Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "love"

Taking your own life is not easy. I know I’ve tried, and obviously failed. When you commit suicide you haven’t lost a battle with depression or illness or whatever it maybe. No, you have won – you have taken the final step away from an insoluble problem.

One day, I'll take my own life and that’s ok. It’s mine to take (unless I were to hurt others in the process). I am a disabled man with little if anything to look forward to in life; apart from increasing ill health and poverty in a society that’s shown itself to be virulently anti old-age.

My lover took her own life last year, she, like Robin Williams, hung herself. She left no note but I found out from reading her diaries that she felt that life had come to a full stop for her and that she did what she did out of bravery not cowardice.

I have no information around Mr William’s death other than what’s already in the public domain but I suspect he knew all to well what having Parkinson’s disease entails and perhaps that factored into his choice.

People do not commit suicide in the depths of despair. There is not enough energy down inside that trench. It’s on the way out of the despair when you can see things more objectively that you have the energy to take action.

Once I wrote a lengthy suicide note that, in a twist of irony, caused me to carry on living. It became my novel on the futility of existence - Pavement. It’s no surprise to me that many suicides do not leave letters of intent. That much thought often hinders action. I ended up needing to know what would happen in the story my own suicide note had become. I suspect that many more people consider suicide than is commonly known about but the primitive survival instinct inside each of us is hard to overcome. I once attempted suicide by hurling myself from a bridge fully clothed but it’s harder to drown than you might think – if you can swim and you are conscious then you will.


I am not sure why our society has such a sanction on suicide when we seem happy enough to cause and create societal death on a huge scale. Perhaps the freedom inherent in the decision to take your own life is subconsciously felt as a threat – what if everyone realised his or her life is ultimately pointless? I also question the sanction that the religious have against self inflicted death, surely if there is a paradise then we should all promptly top ourselves and hop on the stairway to heaven, but nope, it’s a surefire way to Hell if we kill ourselves. Personally I don’t believe all this nonsense.

When you die it’s over and that’s a thing to be thankful for, I know I will be.

When someone you love dies a sudden and unexpected death, the shock is nauseating. Vomiting occurs.

Everything you had invested in that relationship – everything you shared and perhaps, more important – everything you thought you were going to share is gone; snuffed out like candle, leaving only the acrid smoke of grief, nothing more, nothing.

For Cate (1978 – 2013)


Death’s jester came to you,

All jingling bells and japes,

You listened to his trickery,

And now he dances with your soul,

Not me.

This is the first extract from my book. It's a short one, after all this is a blog post and I don't want TL:DR to come up...ever.

Enjoy, next one on Friday.



I like the walk along the canal, water is soothing for some reason; even the fetid liquid that squats in the Regent’s Canal is soothing, despite its empty beer cans, tyres and trash. Why is that? The peace offered by bodies of water – perhaps it’s the idea of another world, silent, dark and cold, containing life totally different from us – the strange nature of its substance, both solid and liquid. Life-giving and life-removing, it creates borders and separates us from each other. I think it’s that, and the life-giving nature of water, which is deeply embedded in our souls. We recognise its power and, in an unknowing way, we worship it – it has power over us – we cannot live without it or in it, we cannot tame it or control it. It has us we do not have it. Is that why I love being close to water? Sometimes, on the rare occasions I get to be by the sea, I feel a powerful urge to walk into it and drown, to let it close over my body and remove me from the world. I have heard that drowning is a peaceful way to die.

Here's an early festive treat from Pavement....enjoy

Christmas Day. I wish myself a very merry Christmas and smile – what a stupid fucking concept. I sit on my bed and stare at my twisted feet for an hour or two. Time hangs in the air of my room, each second is palpable – they don’t so much pass as expire –dying one after the other and falling to the floor, littering the threadbare carpet.Thousands upon thousands of these dead little husks of time lie shadowlike on the floor, the bed, everywhere. I amuse myself by imagining that I am killing each second in person, throttling this one and stabbing that one. Can I wait a minute and massacre 60 in one go? I’m bored of this game and wade through the corpses of dead seconds to open a tin of sardines. Christmas day, what a fucking waste of time, the day that the Son of God, who’s not the Son of God wasn’t born.

The only good thing about this day is that the streets are quiet and everything is closed, well, except the Asian shops and the Turkish restaurants and shops over in Stoke Newington. Good thing – because that’s where I am going to get my Christmas day kebab. I reach for my clothes, only to find that I have no clean underwear; I took all my killing garments to the Laundromat but forgot to take any of my daily dirty laundry.

“Shit.”

I pick up a pair that has been in the laundry bag for a week or so; they should have aired out by now. I pull on the rest of my clothes, shoes and coat, and grab another £50 note from the pile. I pick up my phone: there’s a text message from Martha wishing me a merry Christmas. It’s been there since last night, I just hadn’t noticed. I think I can deal with seeing Martha again. I don’t like her but she’s marginally better than nothing. I think this as I tramp along the hall. I open the door and stand stock still in shock.

Snow.