over a fool because I'm still alive, still learning how to find enjoyment in every day. I'm even doing a little writing. You're reading it. It's an arduous process with my one-handed hunting and pecking at 15 words per minute, but hey, I have the time. I'm retired. I love my wife and I'm relearning to love my life. I sucked at suicide and I'm very glad and grateful for that.

I got the second chance at life that anyone committing suicide doesn't get. Stroke or not, I am one of the lucky ones. What's that saying? We all have a cross to bear. The shit hits the fan in everybody's life. And what I've realized after all this is that each of us has also been given the tools to deal with it. To clean the fan, as it were. Consider mine cleaned.