Jason McCall

5,000 Days

I.         I’ve always been good with dates. I can impress my wife by recalling the day we met. I can win points in a happy hour debate by dropping the date of a battle or movie release into my conversation with any group of tipsy intellectuals. I can list all the dates that led me to think about myself as a writer and to think about how the world made me a writer:

The day I was born.

The day my grandmother died.

The day I took my first creative writing class.

The day John Starks dunked on Michael Jordan.

The day Lil’ Wayne almost made it back to sounding like Lil’ Wayne.

The day my first book was published.

Part of me says all these days matter and all these days made me the writer and person I am today.

But only one day matters. November 13, 2005—the day I killed myself.

II.         I have a map of Alabama literature and literary figures in my campus office. The map shows where prominent Alabama authors lived and has markers to show the location of books set in Alabama. Zelda Fitzgerald is the author listed next to Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomery is my hometown. A generation or three from now, when they make the next map of Alabama literature and literary figures, I want my name to replace Zelda Fitzgerald’s. But even if I went to my office tomorrow and saw my name on that map, I would still come back to my latest poem and grumble over whether or not the enjambments meet the standards for enjambments I was given by Leah Nielsen.

            This restlessness makes teaching attractive. Each class is its own lesson in failure. Even if most of my evaluations are positive, I always leave a class, leave a semester, planning on how I can make a smoother connection between poetic form and poetic arguments or planning for how I can make a connection between Rumi’s Sufism and the depictions of Islamic wealth in The Poem of the Cid. I want to do better because I want to do better for my students. I often tell my students that once they walk into my classroom, they are part of my team, and I tell them that I love seeing my team win. But even if I didn’t care about my responsibility to my students, I’d still lose hours considering edits to my syllabi and grading scales.  

            My restlessness drives me—a controlled burn.

            But in 2005, there was no control. There was only restlessness, and burning.

            My junior year was supposed to be the year the world began to bend to my will. I used to talk about the transition from lowerclassmen to upperclassmen a lot with my friend Danny. We went to high school together, and he was a year ahead of me. We spent more than a few nights drinking on his porch and philosophizing about how there was a certain turning point in a college guy’s tenure on campus. We’d have most of these conversations on those nights when “just one more beer” turned into a night of many beers and many laughs and many silences that weren’t awkward or pregnant. We laughed about the adolescent insecurities we brought with us to college. We laughed about the shitty liquor and shittier beer we drank because it was the only thing at the party. We laughed about the girls we kissed because we needed to know there was someone in the world who wanted to kiss us even if the shitty liquor and shittier beer were the only things that really made them want to kiss us. We talked about figuring out majors and minors and figuring out what it meant to be art school kids from the first capital of the Confederacy who were figuring out life on the campus where George Wallace called for segregation forever.

            Those conversations felt like a turning point. The hard work of being a thinker, a dreamer, and a “good guy” were starting to pay off. I was beginning to get the things I wanted out of myself and out of life. I convinced my parents to let me study abroad in Greece in the Summer of 2005. In Greece, I ran a race on the grounds of the original Olympics. I carried my body—fueled by Natural Light, cheap gin, and Arby’s—up Mount Olympus. My life was threatened in the backroom of a Greek dive bar. My study abroad cohort and I rapped Notorious B.I.G’s verse from “Mo Money Mo Problems” in the streets of Athens when the DJ in the bar changed the song after Diddy’s verse. I had a passport and a dozen stories to tell my friends, family, and any pretty face I was brave enough to sit next to at a party back in Alabama. Bartenders didn’t ask what I was having because they knew my name and had my favorite drink waiting once the bouncer handed my ID back to me. Conversations with family and friends shifted from “How are you liking college?” to “What’s next after college?” They had decided I would make it out and become something bigger than a kid from Montgomery with a good set of parents. I gave in to my love of ancient history and became a Classics major. I finally decided writing might not just be a hobby and chose to minor in Creative Writing.

            I was a good student in my writing classes. I could always dig up a mythology or history reference to earn my share of head nods and gasps in workshop, but I never really saw myself as someone who could be a writer until my junior year. I was in my first upper-level workshop. It was a poetry workshop. Everyone in the room was an English major, someone who wanted to go on to graduate school in creative writing, or someone who had a comic book script they wanted to show me over the weekend. It was an exciting and supportive room until I turned out to be the best writer in the room. When the workshop conversations transformed into coronations for the two or three class favorites, I managed to smile through the praise, offer sincere feedback to my classmates (I didn’t realize I was falling in love with the idea of helping other writers), and watch the clock until I could leave and meet my friends for happy hour at the Mexican restaurant next to campus.

            And then I found myself watching the clock during happy hours.

            And then I found myself watching the clock in the mornings after I kissed a girl goodbye and told her that we’d talk later about what we were doing for the weekend.

            It was the opposite of a Midas Touch. It was the opposite of alchemy. Everything I wanted was in my grasp, and everything I touched turned slowly into lead.

III.        On November 6, 2005, I woke up and drove to the nearest bridge I could find. It was an overpass. I sat on the edge and watched the cars pass by under me. There was no plan to jump. I didn’t even think of myself as a man dangling himself on the edge of a bridge until I heard someone from a passing car yell “don’t do it.”

            The police showed up. Hours later, I was in the hospital.

            The psych ward conversations weren’t much different than the workshop conversations. I was a promising young man. I just had to get control of my emotions. I was told that writers are sensitive people and sensitive people have these kinds of outbursts.

            I nodded my head. I joked. I promised I wouldn’t be a letdown to all the patients and staff who wished me luck and promised me that I had the whole world at my fingertips.

            I walked out of the hospital after a 72 hour hold. I went home and watched the clock.

IV.       My mind is divided on suicide the same way Christian denominations are divided on the idea of sin. Some denominations argue that sin begins with action. Lust starts at the first touch. Idolatry starts once the first animal is laid on the altar of the false god. Other denominations believe that sin begins when the mind moves towards the sin. For me, the latter definition of sin feels truer, and the latter definition feels closer to how I view myself after I decided to kill myself. Satan’s first dream of rebellion becomes just as sinful as the first angelic blood drawn in the war for heaven. Mankind’s decline begins with the apple in Eve’s mind, not Eve’s mouth.

            When I came across the theory of suicidality earlier this year—suicidal thoughts as a condition detached from any mental illness or defect—it was a revelation. When I describe suicidality to people who can’t imagine ever wanting to kill themselves, I describe it as akin to the feeling of wanting to leave a party. It can be a boring party. It can be an exciting party. But most people know the feeling of reading a room, reading themselves, and knowing there’s not a bone in their body that wants to be at the party one more second than they have to. Life is the party, and I’ve always felt a pull to leave this party behind.

            It’s dangerous for me to say this, but I think about what it would mean to kill myself multiple times per year. I drive and think about drifting into the median. I think about rivers and my inability to swim. I’ve spent entire plane rides thinking about the exit doors over the wings.

            Writing this puts my career in danger. Writing this will hurt the people I love and hurt people who gave so much of themselves to make sure I did not give my life away. But I write this with the confidence that my suicidal thoughts won’t affect my day any more than my thoughts of what it would be like to have Superman’s x-ray vision or Professor X’s telepathic powers. Since November 13, 2005, my thoughts of suicide have been empty because I did kill myself. The fantasies are redundant. They’re just thoughts. Empty variables. Mind games inside of a mind that never figured out how to turn itself off.

V.        I attended a Saturday house party after the Alabama vs. LSU game, a party that carried over into the next morning: November 13, 2005. It was our first loss of the season, an overtime heartbreaker that served as a reminder that our dream season was only a dream. But there was beer to drink and friends to meet up with so that we could joke about the game and curse about the game. I was talking to a girl I had never met before. We were laughing and had made it to the point in the conversation where one of us was supposed to ask if the other person was on Facebook yet. One of us was supposed to ask for a phone number. One of us was supposed to ask if the other one was hungry or needed a ride home. One of us wasn’t supposed to walk away and start sending goodbye texts to friends and family.

VI.       Like people who travel to the underworld and back, I don’t remember everything. I remember the psych ward facility was underground. I remember my anger and my jealousy. I remember that Tuesday’s lunch had an option for chicken fingers, but I was released before lunch. I remember speeches from black staff members about how I needed to fix myself because the community needed good black men. I remember the speeches about how I just needed a good woman to take my mind off of killing myself. I remember the other patients arguing over the television, and somehow professional wrestling was the compromise. When I saw the black armbands the wrestlers were wearing, I knew someone had died.

            That someone was Eddie Guerrero. One of my favorite pro wrestlers.

            Eddie Guerrero died on November 13, 2005. He was found like many wrestlers are found: lifeless in a hotel room. The cause of death was listed as a cardiac arrest, but living as a professional wrestler for 20 years killed Eddie Guerrero. He had been sober for a number of years and had enjoyed a run as WWE World Champion in 2004, but most of his career was filled with bouts of alcoholism, steroid use, and painkiller addictions. His heart gave out when he was 38 years old.

            Many of the greatest wrestlers, especially in Mexico and Japan, wear masks or face paint to give them a unique appearance or to help audiences know their backstory. At his best, Eddie Guerrero didn’t need a mask. He could wear any face that he wanted. That’s what I liked about Guerrero: his ability to transform himself. His family was a wrestling dynasty in Mexico and the Southwestern U.S., and he was responsible for helping popularize the quick, high-flying Mexican Lucha Libre style of professional wrestling in the United States. Fans loved the persona he developed and how his performances echoed his most popular catchphrase: “I lie. I cheat. I steal.” He rode a low rider to the ring and made the wrestling world cheer or boo him depending on his mood. He could make the same people who chant “build the wall” today wear his t-shirt and slap their chests with pride. He could also make fans boo with all their might as he portrayed the Latino menace who had come to rob the United States of its moral compass and its championship belts.

            I remember sitting in the hospital, watching Eddie Guerrero’s memorial, and thinking how it reminded me of the funerals in Homeric poems. I thought of the Greeks pausing to mourn and celebrate Patroclus and then later pausing to mourn and celebrate Achilles. I thought of Priam and Achilles negotiating the terms for the mourning of Hector. And like many classical heroes or heroes from other world traditions, Eddie Guerrero was a victim of hubris. Being a great comedic performer wasn’t good enough for him. Being a scrappy underdog wasn’t good enough for him. Being a stereotypical foreigner with a mission to expose the wrongs of the United States wasn’t enough for him. I knew Guerrero’s heart gave out because of the stresses put on it by decades of substances and pain, but I’ve always had the idea in my head that Guerrero died from exhaustion. He was restless. He pushed himself into death.

VII.      My parents visited me in the hospital. We sat in therapy sessions and listened to the doctor assure me that I needed a good doctor when I left the hospital. He also assured me that I couldn’t afford him as a doctor. As we went through the sessions each day, he complimented me on my improved posture and complimented me for moving from an 11 to a 3 on the 1-to-10 scale of how much I wanted to end my life. My family isn’t the type of family that makes elaborate plans, or maybe I’ve been able to present a front that’s made my family believe I never needed help. I once got a bad conduct report in sixth grade. My mother once caught me with beer in my car my senior year. Once or twice, a girl came over when I had the house to myself. But I went to gifted schools and had college scholarships waiting for me, so all was ignored or forgiven. When we talked about college, my parents only wanted to know how things were going, if I needed money, or if I needed help moving from one apartment to the next. My parents love through their support, and support is a monumental form of love. But in hindsight, my parents probably should’ve insisted that I come home or at least take a semester off after my second time in the psych ward. They should’ve at least asked about the drinking. They should’ve at least asked about the drinking because all of the other black people in the hospital seemed to be mad about my drinking.

            But I suspect my parents know me and know my restlessness more than they’ve ever let on. And maybe that’s why the only plan came from my mother. When they were about to leave the psych ward, she hugged me and said “Don’t leave me.”

            The more pleasant essay would say that those words were an elixir, that those words brushed away the doubt and restlessness in my head. But this isn’t the pleasant essay; this is the honest essay. My mother’s words worked because I was able to trade one obsession for another. I promised my mother I wouldn’t leave her, but it wasn’t a promise I made just once. I make that promise every day when I wake up. I live that promise every time I don’t let the idea of drifting into a median become anything more than a dream.

VIII.     The laws of conservation say that nothing is ever really gained or lost. The laws of conservation say that the body that walked into the psych ward had to walk out of the psych ward because a body cannot be in two places at once.

            Nearly 5,000 days have passed since I made that promise to my mother. But keeping my promise to my mother day after day hasn’t removed my thoughts of suicide. One habit doesn’t replace another. I can’t count the number of CSI or Law & Order: SVU episodes I’ve watched where the heroes catch the killer because the killer can’t resist coming back to the scene of the crime. Keeping my promise to my mother means that I return, every day, to November 13, 2005. Returning to that day is, of course, another restlessness. Another need that’s not far from the need that pushed me out of my body that day. I come back to November 13, 2005, in my writing. I come back to November 13, 2005, when a song from that period pops up in my playlists. I come back to November 13, 2005, because there’s always a body to bury.

            Someone named Jason McCall walked into a psych ward on November 13, 2005, and someone else named Jason McCall walked out of the same psych ward three days later. There’s no way I can be the same person I was before I left that party and told the world goodbye. This is the trap I’ve struggled to escape from for 5,000 days, the trap I’ve loved and longed for for 5,000 days. And there’s an allure that comes with this making and unmaking. Every day, I reshape my face into a burial mask so that the world doesn’t see all the dead versions of me hiding behind it. 5,000 masks. 5,000 burials. 5,000 lies. The truth is, I am a writer, a teacher, a son. The truth is, I am a very good liar who’s getting better every day.

Cate Lycurgus