It’s funny. I can’t understand why my friend can’t mentally cope with coming to my house anymore. He hasn’t reconciled experiencing someone almost killing himself in my dining room, and being part of that saga. He’s seeing a shrink tomorrow to figure it out. I took the episode almost in stride and stepped up to talking the man down. My coolness in the face of someone holding a knife almost scares me.

Yet here I am. Two nights ago, I admitted to my husband that “I could understand why medical students kill themselves.” We had a nice long talk about how I’ve considered the act, including how I would do it. I admitted that the only thing keeping me from running the car off the highway, or cutting my wrist, or gulping down every available pill in the house, was him. It was my marriage keeping me from killing myself.

I’ve promised to love, honor and cherish him. I’ve promised to be committed to him. I’ve promised him to take his name (soon as the license arrives, of course), and to build a family with him. There’s still so much we have to do. And besides, if I can’t stand the idea of him dying, what would I expect him to feel upon my death? Especially a death by my own hand?

How is it that I can’t figure my friend out, but the idea of killing myself over school seems so… not easy. Not logical. It seems like something that can be more easily understood, however. Rather than fail and not achieve my dream, I would actually consider ending my life. How is that? Maybe because the someone who almost ended it all in my dining room is like myself – we can’t figure it out, so the knife starts looking mighty friendly. I can understand his side of it. But then… does that explain my coolness about the whole thing? Were my words to him empty?

No, they couldn’t have been empty. I didn’t try to convince him that life was worth living. I tried to make him focus on the problem and take part in solving it. First off, what the hell had happened, anyway? Second, how was his wife (with whom he had just fought)? Did he want us to lend her aid? Third, did he want me to find my husband? Would he be more open to talking to my husband (since he was my husband’s friend, not mine)?

Why couldn’t I do that for myself? Why couldn’t I focus on the problem instead of considering what my husband’s friend almost did? It was only my husband who kept me from the edge, whether or not he realized it. How is that?

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