Let’s get real: I’m sitting in my apartment on a beautiful day in Hilo. It’s sunny and there’s a fall chill in there air here on the ocean. I wanted to go out, but my auto-immune disease is acting up again, so I have to treat my skin, which is laborious, and depressing.
This damned illness has diminished my life for 15 years, and along with a minor heart attack, bleeding ulcers, sleep apnea, chronic sinusitis major depression, osteoporosis from taking prednisone, and other conditions, left me unable to work.
This host of problems is common with auto immune illnesses. They can’t be cured, are still little understood, and in my case only somewhat treatable. Maybe the worst of it is, I don’t appear that sick so I’m afraid people think I’m goldbricking, as I’ve had to bow out of life and retreat to this goddamned room.
From poverty and boredom, I started writing fiction on those days I was well enough and that’s helped - at least with sense of purpose - but it’s made no money at all after publishing costs, and it hasn’t gotten me out and engaged with life.
With the death of my wife, Lauren, on the 31st of July, I reached an impasse. I had to face the decision of whether to live or die, of whether there remains anything worth living for.
Yesterday, I went with a new friend, Micha, to take some needed items to a veteran living down in Kalapana, and when I got home, I came to a banal sort of epiphany. That is that I had to make the decision to live or die and get on with it.
Because I have a daughter I love very much, and my wife wanted me to live in order to be there for her, I made the decision to live; though my spirit would prefer to be where Lauren is, and I feel crushed and disoriented without her.
I don’t mean to imply that it was an easy decision, or to make light of the struggle with life! Not mine or anyone else’s. I know full well how hard it is to go on when faced with certain aspects of reality, and how the inevitability of our own mortality can cast everything in a futile light.
In my opinion those who condemn others for suicide need to walk in that other person’s shoes, and that isn’t possible. Yet I know that for myself, refusing to face the decision would be worse than either choice. Life would become nothing but ongoing anxiety and depression.
So. I’ve decided to live and to get involved (to the degree that I'm able) with the non-profit Micha is founding, called Mental Restorations.
The aim of this nonprofit is to restore boats and create a farm, so that veterans and first responders (as well as others in crisis) can have an opportunity to fish, scuba dive, garden, get away from the routine of their lives, and restore some sanity and optimism. Of equal importance, the goal is to provide a platform for peer-counseling among the community of those involved.
I can think of no more worthy aspiration.
So from creative writing, I’m going to change my focus for awhile to grant writing, peer-counseling, and whatever else I find that I can do to help this venture get off the ground. I’ve done this kind of thing before. In the early 90s my wife and I spent 7 years reviving a food coop in Marquette Michigan that was closing and put it on a sound financial footing. The last I heard it had 8,000 members, 80 employees, and was doing about 13 million in sales annually.
So here we go! It seems I was destined for poverty and these utopian adventures! Well, it may not empower my life, at least financially, but it beats brooding, alcoholism, or suicide! So here’s to the next quixotic adventure!
Brent Hightower
