Tag: Anger

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Finding My Voice, by Gillian

Finding my voice has never been difficult for me. Finding it when I should be losing it is what has always been my problem. From my early school days on, if a group of us were somewhere we should not be or doing something we should not do, I was always the one who got caught. My voice just naturally carries, so even if no-one witnessed our misbehavior, someone was sure to identify my voice and name me as one of the otherwise unidentified miscreants.

For a shamefully long time I failed to learn from this the obvious advantage of keeping my mouth shut! I was a fount of firm opinions, and rarely failed to voice them. This led to many arguments, a considerable number of which I lost because I tended to find my voice without the necessary accompaniment of engaging my brain. Later I would often ask myself, why on earth would you say that? What in the world were you thinking? I failed to answer myself, as I should have, by saying, that’s the problem isn’t it? You were not thinking.

I added to my difficulties by consistently finding my voice when I was angry; and if there ever is a time to lose your voice, that is it. But no, my voice would be off, seemingly of it’s own, volition, speaking whatever words it wanted without reference to me, and most certainly not to my brain which remained silent except occasionally to mumble indistinctly and very sotto voce about big mistakes and future regrets. I could not begin to count how many times I was forced into abject apologies the following day. (I can never decide whether this means I completely flunk steps 8, 9, and possibly 10 of Alcoholics Anonymous, or possibly I have already completed them with flying colors. Suspecting the former must be why I doggedly remain absent from AA.)

However, despite my lack of assistance from AA, I did eventually accept that I needed to change my ways, and for this I needed help. I turned for this to Spirituality. I have been especially blessed in my efforts to follow this path in that my Beautiful Betsy accompanies me. Finding your way along an unfamiliar and often difficult trail is always easier with a companion rather than having to go it alone – especially when that companion is also your soul-mate and the love of your life. Together we have read many books, joined Spirituality groups, listened to CDs and watched wonderfully articulate guests on Oprah’s TV series, Supers Soul Sunday.

One of the early books we read, though more self-help in general than Spirituality, contained simple advise I have never forgotten. Remember to ask yourself from time to time, the author says, why am I talking? I find this the ultimate relaxation tool for group situations. Can’t get a word in? Not familiar with, or no interest in, the topic? Relax. Just listen. You have no need to talk.

I have become a much more peaceful person, both for others to be around and within myself, since I started down the path of Spirituality. Anger is almost a thing of my past, and when it does overcome me at least I no longer find my voice, at least until I have thought through what I really need to say and how I need to say it. I don’t mean to make it sound easy. Given our current socio-political situation in this country, I struggle with the extent to which I should in fact control my anger. I know that in theory I should negate the anger and replace it with calm, positive, action. But is there never a time when anger is justified? Ah, I still have a lot of work to do. Spirituality, like so many things, requires eternal vigilance. And that, in turn, requires something so important to you that you never question the need to pay it constant attention. I have found that in Spirituality. I never intend to go back to the days of finding my voice when I should be losing it.

© October 2017

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Security, by Will Stanton

A person’s sense of security or insecurity may be based upon realistic concerns, concerns such as feeling the need to minimize the possibility of home-break-in, avoiding dangerous locales within cities, or perhaps concerns about local terrorism. In many cases, there are some rational steps people possibly can take to provide a greater sense of security.

There is for me, however, a concern (and this is a concern that progressively has worried me over the years), about a more subtle and perhaps even more dangerous sense of insecurity that plagues certain kinds of people and, consequently, society as a whole. That chronic sense of insecurity may warp those people’s emotions and thinking, resulting in actions that are harmful to others and to the society in which they live.

As I have stated several times earlier, there are various ways that people feel, think, and behave, part of that being based upon what they may have learned from their life-experiences, plus part of that literally based upon how their brains are structured physically. For example, everyone is a mixture of rational thinking and emotions. Research shows, however, that there always has been a group of people who appear to be much more prone to emotional responses and less rational, open-minded thinking. As a potentially terrible consequence, such people are more easily manipulated by devious people with harmful intentions. Also, they become very tribal, work together, often with anger and “fire in the belly,” making them too often more politically effective than more cerebral, better informed people.

Manipulating people’s fear and sense of insecurity has been around ever since the creation of humankind, and I have seen much of that over the last several decades here in America, notably in politics. Whereas it appears to me that one of the major political parties contains a good percentage of people who are open-minded, search for facts, try to think rationally about them, and to form logical, constructive conclusions, there is another major party, with much evidence I might add, that contains a large percentage of people who are more prone to fear, hate, and anger. Consequently, some politicians have mastered the craft of manipulating these people to side with them, to support them, even to the extent that the people vote against their own best interests. These voters not only form opinions that are against what is good for them and society as a whole, but they do so with great emotion, even abject anger against other persons who have formed more rational opinions.

I always have been a student of history, which has taught me lessons about human thinking and behavior. One of the most striking lessons I have learned is from a very revealing quotation from one of the most notorious individuals of modern history, a quotation and lesson that certainly are a warning to what is occurring today here in America. What this person said, along with my comments about each part of it, should ring an alarm bell.

This monster of history was asked how he was able to so control the masses of people in his country. To start with, he maintained that most people are ignorant. Now immediately, some of us might respond that this assertion is an overstatement; yet I ask everyone to recall how ignorant people were shown to be when Jay Leno went on the street and asked simple questions of many people, including graduate students, teachers, businessmen, and even government officials. Need I also mention the recent Republican so-called debates?

Even more harshly, the political leader stated that most people are stupid. Now, I know that this term too frequently is used simply as a slur to denigrate people, yet I have noted for many years that certain people do seem to lack the ability to think rationally. I occasionally over thirty years have tested an acquaintance of mine to ascertain whether or not he can follow simple processes of logical thinking; and, truthfully, he never has. He always responds in irrational, emotional ways, so much so that his thinking is very distorted. I recall in the year 2000 during the Presidential election, this individual actually wrote a letter to the Republican National Committee stating, “If Al Gore steals this election, I volunteer to lead the first tanks into Washington.” In addition to his statement being dramatically irrational, it is quite ironic, now that there is strong evidence that the theft actually was the other way around.

The notorious quotation goes on to state that all the leader had to do was to employ (first of all) fear, and we have witnessed in the U.S. how effective fear-mongering by certain political leaders has been over several decades, stirring up the citizens and priming them for manipulation. “Let us political leaders, along with the top one percent, do whatever we want, and we will make you secure.”

Secondly, he also utilized hate by demonizing certain peoples based upon race, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs, etc.; and those persons today who are easy prey to such manipulation increasingly express opinions and beliefs that can be quite shocking and unsettling to those of us who have more empathetic, civilized beliefs. In this way, the manipulators can misdirect the public’s attention away from the real problems and constructive solutions by blaming everything on other groups unlike themselves.

And thirdly, he employed anger, and we have seen both verbal and physical violence as a result. This certainly was horrifyingly true in his time and his country. Here in the U.S. in the recent Republican debates and town-hall meetings, we have seen anger too often expressed among the candidates and audience. Several times now in Donald Trump rallies, we even saw violence against dissenters and journalists. One Trump supporter even shouted out, “Sieg heil!” Such violence can spread throughout society as a whole, rather like metastasized cancer. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the two most spoken languages in the U.S. was German, the language of a large portion of our emigres, along with it being the language of medicine and science. Yet, with the advent of the Great War, suddenly German-Americans were hated. The German language unthinkingly was banned in all schools. Shop-keepers of German heritage had their windows smashed, and others were physically beaten. During World War II, many innocent Japanese, Italian, and German families were sent to prison camps, the German families being the last to be released.

Now we see such fear, hate, and anger being directed toward Mexicans and Muslims, among others. (I suppose certain people always will fear and hate homosexuals). My belief is that the more knowledgeable one becomes, the more rational one’s thinking, the more empathetic and understanding of others, then the more secure one becomes in his own mind. A lack of a sense of security too often is within people’s minds, not necessarily within the real world.

© 02 March 2016

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Anger, by Betsy

In my personal life there is
very little about which I feel anger. Oh there are the little irritations from
time to time, but when I take a good look inside I find I have very little
anger.  It could be that I have learned
that there is little–there is nothing really–to be gained from expressing
anger all the time or even once in a while. 
I find the expression of anger
directed at me personally very frightening. I really do not know how to deal
with it.  I guess maybe that is because I
am not used to seeing anger expressed.  I
do not recall either of my parents ever raising their voices or expressing
anger except in a rational way.  I, in
turn, learned to internalize my anger and not be expressive about it save to
talk to someone about it the next day in a calm way, of course.
It was only later in life that
I learned that feeling anger is one thing. Expressing it is another. Feeling
any emotion just IS.  We do not really
choose how we feel, do we?  Feeling angry
is no different from feeling happy in that it just IS. Most of us have probably
heard the words at some time in our childhood, “Don’t cry, don’t be mad.”
On the other hand have you
ever been told by an adult to not be happy or to not show joy.  Advise today seems to be much more sensible:
allow yourself to feel the feeling. Give yourself permission to feel
angry.  I think this is good advise. But
it should not end there.  It should be
followed with a word about the appropriate expression of one’s anger. 
It’s in
the same basket with being gay. “If you is, you is.” The behavior choice comes
with how you act on that state of being. 
The behavior choice comes with how you act on your anger. You can take
it out on a crowd of people with an Uzi or you can take some positive action to
try to change the situation, or do anything in between those two extremes.
One thing is for sure.  Anger is a powerful emotion.  Some people can carry it with them daily into
their lives from childhood to old age. Personally, I feel sorry for anyone who
lives this way.  What a waste of energy.
Anger does take a ton of energy.  And
then also, we have all seen someone who is already angry about something that
MIGHT, JUST MIGHT happen in the future. Also a waste.
Among my heroes are the many
people who have much to be angry about but can devote their lives to making
positive changes for the betterment of everyone, people who have historically
suffered abuse and are currently experiencing injustices that might certainly
generate unimaginable anger, yet they choose to take positive action sometimes
at great risk and try to make changes in the system.  Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks
are some outstanding examples here, but there are hundreds of thousands less
known heroes who could go on that list.
 Another one of my heroes is Judy Shepherd,
mother of Matthew Shepherd, the young gay college student who was bullied to
death in Laramie, Wyoming several years ago. Matthew’s parents,Judy and her husband, first FORGAVE
the perpetrators of this heinous crime by asking the jury not to impose the
death penalty, and then (and I think because they were able to forgive) Judy
Shepherd became one of the nation’s most
effective advocates for gay rights.  I
have the greatest respect anyone in such a situation who knows the importance
of forgiveness and, does not carry the proverbial chip on the shoulder. 
 Unlike my personal life there is a lot of
dysfunction in our culture and our society today which does cause me to feel
anger.  The greed and ego-driven behavior
of some of our leaders makes me angry. 
Our gun culture makes me angry. 
Our war-driven politics and means of gaining and keeping power in the
world makes me angry. Inequality and voter suppression make me angry. Our
elected officials disregard and unwillingness to take care of our environment
for the sake of their own personal gain makes me angry. The so-called war on
women makes me angry. The list could go on and on.  However these are not the kind of issues that
generate immediate action.  These
problems are deeply embedded in our culture today and cannot be simply and
directly addressed except in the voting booth. For that reason I suspect a good
bit of frustration is mixed in with the anger.
But, as with personal issues,
I hope I can apply the teachings of my spiritual guru, Eckhart Tolle and not
waste energy on complaining and other 
fruitless mental activity.  Even
those small irritations need not be nurtured. 
Ideally I would choose to either take some positive action as an
expression of my forgiveness or express my personal point of view and take some
general action that would promote it.
© 9 June 2015 
About
the Author 

Betsy has been active in the
GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change).  She has been
retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of
marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys
spending time with her four grandchildren. 
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing
her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards. 
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Anger, by Ricky

“Tranquility base here.  The Eagle has landed.”  The first astronauts to land on the moon,
found an environment completely serene and peaceful.  Of course it would be because there were no
people there until then.  It’s a pity
that our planet is not so tranquil.
Earth is still geologically active and also has an
energetic atmosphere, so there are naturally occurring events that would
disturb the quiet nature of a planet at rest. 
But the tranquility to which I am assigning my “it’s a pity” is the lack
of peacefulness between people, cultures, and nations.
Situations continuously arise which allow people to
make themselves irritated.  Irritation
leads to frustration.  Frustration leads
to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to violence.  Violence leads to war.  War leads to destruction.  Destruction leads to famine, pestilence, and
death.
I think we need an organization that can roundup all
the hate and war mongers and send them to the moon so we can have peace on
earth and they can experience tranquility there.  Maybe we could let them stay there “to infinity and beyond.”
© 9 June 2014 
About the Author 

 I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm
in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.
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Anger by Lewis

I have related here
before the heightened levels of anger I experienced and acted out as a boy–my
killing of birds, shooting out of a streetlight, throwing a dandelion digger at
our cat. 
There are other
manifestations of my inner rage that I have not told.  For example, there is the time that I shut
off the electricity in our neighbor’s house when they were away on
vacation.  Or when I hit the hubcaps of a
passing car with a stone flung from my slingshot.  Then, there’s my all-time most daring feat of
disgruntlement when I wrote an anonymous, deprecating note to a bunch of older
boys and left it where they would be sure to find it.  They, to my shock, surmised the source and
came immediately to me expecting a confession. 
I, naturally, denied any knowledge of the blasphemy, whereupon they
demanded a sample of my handwriting.  I
compliantly agreed and, when handed a pen and paper, copied the words of the
note in my very best left-handed printing. 
The lack of resemblance left them dumb-founded and they turned away in
search of the real culprit.
I could easily blame my
parents for my anger.  My father was
gentle and kind but incapable of understanding me or my juvenile emotional or
psychological needs.  My mother lacked
empathy. 
I was isolated as an
only child and a withdrawn one at that. 
In addition, I was the bearer of a horrible secret about the most
shameful of subjects–my sexuality.  I
felt myself to be kind and loving, yet an unworthy aberration of God’s creation.  I had no role-models, for I did not fit the
“role” of any other human being I knew.  So, I compensated by seeking to act like–and
perhaps be–an apprentice of God while feeling like one of the
“unclean” on the inside.  It’s
no wonder that the tension found an outlet through acts of blatant hostility.
I recently attended my
50th high school reunion.  My high school
years, as I have said here before, were miserable.  I had few friends–in fact, had no idea how
to make any, other than by using my intellect to impress.  I had no interest in sports and was
intimidated by the very sight of a girl. 
If I had thought that I had any sex appeal at all, I would not have
known how to take advantage of it.  
Consequently, my lowest moment at the reunion was after taking the tour
of my high school, now having undergone a $30 million refurbishment.  What little of it I could recognize brought
back memories of a childhood lost or, at least, spent in a depression-induced
daze.  I have long suspected that the
same could be said of most of the folks who never show up for reunions. 
So, what is the state
of my anger today?  I suspect that it may
be out-of-sight but not out-of-mind, much like an old childhood scar, hidden
beneath my clothing.  I still curse a
blue-streak at the slightest frustration. 
Perhaps this is healthy, as I believe anger suppressed leads to
depression.  I suspect the neighbors in
my apartment building would complain were it not for the fact that I live in a
corner apartment with a laundry room next door. 
I think much of my
anger comes from shame.  Shame is a
condition much more difficult to express than anger.  Shame then builds, leading to more
anger.  Next thing I know, I’m feeling
ashamed of my anger, which is really depressing.  I think I’ll go shopping for a punching bag.
  
© 7 June 2014
About
the Author  
I came to the beautiful
state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I
married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas
by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working
as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman
for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured
that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I
wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.
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Anger by Gillian

I know a number of women, and perhaps a few less men, who are nothing more than tightly-wound little balls of anger. They are wrapped so tight that if something loosened just one strand, I feel that they would completely unravel. Most of us are not so extreme, but I think many of us have at least some anger inside us, and we don’t know what to do with it; perhaps don’t even understand what it is about. Perhaps we fear it.

I used to think that men actually handle anger better than women. Now I have come to believe that none of us deal well with it. Men perhaps respond to it in a simpler, less complex way, than many women, but not better. There can be nothing more irritating than that rather too-frequently used ploy of an angry woman, essentially declaring, yes, I am upset, and I’m not going to explain WHY because you should KNOW why. Yes, certainly, irritating. But if the net result of a man’s anger is going on a shooting spree then that can hardly be deemed to be a better outcome. And many of us have read the recent article pointing out that in the last 33 years there have been 71 mass murders in this country and 70 of them had one thing in common; they were committed by men. I’d call that a clear case for improved anger-management.

Aristotle expressed very well our difficulties with anger, and I would say little has changed over more than two millennia.

“Anyone can be angry – that is so easy. But to become angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way – that is not so easy.”

Huh! Easy for him to say!

Earlier in my lifetime, and I suspect many women have this problem, I didn’t even recognize my anger for what it was; and if you are unable to know something for what it is, you most certainly cannot deal effectively with it. I would cry when what I really felt was anger. I would feel depressed or sad when really I was angry. When I did feel anger, I inevitably lost my temper. That really scared me. Well, I guess we all hope that as we struggle with many things over a lifetime we also learn to deal more effectively with ourselves and our emotions.

Through hard work I am strengthening my spiritual self, which in turn helps with my emotional self. I have also found that occasionally spilling my messy guts in Story Time has helped me understand myself more clearly. I have come to accept anger when it chooses to visit itself upon me; not to let it disguise itself as something other, and to understand its cause. I can truly say that I rarely feel anger these days, and when occasionally I do, it tends less to be personal than collective. My favorite spiritual guide, Eckhart Tolle, refers to it as the collective pain body versus the individual one.

I’m not a great Bible quoter though I sincerely believe that if we followed Christ’s teachings the world would be a better place. And, yes, I have frequently been heard to say that although I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, and don’t call myself a Christian, I am, in the way I conduct my life, a far better one than oh so many who scream their Christianity from the rooftops. But clearly I’m digressing again.

Anyone sensing a wee little bit of ANGER? Yes, I do have collective pain body anger at the evil such faux-Christians perpetrate. Not on me personally, or at least only indirectly, but on so many other innocent souls.

Jesus said, and I paraphrase because there are many differing versions,

“What you do to the least of these, you do also unto me.”

And isn’t that what the collective pain body is all about?

I feel great anger at the evil being created in Uganda by American, so-called Christian, homophobes. As a fellow homosexual you do it also unto me. I feel rage at the abduction and clearly dreadful fate of Nigerian girls; and, sadly, so many more before them and doubtless to follow after them. Just being female, I am violated along with them.

I detest the hatred of Obama, which I believe to be in great part racially motivated, but it doesn’t awaken my collective pain body; I am Caucasian. On the other hand, I dread Hillary Clinton running again for President. The vitriol against her will be every bit as hate filled as that against Obama, but I am her age, and white, and female. It will all be directed at ME and all those like me; all the women who over the years have been vilified because they tried to enter male territory.

They suffered from some delusion that they were equal!

Nearing the end of my ramblings, I took a break to watch BBC news which turned out to be all about the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings.

Yup, you guessed it! Up popped that collective pain body, and along with it the anger.

No-one really knows how many died in WW11 but even the most conservative estimate is 50 million. 50 MILLION!

Oh, I do believe that that one was what they call a “just war,” Even the pacifist Quakers accept that if you are attacked you must defend yourself. But when will it ever end?

The newscast showed some very low-key Germans placing wreath’s on German graves at Normandy. One said, to the TV interviewer,

“At least Germany has not been involved in any war for many years now. We did learn something.”

A child of that terrible war, up leapt my collective pain body.

Why hadn’t we, the U.S., my adopted county, nor, to a great extent Britain, my native land, learned this lesson?

OK. OK. I still seem to have plenty of anger.

But at least I see it for what it is, and for the most part understand why it is.

And it no longer carries me away.

I don’t fight it: I feel it and let it go.

No, of course I don’t deal perfectly with anger, but at least I am no longer terrified of it.

© June, 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Anger by Pat Gourley

It was often noted in my teens and twenties in particular that I had quite the Irish temper. This seems to have greatly diminished over the years and now is an emotion I rarely indulge in. Much of the anger I have expressed over the years has really been not much more that self-indulgent bravado. Often the sort of flash in the pan display that passes quickly usually followed by regret and at times an appropriate apology.

There have however been at least two instances in my life where my anger was sustained and in one of those seems at times to persist to this day. Both of these involve the suicides of two people close to me, one professionally and the other a dear friend of many decades. Today I will address the suicide of a co-worker from over twenty years ago. The other death will be the focus of an upcoming piece.

Even this anger, at a tragic death, certainly seems to have a quality of indignant rage – ‘how could you do this to me’ which in some respects seems quite silly since they are the ones who are dead, but then so much of my life has always really been about me.

This first suicide involved a psychiatric nurse who worked in the AIDS Clinic at Denver Health in the early 1990’s. She was a lesbian woman who on the surface seemed very strong and as put together as anyone I knew. Unbeknownst to me, but not to several others in her life, she purchased a handgun I believe in late 1992, saying she feared for her safety around the passage by referendum of Amendment Two by the voters of Colorado which read as follows:

Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitution shall be in all respects self-executing.

I thought after the fact that if I had known about her gun purchase and the stated reason for it I would certainly have confronted it for the bullshit it turned out to be. Even back then I was sort of the resident out radical queer in an AIDS Clinic no less a place full of ACT Up members in 1992 and I would have said “oh honey all they are doing is finally being honest about how they hate us”. The statewide vote on the referendum was something like 53% in favor of literally codifying discrimination across the board based solely on sexual preference and 47% opposed. We were simply being put on notice to a fact that had always been the reality. This was of course challenged in court and overturned eventually by the United States Supreme Court in the case Evans vs. Romer in 1996.

I would in hindsight have been right to call her on this purchase since she used the gun along with some alcohol and prescribed medications as lubrication to drive up to St. Mary’s Glacier in early January of 1993 and blow her brains out. I would hope I would have insisted on a better reason, than homophobes run amok, for buying a lethal weapon by a person who was in many instances a very out and proud queer woman.

You must remember this was in 1993 and the peak of the AIDS nightmare. So many of our clients were valiantly struggling to often just stay alive for one more day and this crazy-ass women who I loved and admired, in excellent physical health as far as we knew, goes and kills herself. It was a great blow to many of my staff and her clinic patients to whom she provided psychotherapy. It was difficult for me to even speak her name for many months but we did finally put up a plaque in her memory when our own unbelievably raw feelings subsided and perhaps I personally better appreciated whatever the mental anguish she was suffering from. There were apparently major relationship issues in her life and perhaps these involved anger on her part or maybe it was simply an overwhelming depression made worse by well intentioned use of psychiatric medicines that unfortunately proved to be disinhibiting in the long run and maybe even direct facilitators in pulling the trigger. Suicides seem to often to be impulsively facilitated in our society by the criminally easy access to guns along with alcohol and certain psychotropic medications most often legally prescribed.

My feelings around suicides of people in my life are not however universal and do not always involve anger. In those days in particular end of life decisions to speed the dying process along by many suffering terribly from the ravages of AIDS were not uncommon. For those unfamiliar with this time and its nearly unbearable realities I would encourage you to see the current HBO movie version of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, visually at least it is much more riveting and intensely in your face than the play ever was.

The best suicides as I recall from those days were well thought out and often involved much support from lovers, family and friends. The act was rarely impulsive, rarely to my knowledge involved a gun and rarely if ever done in isolation. News of these passing when they would reach the clinic often invoked great sadness and sometimes a sense of relief but no anger.

If this is to be an act with integrity it seems to me it should never occur as a result of subterfuge and certainly not as an expression of anger toward others or one’s self. That itself seems to be a very angry last dance that certainly does not affect in any positive fashion others in your life, many of who may care deeply about you. It strikes me as not only very angry but selfish. I appreciate that deep depression can often set the stage but a common caveat about suicide is that it is mostly the choice when one is coming out of depression.

As mentioned above I will again explore suicide in a future piece, one by a dear friend of many decades and my own personal feelings about it. Most days I tend to take a Buddhist approach that suicide will only result in another reincarnation something to be avoided and continued samsara on the wheel of death and rebirth, which could go very wrong with one perhaps returning as a banana slug.


June, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.