Tag suicide

Together We Will Go, But Where?

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

Mark Antonelli, a struggling writer, concocts a plan that begins when he buys an old tour bus. His idea needs riders, so he advertises for special people to join him for a cross-country trip to San Francisco.

The dozen passengers he picks up for the journey agree to ride until the bitter end, when he intends for the bus to plunge off a cliff. Their individual stories are the foundation of an intriguing novel, Together We Will Go: A Road Trip to the End, by J. Michael Straczynski.

The passengers are an eclectic, quirky group, and include a poet, a young woman with a chronic disorder, a 65-year-old widower, a woman who grew up bullied for her body size, a party lover, and a mild-mannered young guy who is literally blue due to a hole in his heart. Antonelli hires a young Army veteran to drive.

There are many twists (but these are not spoilers).

One rider gives up his life so the others can pursue their plan to end theirs.

The passengers find happiness with others who want to die because their lives are empty.

They each go because they don’t care to live, but they grow to care more about each other than most of them have cared for anyone.

I found myself liking most of the characters so much I wanted them to fail—in other words, to live. In the end, they do not all die, but some do, and not necessarily how they intended.

Straczynski brilliantly balances a sometimes lighthearted story with the seriousness of the topic. He uses the characters’ own words to advance the story through the texts, journal entries, emails, and voicemails they send to Antonelli, the leader of the bus trip.

Straczynksi, known for his many successful motion picture and television projects, has also written Marvel comics. My favorite TV series he created is Senses8 on Netflix.

The book made me wonder if these 12 passengers really want to die. Or are they looking for something else? For them all, the tour bus, like life tends to do, takes them to places they do not expect.

The Boy Between: A Gripping Story About Depression

Reg Spittle 10 Comments

There is a scourge that does not discriminate, regardless of gender, race, nationality, or sexuality. It often finds its way to victims through social media. And it does not watch a clock–it hits some people during the prime of life.

Depression tightens its grip on Josh Hartley when he goes away to England’s Southhampton University. He watches fellow students have the time of their lives, but for him, university life heightens the loneliness and despair he has experienced for years.

In The Boy Between: A Mother and Son’s Journey From a World Gone Grey, English novelist Amanda Prowse describes her struggle to lift her son from the depths of depression. She gains new hope as he heads off to university.

In alternating chapters, mother and son describe the journey. Josh’s narrative is especially powerful as he buries his shame under the covers of his bed. How do you come clean that you are not perfect? That you failed in college? Or, he asks himself, is it easier to check yourself out? For Josh, the book was a way to open the mental health conversation, especially for boys and men, with a message. He encourages males to say “I cry,” or “I suffer” and admit, “I need help.”

He is thankful he has a loving family to support him, but he and his mother now know those who have depression must lead their fight to get better. He pleads that other sufferers hang in there. “You are not alone.”

This is a book for the mentally ill, but also for those who want to understand an illness that affects so many. It holds a message of hope. It offers education through a story that relates the pitfalls of ignorance, like when someone tells a suffering youth to “Man up.”

As a sufferer of anxiety and depression as long as I can remember, I have found solace and much more on the long-distance trails of Europe. Like Josh, I told my story in a book (Camino Sunrise: Walking With My Shadows), which was cathartic for me. I am most touched when readers write that my story helped them with their own struggles. Like Josh writes, we are all in this together.