Notorious B.I.G. - Suicidal Thoughts

Do You Want Something to Cry About

1. Let me tell you a true thing about considering suicide before your age can be counted in double digits. It makes complete sense to a kid, at least it did to me. Here's why: I was made to think I was pathetic and stupid, and the people making me feel that way were the people who were supposed to love me the most. Naturally, I believed them. I believed everyone who ever belittled me or doubted me for a tremendously long time.

   At nine years old, after getting slapped around a bit and then threatened with the tried-and-true classic "You want something to cry about?" my mother and stepfather carried through with their threats. They became victims of their own anger, letting it feed on itself until they were seething and furious at everything ugly inside of them. They couldn't help but take it out on the 100-pound kid already crying in front of them. I was weak and disgusting to them. They had to crush me. They projected all their ugly and all their hate onto me, and they hated the painting they collaborated on so much they sought to destroy it. They gave me something to cry about.

   I recall lying on the carpeted floor, bleeding from the mouth and nose, crying, and choking on the blood with my tears flowing into my mouth. I also recall my mother; teeth gnashed together, breathing heavily, and cursing me. That was her style. She wore it like a crown of thorns. Self-martyrdom was my mom's bag. She would go the extra mile if it meant she could lay a mean German/Polish Catholic guilt trip on you. She stood over me like a boxer taunting a defeated opponent and laid this flawless nugget of warm parental wisdom on me:

   "If you think it's bad now it only gets worse when you get older."

   - My mother

2. Recapitulation: A child at his most vulnerable gets beaten nearly senseless by his mother and stepfather. They are supposed to love him. They aren't supposed to beat the shit out of him. They are supposed to be supportive, or at the very least, not violent. They aren't capable of such behavior. They are animals. They beat him bloody and tearful and tell him life only gets worse.

   Worse? What the fuck do you mean worse, Mom?

   I know my mother wish she got a fuckin' abortion.

   Biggie, Suicidal Thoughts

   At nine years old, everything hurt me all the time and I couldn’t handle the things I felt. I was not capable of doing all things I wanted to do, and I wanted to run away so hard and fast my legs would snap and when they did I would crawl and cry faster and harder until my lungs wouldn’t work anymore and my eyes would be flooded and my brain would scream at my body to stop and I wanted to dash my own brains out because the cognitive dissonance between what is and what is supposed to be is a chasm too wide and huge to be overcome by myself and I have nowhere to go and God wasn't listening because I didn't know how to pray correctly and I was too weak for his love anyway and I was supposed to be able to help myself and I couldn't so I must not be worthy of his love, and you're fucking telling me it's only going to get worse?

   No! No, no, no. Fuck all of that. I was checking out of this hotel post haste. Right now. Yesterday. I wanted to be history, a news story clipped from the paper and left to brown in a keepsake box for years. It made complete sense to be dead. Nothing would hurt anymore.

   Forget everything you know about life getting better. Forget everything you know about reason and the importance of life and your religious beliefs about mortal sins. Forget all of that and consider the pure reason of it all. If you're in more pain than you've ever been in, and the people who caused you that pain are also, in a sadistic twist, the people you trust more than anyone else, and they tell you your life is only going to get worse, wouldn't you check out? Wouldn’t you??? Before you ever knew better. Before you'd ever kissed someone, or made love, or seen the sunrise with your best friend, before you ever had any inkling of a better life in any way, shape, or form, you would consider killing yourself to end it. It would be merciful, tender even. When I say pain, I mean an all-encompassing definition. Emotional, physical, and indeed spiritual pain. The kind of hurt that comes when a child calls for a God that never responds. When that sort of pain arrives, you want to leave forever.

   Back to that question "Do you want something to cry about?" Yes. Yes, I do. I want to cry even more. Parents who ask this question have taken complete leave of their senses. Let me see if I understand: A child's crying bothers a parent, so that parent opts to make the child cry even more. Threaten a child? Why is that in America beating a dog gets a person jail time, but threatening or hitting a child is perfectly acceptable? That's what we tell people. Hit a dog? Go to jail. Hit a kid? Tough love. I weighed maybe a bill. My stepfather? Around 225. Let's do this. Hit me harder and don't stop until you feel better about yourself.

   "Do you want something to cry about?"

   - Every asshole parent ever

   Give me something to cry about and while we're at it, let me get a heavy dose of existential fear and abject horror. At least enough to last through the formative years so as to cripple any hopes of allowing personal connection and human interaction. Take a sensitive, shy child and fill him with enough poison that he'll be unrecognizable to even himself in just a few years.

3. For 25 years the idea of suicide was a comforting thought. It was the ultimate escape hatch. No matter how bad things got, I could always punch my own ticket and that would be that. It was an ace up the sleeve. But like a nuclear weapon, you have to be sure. The thought warmed me and became a good friend on lonely nights.

   Now, of course, I'm still ticking. I have less than zero interest in hollow platitudes like "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," "God doesn't give us more than we can handle," or "You wouldn't be who you are now without that." Here's the short answer to each of those: There are worse fates than death, there isn't a god, and I really, truly, deeply hated myself. Empty platitudes and recycled clichés make me want to vomit bile and Bourbon in a church offering plate.

   Self-loathing and hurt were my defining characteristics between the ages of 8 to 32. Before that, from what I recall, I would say it was curiosity. Now? Now it's absurdity. My defining characteristic is absurdity, because in all of this, throughout the arc of my 43 years, everything gives way to absurdity. It's absurd that I'm still alive, and it's absurd I didn't kill myself (They are decidedly not the same thing). It's absurd that I've achieved what I have. All these personal deceptions and distractions we've created as a culture are absurd. The joke was always on us and the madcap laughs are our best friends in the Grand Design. It's all meant to be funny, even when it isn't, especially when it isn’t.

   If my humor has pain in it, or the pain has bits of humor in it, so be it. I've accepted that, and I laugh the hardest on the metaphorical gallows because I'm not afraid anymore.