Suicide isn't painless

Not for those trying to prevent it

The film Torch Song Trilogy starts back-stage in an off-off-way-off-Broadway theatre, where Harvey Fierstein, who wrote, directed and starred in this triptych-style testament to being gay in 1980s America, addresses the viewer while mascaraing his eyes via the intermediary of his mirror. He tells of his long-lost love, for a man who was deaf and dumb, but whom Harvey had loved more than anything in this world. He’d avowed his adoration for the boy, pleaded with him even, and had been met with a sad, vaguely stoical answer, conveyed in sign language. “Yes, you love me,” signs his paramour, “But not enough.” A hand swept twice over a closed fist: that is sign language for enough.

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A letter to a potential suicide

I want to keep your confidence up, but how do I encourage you? I don’t know your true reality, all I can do is imagine it. No one was ever encouraged by people who don’t know the heck. Because, what the heck do they know? 

And yet, people get encouraged all the time by people who never knew the heck who they are, but who draw inspiration from some figurehead, or some famous person, a martyr, a saint. Funny, that: you can draw more inspiration from someone who lived a thousand years ago and still ignore someone who knows you but who doesn’t know enough.

So, let me tell you what I know about you, Paul Canary: that way, you can tell me if it’s enough. You have initiative. I think that, when the problems arose at home, you didn’t panic, but you realised you needed to be out of there. I reckon that the road from Uganda to Kenya is fairly easy - it’s a “traditional link”, maybe. So, you headed east.

You probably didn’t think much about where you were headed. I’m not too sure about when you even knew of the existence of Kakuma, what it is, where it is or even who runs it. But you’re there now and its harsh realities have become a harsh reality for you too.

You took that initiative and, when you arrived at Kakuma and realised what was what, you took a new initiative. You organised. It is you that’s doing the organising, isn’t it? You make movies, interviews, campaign, write focus pieces. Get advocates like me to tell the story. I guess some of us will repost or highlight your situation and then move on. Just like those who read them. Read. Move on. 

I’m trying to understand you, and I see this, but don’t judge it: you tried to find a solution in Uganda, and failed, so moved to Kenya. In Kenya, you found a new quest: to fight, not for you alone but for a whole community. Does that community rely on you: turn to you for advice, as its spokesman? That’s what it seems like - you have a key role. But it is a role that brings little satisfaction because those for whom you speak cannot be shown any benefit - material or otherwise - from your speaking for them. Perhaps they are even critical of that, I dunno. But, more importantly, perhaps you are as well. Critical of yourself. 

After an early post of yours, I saw that a lady in Brussels who works for the EU had expressed shock. I wrote to her: praising her words of horror and asking if she and I could perhaps join forces to try to seek some solution. She never replied. In effect, she publicly said, “That’s awful” and, when I said to her, “Yes, isn’t it?”, she turned and walked away from me.

That was an initiative of mine that failed. But I didn’t fail it. She did. The reason why advocates - and you’re one yourself - are needed is because lots of other people fail. If they didn’t fail, you’d not be needed. So, have you failed?

Whether or not you, or I, or anyone, fails at anything has got nothing to do with exam passes or degrees or high position. It has to do with one question. One alone: Fail or no, did I do what I felt in my heart was right?

If you do what you sincerely believe is right, it makes no matter what results come from it. The only important thing is that you believed it to be right and you believed it to be true. And, the reason why nothing else matters is a question of faith, and I don’t know anything about your spiritual beliefs, but herewith I will tell you some of mine: that God does not give a toss for what you ever did on this Earth. Not a heck. But, what God cares about more than anything is what you intend on this Earth. Not what you do. Much of the clap-trap that is written about God is predicated on the act of sin, but sin is not an act: it is formulation of an intent in the individual’s mind. When you formulate an intention, the act may follow, but the act is not the sin, even if it compounds the sin. And that is the simple reason why it is not a sin to be gay. Being gay is a sexual preference, rooted in the biology of this life. What you do with your gayness, over which you formulate intentions, to give comfort or pleasure, or to do harm and cause destruction, it is these things that God will judge and which so few Kenyans seem to understand.

I will send my articles to the UN, where they can lie for the next ten years in some inbox. Maybe I can send them to a newspaper. Maybe I’ll even get a reply. I can try to contact gay MEPs in Development to see what influence they can exert on Kenya. I don’t think it’s much, really. It hasn’t been much, not since 1897.

But, you are an initiative-taker, and not a life-taker, least of all your own. So, Paul Canary: examine your options. Stay, or go. Where to, if you go? Kenya is not your home. Uganda is. Will no one - no one at all -  help you in Uganda? Look at whether you can get to Belgium. In Belgium, you have a helping hand. You have mine. But you must get here. 

There is no false flattery in any of this and there are no false gods in any of it either. Yes, it is written because you spoke of suicide. If you did that, then I may just think I’d failed.

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Suicide is painless

Read my previous article on suicide here.