Feel free to skip this one if you're sensitive about suicide and related topics.
On June 8, 2015, I tried to shuffle myself off this mortal coil.
I was, obviously, unsuccessful (or, depending on your attitude toward the language we use to describe these events, successful in not doing so, though I like to think I get to choose whatever words I wish to describe my own actions). It was a whole unpleasant thing that you can read about here if you would like.
On June 8, 2018, we learned Anthony Bourdain had shuffled himself off this mortal &c.
I haven't been quite as touched by death as most people I know. Your usual grandparents, plus few people I'd known—a middle school teacher, a friend from college. Nothing exceptionally tragic, for me. The news of Bourdain's death, though, sent me careening down dark crooked paths of grief I'd never before traveled.
I’d discovered Bourdain—"discovered"—shortly after finishing my seven-month odyssey around America at the end of 2017. A friend or two who'd read my essays about America's centers said the essays reminded them of Bourdain's voiceovers on Parts Unknown. My instinct was to tell them to fuck off and that I am a Special Unique Writer Who Sounds Like No One But Herself—an instinct I thankfully curbed, because that really was quite the compliment, I came to realize after somewhat reluctantly watching an episode. And then another. And then a whole bunch more.
The ultimate trick of every good writer is making you feel as though you know them, really know them. I use the word "trick" not to belittle it or imply that your favorite writers are charlatans, but to remind you that this is an element of the craft*. I do it all the time: The things in my life that I am open about, I am open about for a reason, and though it may seem as though I am letting you into the darkest recesses of my mind, you should know that there are whole lives that lie in deeper darkness still. Sometimes broader, sometimes tantalizingly narrow, there is ever a gulf between thought and word.
Even knowing this, I still felt a deep kinship with Bourdain, one I'd secretly hoped I would get to discuss with him some day. In the later seasons of Parts Unknown, I saw it, there, in that glance, in that seemingly unguarded moment, in that "joke" about suicide: the weight.
Of expectations—his own, his subjects, his supporters and detractors. Of all the stories he carried with him. Of despair; the nagging doubt that his quest for hope was in vain, or nothing but vanity. Maybe if we'd gotten to talking about it, I would have learned that I was merely projecting this weight onto his tall, thin frame. I'll never know, though, and an entire year later, my heart still aches.
As always, there is an element of solipsism at play here. I had been struggling mightily, both during and after the Centerville project, with despair. The weight of the conspiracy theorists, the Hollow Men, the horrifying lack of empathy, the physical dangers I'd passed through, pressed down on my soul. I had no way of dealing with this despair, outside of watching Parts Unknown and reminding myself that there, at least, was someone who kept on, long past the limits of any sane person's endurance, looking for hope.
And then came the morning of June 8. The search ended.
This was a man who’d kicked a heroin habit, who in spite of or perhaps because of all that he had seen and been through, spent his life in search of hope. If he couldn't make it work, how on earth could I?
*[Extremely Borat Voice] my craft