Pretend It's Not Me

I am 32 years old and living in San Jose, Costa Rica.

It's about 5 in the afternoon and I am sitting on a bed in The Garden Court Hotel.

Spread out before me are 100 10mg valium divided into 3 piles.

On a small table across the room sits a bottle of rum, a crack pipe made out of a beer can and a few rocks of cocaine.

It is September 1995, my day of reckoning.

Everything that's ever happened in my life has led up to this moment.

It's been a loveless life, a life devoid of family and friends. A life spent trying not to go under.

I have to talk to God before I swallow the pills, I have to justify my decision in a way that will satisfy both of us. There is no one else in the room, just God and I.

I wasn't anxious or sad, I wasn't feeling sorry for myself or blaming anyone else. I was certain I'd done my best with what I knew.

I was fearless and determined.

A powerful feeling of relief had washed over me and now it was time to move on.

I'd been in Costa Rica for 2 years and had never felt more isolated or lonely.

I didn't want to leave Canada but I felt obligated.

I was 14 when I came out to my family. It was a Saturday morning in 1977 and my father was at his office downtown. When he came home I was waiting for him in my room.

He sat down beside me on the bed and as I lifted my head to look at him I realized he was crying. It was the first and only time I'd ever seen him like that. We were both crying as he gave me a long hug with the words "don't worry son, we'll get you help".

By 11 o'clock the following Monday morning I was disowned and committed to the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital. I felt betrayed. When my father told me to get in the car he didn't say a word about where we were going.

From that day forward my life split in half. My existence would be defined as before Lakeshore and after Lakeshore.

At first I wasn't sure I'd be able to live through this madness, I'd have moments of such extreme hopelessness and despair.

No one could ever have imagined I would crawl out of the ditch my family threw me in.

And now here I was, 20 years later in Costa Rica clinging desperately to the last few grains of hope I could find, trying to understand the world and my place in it.