This story is way too close to home. This man started farming in 2016; by 2019 his last words were "I can't go on like this". I look at this, and of course from the outside we all say "but you have so much to live for, look at those kids and your wife"....but what he saw was the responsibility. People try to encourage you to do things so you'll have confidence to do them...but those people doing the pushing never have to wear the shame if you don't make it.

That's what kills people. Sure, it seems like a no-brainer to "give it all you got" and "never give up" and "push yourself, you can do this", but it just grows. There's a joke in the spirit of Murphy's Law ("if it can go wrong, it will go wrong") called "The Engineering Philosophy: IF at first it doesn't work, make it bigger.". This is how Rube Goldberg became a thing.

But in "life', especially finances, it's not a joke. It's not even close to being funny. What broke me was that each new solution breeds new and unforseen problems. That's bad enough; but with each new problem you hear "Why did you do THAT?" after it goes wrong.

My dad, the mechanical engineer for 32 years who has 19 patents with his name on them, told a story that people would look at his designs and say "Why did you do that?"

Dad would answer, "Where were you when the page was blank?"

It's too goddamn easy to second-guess and condemn what someone else did wrong, when you never had to put your own reputation on the line - or the well being of your whole family - on the outcome.

Me - I saved myself by crawling through the byzantine network of "help" that is available. I got a lot of it. Right now in politics, it's very popular to shame guys like me. It's a sport to humiliate and denigrate and BLAME ME because any penny I got surely was TAKEN from someone else who WORKED FOR THEIR MONEY, DAMN YOU. and then when you read a story like this....put it all together.

Next time you see some Trump voter or a "conservative" talk about how they never "took nothin from nobody and they made it all on their own", think about how that sounds to a guy like the one in this story.

Free speech is free (unfettered, unencumbered) because words have consequences. An inspiring idea or a motivational movement can save countries, communities, families - people. But if you're going to be that proud to say just that, realize that words have just as much power to destroy people as they do to save them.

I know some people by name who I would like to see trapped in car fires. I mean that. Viscerally. Because when I was down, they didn't just walk away, they didn't just deny any chance to help me, they took the moment when I was already coming apart for my own reasons, and they figuratively threw rocks at me, taunted me, ridiculed me - some of them total strangers....why? Sure the counselors and many friends say "why do you care what they say?"

I say, "Why don't you ask the other guy why he was so invested in his goddamn right to say it, and keep saying it, then you can ask me why I didn't walk away from what someone felt they had the RIGHT to slam me in the face with for his own reasons."

Look around you. I have said it for a few years now, and it was only 2017 when the national suicide count passed 40,000 people in a single year. People ask me "how could anyone think of such a thing?"

Well, think about what you just did. You took a person who's staring death in the face by their own hand, and you questioned their judgment - and their motives - and you may have helped just that much by further impugning their mental state. You think the words "get help" are like calling the fire department to put out the blaze at someone's house so it won't burn to the ground. BUt it's not the same thing. YOu say "get help" to someone when that's all you're going to do is say "get help", what you're really saying to them is

"You're broken, you pathetic bastard, and we can see you can't fix it on your own. So take your wrecked self and go see a mechanic, because we're tired of seing this broken thing on our street every morning when we come out of our house and you're still not able to go anywhere with your life."

America builds broken people. For sport; but sometimes for pure schadenfreude. The joy of pointing out how broken the other poor bastard is because THAT PROVES YOU'RE NOT BROKEN, NOW DOESN'T IT?.

Stings when you say it that way. But listen to the discourse in public right now. People go to sleep at night just as miserable as the poor bastard next to them. But they say to themselves, "Yeah, I"m miserable, but that OTHER guy, he's MORE miserable, so I must be OK as long as I'm better than him."

Look around you. There's an entire political movement and party and a deranged leader who are speaking this sentiment with every breath. They dont' care what the problem is, they dont' care if the problem gets fixed, but they're vigorously invested in screaming that they know who created it, and who OWNS IT, and who's to BLAME FOR IT.

Let me ask you this - in the spirit of a Trump rally - "Lock Her UP" - if whoever needs to get locked up gets put away; if whoever needs to be killed needs to be killed (because homosexuals are an abomination and shall be put to death... look it up, Leviticius...they don't write out the "put to death" part every time, but if we're talking about the LITERAL WORD...it's right there) ....

...all that rhetoric, all that vitriol and contempt and derision and mocking....

...what goes around, comes around.

and around.

and around.

I"m not crazy, neither was this man. But I know the sound of those who are screaming in our faces, and they're quite adamant that they know who the problem is. My wife, my friends, this man's family and anyone can say "don't listen to them." - but when a person tries to find calm and solace in the dark so they can sleep at night, who's voice is loudest and still echoes in the silence?

"YOU FAILED" or "Don't give up". Because all the problems that have yet to be overcome are also chanting their own reminders over the sound of "don't give up."

40,000.

Are we all broken, or is there perhaps some value in asking the world that they lived in which did the breaking if they are willing to accept any responsibility at all?

When I say Karen saves my life every day, this is why. All the shame in the world that I feel can't be enough to leave her with the rest of her life to ask "why?" in my absence.

I'm still broken. She is, too, for the same reasons all in their own context. We lean on each other.