Benning Banner, November 25, 1998, the day after I shot myself.
Twenty-two years ago today I shot myself in the chest with a 9mm handgun. It has been an interesting journey these past two decades. I have learned a lot about myself and other people. Some days I am glad to be alive, but many days, honestly, I wish I had died back then. I have experienced love and friendships and seen some beautiful things… But, there has also been an enormous amount of pain… a lot of loss. I have come to understand that we humans grow the most out of our pain and suffering, not from our happy times. I have also come to understand that much of life is loss. In the past 22 years friends and family members have died. My Grandmother, my Nana and my father died, all leaving huge holes in my life. I fell in love several times and all of those amazing loves ended in pain and sorrow. Am I better for knowing these people, maybe. Would I give up the past 22 years to not have the pain I carry around every day of my life, probably.
Aging is an interesting thing. The older I get, the more calm I get. People who knew me in my youth would say that I was an intense nut. I still have some intensity, but nothing like I use to. I use to talk a lot, now I listen a lot more. I use to do stupid things not caring if I got physically hurt… living with chronic pain for 15+ years has taught me to be much kinder to my body. There is a wisdom that comes with age and I guess that I am thankful for that wisdom and the ability it gives me to live a contented life, but the costs have been high!
For many reasons I have not written on here for many months. I have been depressed. This whole COVID nightmare really brought some things into focus for me (and not in ways many people might think). I am hoping to write more now… and we people with “issues” often pay attention to anniversaries… and so today seemed like a good day to finally publish something.
I have set some lofty goals for myself for this year and next. In order to get my goals achieved I will have to dig down and through some painful memories with Lena, Ava and some other people. I have to go back and read hundreds of social media posts by myself and these women whom I have loved more than my own life… I have to read hundreds of pages of saved text messages. This is going to hurt… worse than shooting myself in this chest, but it has to be done.
Came across these posts from Lena that she posted to Facebook and I just tear up and wonder what went wrong?
I have been talking about the gut-brain connection for years. In addition to my depression and suicidality, I have had gut issues for most of my life. Some of my fondest memories of my marriage to Lena (who is a neuroscientist) were discussing the possibilities of this linkage… and now it’s proven!!!
How 3 Generations Suffered Depression Due to Expectations and Disappointment within a Family
Monday, November 25, 2019 5AM
I just awoke from a very strange dream. In the dream my aunt and uncle invited me to stay with them to finish writing my book. This may not sound very strange to people who don’t know me, but let me explain. I have an uncle, my father’s brother Jonathan Cole, but I have no relationship with him or his family and haven’t for some time now. The choice to cut ties with Uncle Jon was made in anger, but had been coming for a very long time. In the dream the whole family was gathered at the apartment of my Aunt and Uncle (not the actual apartment they live in but some fantastical apartment that doesn’t and couldn’t exist anywhere). It makes sense that I would dream of getting together at Uncle Jon’s this week, fore when I was a kid the whole family gathered at his NYC apartment for Thanksgiving for many years. It also makes sense that I dreamed of him specifically last night because yesterday was the 21st anniversary of when I shot myself… and Uncle Jon (and his family) did not come to visit me in the hospital after I survived the shooting.
One might assume, because of this dream, that I miss my Uncle… and I do, but not the man he became but rather the great man I once thought he was and I know that he could have been. This might sound ridiculous to people who know Jon as many think that he is a great man. He has been married to the same woman for close to 50 years. He has 2 fairly healthy children and 2 grandchildren. He was very successful monetarily… He is part of the 1%. He was successful in his career, being one of the longest serving Provosts of Columbia University. He has published several books and is considered such an expert on higher education that the Chinese Government hired him as a consultant and flew him to China to give advice on building the world’s largest and “best” public research university in the world. These all definitely sound like the trappings of a successful man in our society.
My mother and father with me at 3 days old. You can see that my father’s right shoulder is much higher than the left because of his Scoliosis.
I mentioned that I once thought Uncle Jon was a great man… and this was true, when I was a small child before my parents divorce. I thought the world of him but not because of the societal trappings of success that he now has and had started to gather back then. My father, Stephen Cole, was a sick man in many ways. He had a very bad curvature of the spine (Scoliosis) that ultimately caused him to lose almost 70% of his lung capacity. As a child I can remember that one shoulder was always significantly higher than the other. My father made enough money to afford custom made suits in which extra padding was added to the low side shoulder to make him appear “even.” Towards the end of his life there was no hiding the effects of the Scoliosis; he looked like a hunch back. My father also suffered from crippling arthritis at times and chronic migraine syndrome for most of his adult life. Overall, he wasn’t a “well man.” On top of his physical ailments my father was very narcissistic personally and competitive in his work. All of this meant that he never played ball with my brother or me. He didn’t take us to ball games. He didn’t encourage us to pursue things that we were interested in. He encouraged us to pursue the things that he had been good at… getting good grades and making money.
My Uncle Jonathan playing catch with me and comforting me when I got hurt. He must have brought the football because I don’t remember ever owning one as a kid.
When my uncle and his family would visit us out on Long Island he would play ball with me outside. I was too young to emotionally understand what I was thinking, but I elevated my Uncle to hero status because he wasn’t “sick” like my father. Uncle Jon doesn’t have scoliosis and stands over six feet tall. He is a handsome man. He was smart and well spoken… and much more soft spoken than my father, who had a tendency to be loud and aggressive in his speech (perhaps to make up for the fact that he was physically weak?). When I was a small child I can remember looking forward to seeing Uncle Jon and looking up to him so much.
When my parents separated and were getting divorced, Uncle Jon told me that if I ever needed someone to talk with or if I wanted to come visit in NYC… all I had to do was call and he gave me his number. But that turned out to be an empty promise. I reacted very negatively to my parents divorce. I was a problem angry kid prior to their divorce and only got worse through their dismantling of our family.
I remember that I tried talking to Jonathan a couple of times. He did not know how to deal with my anger; most people didn’t… and then he was gone. There were no invites to the city. There were no invites to join his family on vacation to the country, the Caribbean or Europe. He has had a house on Martha’s Vineyard for more than 20 years and never once has an invitation been offered even though he specifically said one would be. Invitations from Lena and me to come to our home in Rivertown were turned down. I expected my uncle to be present in my life and I was disappointed.
It wasn’t just me that was let down, Jonathan totally abandoned my brother; in some regards more so than me. My younger brother Walt, lived less than 20 blocks from our aunt and uncle in NYC all through high school and even closer during college… and during all of that time I don’t think Jonathan had Walt over for dinner once, other than the obligatory Thanksgiving get together. Walt went to Columbia University where Jon worked… and not one lunch or breakfast… not one cup of coffee. What kind of man does that? I expected my uncle to be there for Walt and was disappointed when he wasn’t. There’s no excuse, but it was indicative of a larger issue.
Uncle Jon, Nana and my father.
From the mid 1980’s until my father’s death last year there had been an ever deepening divide between the families of these two brothers (my father and uncle) who once were so close.
From what I have been told my father and his brother were very close all through college and graduate school. They both attended Columbia University at the same time. They both majored in sociology. They both went on to hey PhDs in sociology from Columbia studying under the same mentor, Robert K. Merton. Even at the beginning of their professional careers they remained close working together on research projects and books. “The Cole Brothers” were known as a formidable force!
Very early in his career (around 1969) my father left a tenure track position at Columbia and moved our to Long Island and started his career at The State University of New York at Stony Brook (which would later be renamed, Stony Brook University). I honestly am not sure why my father made this choice and he would come to dislike Long Island intensely later in life. He did become the youngest full professor in Stony Brook University’s history, and I believe he still hold this record to this day.
My mother after my birth, Joanna Lewis Cole, Jonathan R. Cole and Sylvia Cole, in Port Jefferson, NY
At this point the brothers were still very close… working together and visiting each other and their mother, who lived in Queens, often. When I started to write this blog post I dug through some old family albums that my mother has lent me in order for me to digitize them and found these photos from the year I was born. I have to admit that I was somewhat shocked or, perhaps more accurately… bewildered by the photo of my father holding me up to his face between him and my Aunt Joanna.
My father, me at 6 months old, and Aunt Joanna
As far back as I can remember, I have always felt that my Aunt Joanna didn’t like me. I can’t put a finger on exactly when I was aware of feeling this way as my childhood before the age of 10 is fairly blocked in my memory… but I always felt that she looked down on me or didn’t approve of me for some reason unbeknownst to me, as a child. As a young adult I was keenly aware that Joanna and her children did not care for me and at the time I thought it was because I was an unapologetic outspoken conservative. My uncle and his family were fairly liberal back then and only became more liberal as time went on.
My mother claims that when I was 7 or 8 at a family get together, I called my cousin Daniel a “fag.” I don’t remember this. If I did indeed do this I must have been mimicking my father, who didn’t really have anything against homosexuals but was just an ass. It was clear from a very young age that Dan was homosexual. His parents and my grandmother Sylvia, Nana, were all in denial until he came out of the closest some time in college or shortly thereafter. Once Dan came out he was 100% accepted by everyone in the family. Perhaps my uncle’s family thought I did not approve because I was a “conservative,” but nothing could have been further from the truth. In college I was a hardcore Libertarian style conservative and I couldn’t care less about anyone’s sexuality. My mother also claims that Jonathan and Joanna did not agree with how my mother and father were dealing with me being a “difficult child.” So, according to my mother, I was a significant factor in the dividing of these once so close brothers and their families.
Nick Grinder and Daniel Cole at the celebration of their marriage.
My father had a different point of view. My father had an expectation that Jonathan be grateful to him as my father attributed much of Jonathan’s success to himself. According to my father, Jonathan never would have finished his PhD if it had not been for my father’s help. Also, when my father left the tenure track position at Columbia University this opened that track up to Jonathan. There was very little chance that both brothers would have received tenured professorships at the same university. So from my father’s point of view all of Jonathan’s success at Columbia was to some extent because of my father’s actions. Jonathan couldn’t write a book on his own until he was in his 60’s. His last two books on higher education had little to no input from my father; and quite honestly… I have not read the latest book, but “The Great American University” is a steaming pile of shit, in my opinion. Regardless, my father felt (had the expectation that) Jonathan owed him a debt of gratitude that was never paid.
My father being the emotionally stunted individual he was allowed this disappointment to grow into resentment and this furthered the divide between the brothers and their families.
Sylvia Cole (Nana) holding me when I was just 3 days old.
My father also had a very close relationship to his mother, my Nana. He would go into his office and call her for an hour every day. Nana came to visit us on Long Island often. We went to visit with her often at her apartment in Queens. I am named after my father’s father who died when my dad was only 19. Due to me being named after the love of her life and me being the first born grandchild, I was my Nana’s favorite… not that she didn’t totally dote on the other grand children, but we had a special relationship above and beyond what she had with the 3 other grandchildren. Eventually, my father and I both felt disappointed in how his brother and his family treated Nana. Nana had the expectation to be allowed to be present and appreciated in my uncle’s family. By the end of her life Nana too felt very disappointed by the behavior towards her by my Uncle Jonathan and his children.
Sylvia Cole (Nana) holding Daniel Cole in 1975
Despite routine efforts on the part of my Nana to be part of lives of Daniel and Susanna, my uncle’s children/my cousins, she was routinely rebuffed and eventually almost totally excluded. Nana had the expectation that because she was their grandmother and that because she loved them, that they would love her back and want to include her in their lives. This expectations and resulting disappointment had the effect of causing my Nana severe emotional pain and depression. The older Daniel and Susanna got the less Nana heard from them or saw them. She was even excluded from Susanna’s wedding which took place right in NYC while she lived half an hour away in Queens. Multiplying the hurt was the knowledge that the grandchildrens’ other grandmother, Joan Lewis, was included in everything.
Susanna Cole Bach, Joan Lewis (the favored grandmother) and Daniel Cole
I can’t find the words to express how hurt my Nana was by the exclusion she felt coming from her own son’s family. She spoke to me about it often. She cried about this often. She would send the kids gifts and not even get a thank you. She wasn’t the only one treated this way. Neither my brother or I were invited to our cousins’ weddings. My aunt and uncle did have a get together at their apartment several months after Daniel and Nick got married and I was invited to that. I took a lot of very nice pictures of the party and offered them to Daniel and Nick as a kind of wedding gift. I did not get so much as a thank you email or call or anything. Furthermore, and perhaps more insulting… they never even looked at the photos. I put the photos in a password protected gallery on my website and I get notified when someone signs in… they never even signed in to look at the pictures. I tried repeatedly to connect with both of my cousins and was rebuffed every single time.
This blog post has gone on much longer than I had anticipated… The good news is that I have learned my lesson… I no longer have expectations of anyone because I realize that expectations almost always lead to disappointment… and with enough repeated disappointment leads to depression. When I married Lena in 2011 I told her point blank that we should not have expectations of one another. I said that the only expectation I had of her and she should have of me is that we not cheat on one another and that we don’t leave the relationship. I held up my end, she couldn’t live with just those expectations and apparently consistently felt let down by me and eventually asked for a divorce. Now I live a life where the only expectations I have are of myself. Period.
I’ll be 100% honest… the whole thought of dating makes me want to kill myself. I am well aware that I am not randomly going to run into “Ms. Right” in my day to day life. Because of where and how I live, online dating is really the only option. I have profiles on several sites, although I don’t pay for the premium services. I waste countless time actually reading profiles and flipping through hundreds of pictures. I am discouraged at the number of fugly women out there… sorry. Seriously, I am sorry. I 100% wish I were not so vain and superficial. I have married, and then been divorced from, 2 stunningly beautiful (on the outside) women. I know, without any doubt in my mind what-so-ever, that if I could fall in love with an ugly woman, my life would infinitely be better. I know this with zero doubt… but I just can’t. So, I swipe left… swipe left… swipe left….. Then….
Then, I come to a beautiful woman… and I just want to hang myself. Why? Am I not worthy of being with a beautiful woman? Would I not be appealing to a beautiful woman? Honestly… after everything that I have been through… I don’t know. I guess despite my outward bravado I must still have some insecurity. Why would a woman “like that” want to date me? What would I have to offer a woman “like that?”
Even if it’s not insecurity eating away at my sanity… there is a laziness factor that has come into play in my late 40’s. Do I really want to expend the time, energy and money to pursue a woman “like that.” Finding someone takes time. Wooing someone takes time. I am not looking for one night stands, so more time than one night is required. I often feel like I live on thin ice as it is… how much can I risk pursuing something that is probably doomed to start?
When I start to talk to a woman I have so many variables I need to keep track of. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time… so when do I reveal my psych history? Many women are immediately scared away from me because I have tried to kill myself in the past. I understand this. Other women have been attracted to me because I have tried to kill myself in the past — I have learned to be very weary of these women!!! They want to save me and no one can save anyone else!
On top of my psych history I have several physical ailments that can be an impediment to a relationship. I have Fibromyalgia. I have a degenerative joint and nerve disease. I have Afib. I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Spastic Colon which also gives me chronic gastritis! I have chronic migraine syndrome. I take Opioids and muscle relaxers every single day. Who the fuck wants to deal with all of that? I certainly hate having to deal with it!!!
I am lucky in one regard… most of the time I don’t mind being alone. In fact, I rather like my alone time. But there are some times when I feel lonely and wish I had someone to share my life with. About a year ago, I came up with a test for myself in terms of how much time I am willing to put towards dating… When I think I am lonely and wouldn’t life better with a girl friend… I watch some porn and jerk off — and after I cum I ask myself if I still really want a girl friend. Think about it… not a bad test! Unfortunately, recently the answer has been — definitely maybe. LOL.
My next open and free public talk on issues of mental health, PTSD, bullying, suicide and the stigma of mental illness will be December 9th at 7 PM at the Hampton Volunteer Fire Company #33 in Hampton, NY.
Recently I was chatting with a young mother whose baby died in her arms shortly after being born too prematurely to survive. I check in on her every few days and I told her that grief comes in waves… That she shouldn’t be surprised if she feels better one day, or for a few days, and then the agonizing pain returns. I warned her that this will happen again and again, and may never end; the hope is that the period of time between waves will grow longer and longer as time goes on.
I should listen to my own words. I woke up this morning around 5AM and had a really nice conversation with a young man who has reached out to me because of this blog from South Asia. After showering and having my 2nd cup of coffee I went down to my office with the idea of editing some photos. I turned on my music app and a song that I love but had not listened to in a while came on… by the 2nd or 3rd bar I was in tears. The tears just welled up in my eyes and I could feel my heart expanding in my chest to the point it felt like it would burst. Then the tears just flowed.
The gut wrenching wave of grief struck me out of the blue and I felt like I couldn’t breath. It felt as if it took all of my bodies will to make my heart beat each beat. My brain was awash in sadness and of course, me being me, my initial response was to wish that I were dead. I wasn’t acutely suicidal or in any imminent danger to myself… I just wanted the pain to stop and my old “stand by” reaction to this type of stress is wishing I would just die.
The song was “Forever Young” by Alphaville…
I love this song… I have since it first came out… but it reminds me of Lena. This morning, out of the blue, when hearing this song all of the hurt Lena’s leaving me… pushing me out of her life… and the lives of her children who I helped raise for 8 years… all of that soul crushing, heart breaking pain came rushing in as if it had just happened all over again.
I recognized the stress for what it was and immediately turned off the music and forced myself to run some errands. But the “wave” didn’t stop when I turned the music off. Driving felt almost surreal as I wasn’t aware of consciously deciding to turn the wheel a certain way or press the gas or break… I was kind of on auto-pilot. I still felt like just breathing was taking all of the energy that my body and mind could muster. This lasted for more than an hour! Some quacks would call it a panic attack… but I would not. It was a grief wave.
As I am writing this, now 8 hours later, I am listening to “Forever Young” on repeat and I can feel those feelings without letting them push me to that “wish I were dead” spot and helping me write this post. It never ceases to amaze me how certain songs can provoke certain responses… and as time passes the invoked feelings can change. In the months prior to marrying Lena, I listened to this song alot and thought of it as a happy song. Now different verses of the song provoke very different feelings.
Prior to the marriage the first verse spoke the most to me and it rang as youthfully hopeful to me…
Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst
Now, almost 9 years later and fully knowing the whole marriage was a lie… that I was used and abused and then thrown out like a dead work horse… this verse rings truer to me…
It’s so hard to get old without a cause I don’t want to perish like a fading horse Youth’s like diamonds in the sun And diamonds are forever
I have promised myself that I will NOT kill myself over Lena. I just won’t give her that satisfaction. I probably will kill myself some day, but not over her!
I had suicidal ideation by the age of 10… meaning I was feeling sad, lonely and severely stressed and I saw my eventual death as an end to and preferable to the daily struggles I faced. But, even with suicidal ideation, or ideas of preferring death to life… it never occurred to me to actually end my life at the age of 10. My embracing the idea of death at such a young age use to put me as a far outlier in terms of society and how children thought and felt. Today we have 10 year old kids actually committing suicide.
Allison Wendel, age 10, committed suicide.
Two days ago it was reported that a 10 year old girl was found dead after committing suicide. Read that again… a 10 year old girl was found dead after committing suicide. Bullying is rumored to have played a role in her suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for teenagers in the United States.
The suicide rate among people ages 10 to 24 years old climbed 56% between 2007 and 2017, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This country needs to wake the fuck up! We need to realize that despite all of our “modern advances” children are just as cruel, if not more so, than they have always been. In fact, some of these so called advances probably play a significant role in the increased suicide rates of teens… Specifically I am referring to social media. When I was a kid we may have had to deal with a bully in a certain class or during recess, but when we went home the bully wasn’t there. With the advent of social media the bullies can be present 24/7 creating an inescapable stress bomb that pushes many kids to killing themselves or killing others.
Bullying isn’t the only ill of social media. Children today become obsessed with the number of “likes” they get on Instagram. Imagine thinking of killing yourself because you didn’t get enough likes on a photo… WTF? The social pressures created by social media are huge and potentially deadly.
We as a society also need to finally admit that the current medical model for depression and suicide just doesn’t work. Taking a little yellow pill isn’t going to fix what’s wrong despite this messaging from Big Pharma for the past 30 years. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies have gotten rich off of our misery and what they offer DOES NOT WORK!
Neuroscientists who study suicide and depression have known for 10+ years that SSRI “antidepressants” do not work. There have been books and numerous articles published about the false claims made by SSRI manufacturers. There have also been numerous articles written about things that do work, or at least work better than SSRIs… such as working out 3x a week. Yes, working out for half an hour 3x a week works better than taking an SSRI if you are depressed.
For Depression, Prescribing Exercise Before Medication Aerobic activity has shown to be an effective treatment for many forms of depression. So why are so many people still on antidepressants?
There is much more that is wrong with the current medical model of suicide and I will continue to discuss this in my next post… but for now, we as a society need to decide if we care that our children are killing themselves at an alarming and ever increasing rate… and if we do care and want to change it, we as a society are going to have to face some hard truths and fight powerful entities that have made alot of money off the current model.
I was speaking with someone today and mentioned that I had a loose plan to kill myself around my 60th birthday in the year 2031. They asked why and I told them that I had given it a lot of thought and that with the confluence of my declining physical health and the fact that I have enough money to just get by for about 10 years… It seemed logical to me. This person knows me a little and said that I had so many talents and why didn’t I find some way to earn some more money and that my physical health wasn’t bad enough to kill myself over. This person didn’t say it in a judgmental way and I thought about it the whole way home and some more tonight.
I am not one of those people who think that all life has inherent value; I never have been. I think quality of life is more important than how long someone lives. I was standing on my deck smoking and I was asking myself why I have never been afraid to die. I also found myself pondering what I am here on this earth for. I thought about my “talents” and it occurred to me that although I may be an OK writer and an OK photographer and an OK public speaker… these have never seemed like life-worth-living pursuits. Now being on love on the other hand… that’s a different story. I’ve always been willing to give my all to love and have foregone suicide a few times for love.
I found myself thinking about my relationships and how I give myself over to them 110%. In a relationship I can be a chameleon… in that I tend to end up liking things my partner does and doing things they do — even if I wasn’t interested or if it isn’t particularly healthy for me. For example, the last woman I dated, April, smoked and I had been smoke free for two years. April wasn’t interested in quitting and within a month or two I was smoking again. I’m the same way in bed… I am very willing to accommodate a wide range of bedroom activities to please my partner. That’s when I came up with the idea that I am chameleon like; reflecting back to my partners what they want or are interested in, at times to my detriment… such as when Lena asked me to move to Rivertown full time. I moved without hesitation and created the life that she said she wanted, even though living there was very detrimental to my mental health and even though living there in her “normal life” was very demeaning to me as a person.
So, now that I am single, where does that leave a chameleon? I feel like a chameleon that has been placed on a blank piece of paper… with nothing to reflect back and no goals. The psychobabblers out there will immediately say that I am co-dependent. OK. Maybe I am. So what? I am 48 years old and admit that I am a bit fucked in the head. I have been through thousands of hours of therapy and the statistical likelihood of me changing this core part of my personality at this point in life is basically zero. The greatest joys in my life have come from loving a woman 110%… Is that so bad?
