Don’t Give Up

October 20th, 2006

I’m in the process of placing all of my old CD’s onto iTunes. Talk about a stroll down memory lane! I haven’t heard some of this music in 15 years and I have biten by the nostalgia bug, thinking of what my life has been like during that time. Let’s see: college, grad school, 6 jobs, marriage, kids, apartment, house, 4 cars, anxiety, depression, happiness, etc. Half my life has gone by since listening to some of this music. Unreal.

Yesterday on the train, a song from Material Issue starting playing in my headphones. Wow! I haven’t heard this song since…

I wonder what they are doing now. Still around? Broken up? Any new albums?

Still in love with my new found Web freedom wherever I want it (practically), I looked them up on Wikipedia and read this:

“Throughout the remainder of 1995 and into 1996, Material Issue had recorded a set of new songs that they had hoped to shop to a new label. However, the band came to a tragic and sudden end when Ellison committed suicide on June 20, 1996 by carbon monoxide poisoning from his moped in his garage. No one knows for sure what compelled Ellison to end his life, but two circumstances that seem to be the catalysts were the end of a relationship with a woman on his birthday on April 18, 1996 and the loss of his band’s record deal from the previous year. A suicide note was found by police, but the contents of that note remain known only to Ellison’s family.”

My heart fluttered then sank. In the post Kurt Cobain era that was the mid 90’s, there were lots of suicides. I’m not sure if there were more during that time than other time periods, but every time I heard about an attempted or completed suicide, it hit me hard, especially if the person was someone I knew (even if it was through music which surrounded everything I did back then). I didn’t know about the Ellison suicide until yesterday. So sad. I cried.

If I had learned about it in the mid 90’s, I would have dropped into an emotional funk, reading every book I could get my hands on about why people take their own lives. Suicide is so encompassing and ubiquitous that you would be kidding yourself if you deny never contemplating it. We all have thought about what would happen if we killed ourselves. What would others say at our funeral? How many people would attend? Who would attend? Who wouldn’t?

Thank G-d most of us don’t have the guts to go through with suicide.

I sure didn’t.

Chicken shit.

Thank G-d.

Now, I take different approach when I hear about a suicide. I still wonder why people do it, but then I look back to everything that I have accomplished in the past 15 years. I think of Hallie’s smiling face, Ari’s adorable cheeks, and my wife’s loving arms. I acknowledge my emotions and use them to push further in my professional and personal life. I didn’t kill myself then and I will, of course, not do it now. But I won’t deny that I haven’t thought about, “What if….”

If you are depressed and are thinking of killing yourself, don’t do it. Besides taking the easy way out, you will be hurting so many people who care about you. Even those you have never met. We may know you through your work, your music, your writing, your world.

Be a chicken shit.

-Steven Cohen

“Cause everybody hurts,
take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts,
don’t throw your hands,
oh now, don’t throw your hands
If you feel like you’re alone,
no, no, no, you’re not alone” - Michael Stipe

“don’t give up
you still have us
don’t give up
we don’t need much of anything
don’t give up
’cause somewhere there’s a place
where we belong

rest your head
you worry too much
it’s going to be alright
when times get rough
you can fall back on us
don’t give up
please don’t give up - Peter Gabriel

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