"Did you hear about Tim McNoun?" "No," I said, bracing for the inevitable news. Then one after another he began to name people I had forgotten. Some who were my friends. In all, we counted 11 suicides from our class of 1989. A sobering day as a realized I could have been number 12.
Their stories were all similar. They were lost in high school, looking to find their worth, yet with no answers. This was my journey in high school. In a time of soul searching shortly after the days of Jack, yet before the days of mustard sandwiches, I was struggling to know my worth and my place in the world. Struggling in the same journey, Dan, a good friend of mine at the time, invited me to come over on a Saturday. He had found his brother hanging from a self made noose in his basement a few years prior and had come to the conclusion his time had come also. He did not want to go alone.
He explained the plan.... We would go into his garage, shut the door, start the engine of his 1970 Camaro, and wait until it was over. All he needed was for me to sign on to the idea and make my way over that day.
Dan was a long haired biker. I first noticed him near the start of my sophomore year of high school. He would ride into the school parking lot on his motorcycle with his sleeveless shirt and hair dancing in the wind. He looked like a rocker, a clash between Brett Michaels and Vince Neil. He looked free, cool, and collected. He looked like who I wanted to be.
He was in my math class. I studied his every move. One day, like a scene from "The Breakfast Club," he was disrupting the class with wise cracks, drawing attention to himself. Students were laughing. The teacher called him out, what looked like a David vs. Goliath matchup. He stood up, grabbed his stuff and said, "I don't need this s&$t!," and walked out. Instantly I thought, "This is my chance!" I found the courage, grabbed my books, and trying to look tough, shouted, "me too" and walked out. If a video had been captured that day and gone viral (which didn't exist back then) I would imagine countless hits with comments like, "epic," "Laughing still!," and "watch the most ridiculous "wanna be" guy ever!" That was me.
When I thought I was joining the new "cool" school, running after Dan that day, I would not take into account until much later what I was throwing away by walking out that door. I went from being fully enrolled in high school to having 4 study halls. (Why they allowed you to have 4 study halls was beyond me.) Sexual addictions took hold of my life. My friends were no longer the ones that went to the Friday night football games and enjoyed Duran Duran, Madonna, and dancing. My new friends were angry, violent, broken, desperate, and willing to break the law to find life. My new road would lead me from orchestra, good grades, potential athletics, to becoming a high school dropout, a drug addict, and into a constant fight against the law.
Dan and I rode out of school on his bike that day. That ride would start my descent. We tested the limits on just how far people can be crossed, how late you can stay out, and how reckless you can become. Though I must say, that Saturday morning shocked me. Could I really go as far as suicide? Didn't I have a place in this world? Hope took hold, and I said, "not today."
I did not realize however that suicide was not just an idea in our heads that day, but a ghost that would haunt our high school and follow me even six years later.
I am encouraged to say that in my search for Dan over the years, I found him, alive. I am grateful to get to know him again in a new season of life...
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