Q & A with Francis and His Therapist

Therapist:  Well, how have you been doing for the last twenty-four hours, Francis?

Francis:  I feel happy and productive!  I've been trying to get a new status that I think might be more beneficial, and it looks to me like it might work out.  There's a lot of paperwork involved, but ever since we began meeting every day, I find it easier to maintain faith and interest in my goals and objectives.

It doesn't bother me anymore when people at the beach ask me, "What do you do, Francis?"  I just tell them, 'You know, everyday I ask myself the same question!'  Then we all laugh and move onto some other topic.

Therapist:  And at home, how are things going?

Francis:  Well, marriage has been a big question on my mind lately.  Not for me, because I'm happily married.  But when my sixteen year-old daughter makes a lot of noise, laughs loudly and disrespects people, and then screams "porra" about thirty times a day ("porra" means "semen," "jism," "come"), I think maybe we should start dealing with her in a whole new way, by looking for a husband for her, "as is", and getting her out of the house as soon as possible.

Therapist:  What?!

Francis:  Well, yeah, I think it's time for her to get married and move away--far away.  I've put an ad in a Uruguayan newspaper and I'm hopeful we may be able to find a husband for her by the end of April.  We're going to ask just $200.00 dollars for her, but we'll take $75.00, "as is". 

Therapist:  You're kidding, Francis!  I think that's a good sign that you can maintain your sense of humor even in trying times.

Francis: Yes, and these are trying times.  Today, we learned that our eighteen year-old, who desperately needs a job (we need for her to get a job), was called yesterday for an interview at eight o'clock this morning.  But the younger daughter, who took the call, didn't bother to tell anyone about it until five o'clock this evening, when it was too late.

My wife even called to inquire.  All of the candidates who showed up were interviewed, she was told, and those who didn't even bother to return the telephone call probably had their resumes thrown in the garbage.

Therapist:  And how do you feel about that? 

Francis:  Well, maybe it's just a generational difference, but I hate to throw money in the garbage.  I think kids who have a bed to sleep in, a computer, Internet and food to eat really don't value money, unless they're kicked out the door to earn some money themselves.  It's really hard to adjust to the idea that our sixteen year-old just threw her sister's job in the garbage and isn't even penitent about it.

Hey, I didn't know it was important when they said to come at eight o'clock in the morning.  And, anyway, it's just a job!  What does she need a job for when she can get money from MOM?

My wife says she's partly to blame.  She never explained to the sixteen year-old that when a company calls with a job interview, then that's information that needs to be shared with the person who would have been interviewed, had they known about it.  I think kids have to be hungry--starving--to appreciate the value of a job.

It's at times like this that I have to remind myself that beating a teenager with a steel rod is illegal, even if it's by accident.  My attitude becomes a lot like hers:  'Hey, how was I to know it was a steel rod and not a broom stick?  And anyway, what does she need skin for when she's got flesh underneath?'

Therapist:  You don't mean that, Francis!

Francis:  No, it's really just an idle thought I had when I was hunting around the house for a broomstick.

Therapist:  How are things going otherwise?

Francis:   Well, I think that ever since we began meeting every day, I really feel much more enthusiastic.  I'm really able to maintain a positive attitude, remembering your encouragement of yesterday until I forget it and then we meet again the following morning.

And my swimming's been going great!  Every time I swim, I go further out into the ocean and there are more women waiting for me when I get back, telling me that they were afraid they'd never see me again.  It's a great attention getter and, unlike a fancy car, it's free.  One of these girls has met me like three times after my swims, and she's kind of cute.

Just the kind of cute that everyone would tell my wife about before I got home for dinner!

Therapist:  So, wouldn't that cause trouble in your relationship with your wife?

Francis:   Well, my wife is very understanding.  If someone tells her they saw me with a girl at the beach and then asks who it was, my wife says, "Oh, that's his girlfriend."  That ends the conversation with the busybody getting no satisfaction, but I still hear about it from my wife when I get home.  What can I say?  IT WASN'T ME!

Since I don't want to hurt my wife's feelings, now I only meet my girlfriends behind the dumpster at McDonald's, where no one will see us.  It's not optimal, but then what is optimal in life, huh? 

Therapist:  Okay, Francis, our time is up.  I'll see you again tomorrow morning.

Geraldine Ferraro Dies and a Little Bit of Color-Aroused Delusion Dies with Her

. . .

I don't think I have to remind readers that the late Geraldine Ferraro said in 2008 that Senator Barack Obama had only gotten to where he was in the presidential contest because he is Black.

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JULIE BOSMAN

Published: March 12, 2008

PHILADELPHIA — The Democratic presidential contest was jolted Tuesday by accusations surrounding race and sex, set off by remarks from Geraldine A. Ferraro that Senator Barack Obama had received preferential treatment because he is a black man.

I believe that most Black people would never have known who Geraldine Ferraro was but for this color-aroused delusional attack on Black people, asserting that our skin color was advantageous in a presidential contest.

Ms. Ferraro, the former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate who backs Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, told The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” NYT

Now, she's dead and she's about to be buried, I would imagine, and so this is not the time to drag her through the mud.  No, this is the time to remember who she was when the chips were down:  a color-baiting anti-Black antagonist who besmirched Hillary Clinton in the Black community just by her obvious association with Clinton's campaign and Clinton's failure to strongly and immediately disavow the Ferraro's statements.

Let's take this moment to remember Geraldine Ferraro and how she disgusted us.

Alternatives to Suicide

The Temptations' Roger Penzabene (who wrote song above) killed himself just days before his songs about his feelings became national hits.

A lot of people consider suicide, including me from time to time.  According to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), almost 35,000 people "successfully" committed suicide in 2007.  This number doesn't include young people who intentionally or with callous indifference crashed on their motorcycles or committed horrific but intentional accidents while driving their cars. This number would also not include adolescents who die while "surfing" on top of moving cars, trains and buses.

A few days ago, a new friend--who seems to be brimming with life and projects--acknowledged that he had once slit his wrists in a suicide attempt.

In my experience, one alternative to committing and/or endlessly contemplating suicide is to avail oneself of twice-weekly cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions, while taking medication that lessens and ameliorates the depression and suicidal ideation that lead to suicide, and also attending self-help meetings that reinforce new and more functional behavior.  This cognitive-behavioral-medicinal-psycho-social cocktail has prevented me from committing suicide during the many, many weeks and months when suicide was the foremost thought on my mind.

I have not automatically known that I had to practice the above in order to make suicidal ideation go away and render myself safer in my own company.  I have gone through months and years of fighting suicidal ideation by myself before an acute bout with depression led friends or family point me toward the above.

I began the latest time round of treatment, in which I am presently engaged, because I remembered what worked before.  I proposed to my therapist that we do the same thing now, even though it's costly to me.

I have the good fortune of living in Brazil, where my public hospital therapy sessions are free, psychiatric medication visits are free, psychiatric medicines are free, and my private clinic sessions cost me $23.00 per one-hour session.  Compare this to my last experience in the United States, where I was charged ninety dollars per session with a psychotherapist and $150.00 per session, twice a month, for seeing a psychiatrist.

The total cost of this care would have been eight hundred and sixty dollars per month, including therapy, psychiatric prescription visits, and medicine, but not including the cost of traveling into Philly where I was availing myself of these "services".  I can only say with regard to myself that being depressed and suicidal in the United States was too costly for me, so I had to move overseas.

In the course of those therapy sessions, it is important that I develop and begin to implement one or more goals and objectives that are positive enough to serve as an alternative to killing myself, instead of choosing an early death.

Since I was 22 years old, I didn't kill myself because:

• I wanted to finish the college semester; 
• I wanted to finish college, 
• I demanded to finish law school, 
• I decided to give the Bar Exam my most intense conceivable effort with the twice-weekly support of a psychiatrist, and then I passed the Bar Exam and became able to work as a practicing attorney.

After I became a practicing lawyer:

• I didn't kill myself because my clients needed me;
• When depression forced me to stop practicing law, I didn't kill myself because going to France to learn French seemed like an acceptable and engaging alternative.  
• In France, I didn't kill myself because I wanted to become a famous lunatic first, and 
• because all sorts of wonderful things happened in France that distracted me for most of thirty months.

In Brazil, I have given my life over to the forces of nature and the capacities of my body.  Each day or two, I swim out into the ocean beyond the ability of people on the beach to see where I've gone, and largely beyond my ability to identify the beach restaurant at which I have left my bicycle and my backpack.

I swim directly out toward the open ocean, in the waves and swells, for at least half an hour.  This challenge compels me to focus on such simple but crucial questions as:

• Which side can I breath on without getting water in my nose?
• What direction will I need to swim in to syncopate with the ocean's wind, currents, swells and waves?
• Who will greet me when I get back from my swim and tell me that they seriously considered calling the fire department when I disappeared into the distance?
• Should I swim for the admiration of those who watch me disappear, or just swim because I enjoy it regardless of who is watching?
• How many hours can I swim and still retrieve my backpack from the beach restaurant before it closes?
• What can I write in my blog when I get home and who will read it?  What will they think?  Why should I care?

I feel victorious when I return to the beach and put my feet in the sand, because I have just swam in billions of liters of water and survived, with my body healthier, more muscular and lighter for it.

It is certainly true that I could drown or even be hit by a speed boat while swimming one or two kilometers out to sea.  I do my best to be careful and match my physical abilities to my swimming techniques and pace, always remembering that if I get tired then I can just float for awhile and look at the ocean, peninsulas and coral reefs in the distance.  I know that, if I had to, I could just trust the waves and wind to bring me back to shore.  I don't swim at dangerous beaches, because I frankly don't want to die by drowning, which is not hard to do.

Having given the question a lot of thought, I would prefer to die by swimming out to sea and then shooting myself in head (or neck or chest).  Swimming is sufficiently challenging that no one can be expected to do it successfully after being shot in the head.  I feel fairly sure that if I shot myself in the head while I was two kilometers from shore, then by body would float up onto the beach in a day or two if not within hours.

I wish I could talk about the more positive aspects of my life, but when you're on welfare you can't let your social worker know that you have bought a new washing machine.  That leaves me circumspect, even in the context of public confessions of uncommon oddities.

Here are my suggestions for people considering suicide:

• If you have an addiction to a drug or process that is ruining your life, go to a self-help program focused on recovering from that addiction by abstaining from the self-destructive behavior one day at a time.  Find a sponsor who can teach you how to read the literature that includes the Steps that lead to recovery.
• Simultaneously, there must be some reason why you are wanting or trying to destroy your own life through addiction or by suicide.  Find a cognitive-behavioral therapist with whom you can meet twice a week, who can help you to avoid the negatives in your life so that you can invest your time, mental and spiritual energies in the project(s) that you and your therapist have agreed upon.  A sense of meaning is a powerful medicine for someone suicidal, and realistic goals and objectives can provide that sense of meaning.
• Finally, if you want to kill yourself today, there must be some good reasons why you should put it off at least until tomorrow.  Make a one-year plan to put your life in order so that when you die you will not leave any loose ends for others, and will leave others in the best possible position to cope with your death.  Don't kill yourself until you have researched suicide survivors groups in your area and have ascertained that your family and friends will be welcomed there.  In other words, one way to avoid suicide is to procrastinate.  No one said suicide would be easy, and you have much to do before you can kill yourself in good conscience.
• Join an A.M.E. church, where you can also join the Men's Fellowship and the Men's Choir (depending on your gender).  You might get years of support and a thin rope of salvation  before you realize that God doesn't exist or that He is actively trying to ruin your life.   That's a joke, mostly.  God helps people who accept wisdom from the people around them and the pearls of wisdom in the Bible.  God (and life) penalize and castigate people who reject all good sense, regardless of its source, and who do as they please, regardless of the terrible and terribly predictable and predicted consequences.

Did you know that there are local suicide hot-lines that you can call and where you can talk for hours, one on one, about why you want to die and why you might want or feel compelled to live?  If you're really fortunate, one of the hotline workers may even visit your home to offer some "sexual healing."  But you may have to avail yourself of these lines for years before that happens, just as I did.

The best advice I ever received with respect to suicide came from my friend "Benzi," who advised me to forget about the roots of my depression, forget about killing myself, and simply go the beach and have fun.  I think I had more fun in the following months than many people do in their entire lives.  But I never would have had the relational skills to enjoy myself as I did, had I not first been in years of therapy while simultaneously attending nightly self-help groups for people with problems as various as being the adult children of  alcohol-laden families and being adults with the process addiction of sex, love and romance-related compulsive, self-defeating and self-and-other destructive behavior.

Yes, life is complex, and so are we, and that's why it takes so much work and dedication to learn to enjoy life instead of committing suicide.  You might well find that dedication in your therapist's office or at a meeting for people who once could not stop doing what they knew was destroying them and their families.

And look at the bright side:  If you don't have fantasies about killing hundreds or thousands of people, then you are a lot healthier than the people who do have those fantasies, and you just have to spend a few additional years learning to enjoy life instead of wanting to stamp it out like the beginning of a forest fire.

Have I exceeded my five minutes?

"I Wish it Would Rain": Suicide and Black Men's Reponses to Bereavement and Depression

Why did Roger Penzabene commit suicide
and what can be done to prevent other such suicides?

I have been reflecting on Roger Penzabene, the Temptations song-writer who killed himself on New Year's Eve, 1967, just before his "I Wish It Would Rain" ballad became a hit. If you wish someone you know had left a suicide note, then listen to this song, which expresses the emotional anguish, desperation and depression that lead to suicide, with the loss of a significant relationship being one of the risk factors for suicide.

""I Wish It Would Rain" is a 1967 hit single recorded by the Temptations for the Gordy (Motown) label and produced by Norman Whitfield."  Wikipedia.  "I Wish It Would Rain" describes depression so well that it could not be a coincidence that he wrote it a week before his death.  In particular, the song focuses on the human behavior associated with depression as well as the fairly consistent depressive thought patterns that are brought on by depression.

In "I Wish it Would Rain" (hereinafter referred to as "IW", Penzabene points to a circumstance that has left him deeply depressed, even though most people pick themselves up and move on after the same circumstance:

Sunshine, blue skies,
Please go away!
My girl's found another
And she's gone to stay.

So far so good. Cheating wives are so common that Brazilian Portuguese has a deprecatory name for husbands and lovers who know their wives are cheating but stay with the anyway.   The term is "corno" and it refers to the totally socially devastating experience of accepting that one's wife is sharing her time with another man.

Then, however, Penzabene goes off on a depressive riff utterly divorced from knowable reality, describing both his perceptions and his dysfunctional reaction to his reflections:

With her went my future.  My life is filled with gloom!  So, day after day, I stay locked up in my room", ruminating.  (It was impossible for Penzabene to know what his future would look like, but his two or three hit songs after his death show that his "future" did not have to be defined by his wife's behavior.  There are plenty of women who want to go out with a famous song-writer and spend time around the rarefied culture of hit musicians, hit groups and hit songs.

Penzabene acts as if his future is coterminous with the end of this relationship, and yet there is no reason whatever for him to believe that his future disappeared along with his wife.  Certainly, the future that he wanted was imperiled, but had he lived on he might have found a different future much better than the present desolation that he projected onto the future:  'My life will never get better than it is right now, in this time of depression brought upon by an outside circumstance.'

I know of various couples that have gotten back together and gone on to live happy lives after one or both of them was involved with "another."  There was simply no objective way to know that his wife wouldn't come back.  And furthermore, in a world filled with billions of people, there was no way for him to know that he wouldn't find another woman with whom he would love and be loved much more.

"My life is filled with gloom."  Subjectively, that might have been true of Penzabene's mind when he killed himself, but there was really no way for him to know whether, had he lived on, his entire life would have continued to be filled with gloom forever.  It's natural to be filled with gloom or anger immediately after discovering infidelity, and yet--as painful as it is--most people get through it.

Moreover, Penzabene perceived his life to be "filled with gloom" in spite of great success in other areas of his life, such as his music.  By exaggerating the relative importance of this relationship, he weakens his desire to live and his love for other aspects of his life that are just as important.

By globalizing his feelings and insisting that his "life [was] filled with gloom", he projected his feelings about his wife, in the momentary present, onto every aspect of his life in the present, including all of the future.  Naturally, he was depressed at the notion of spending his entire life with his emotions defined by his relationship with his cheating wife.  And yet, had he lived a week longer, he might have met a woman who was more in love with him and more faithful than his wife.

"So day after day, I stay locked up in my room."  It's common among depressives to divorce ourselves from support groups and from people who could help us to have a more measured view of the present circumstances, but that isolation leads only to greater sadness, deepening depression, and apocalyptic "solutions" like suicide.  If the song's lyrics really describe Penzabene's behavior at the time of his death, it seems that he isolated himself from family and friends who loved him and might have provided encouragement, or, in the alternative, he may have lacked family and friends with whom he could share his profound depression and thoughts of suicide.

Because he believes his life is simply gloomy, he reacts by avoiding all of the people who love him and by spending all of his time alone, in a downward spiral of social isolation where he gives no one he knows a chance to help him.  He acknowledges that his mind is filled with gloom, while the belief that his life was filled with gloom seems exaggerated.

He was actively involved in a number of musical collaborations and undoubtedly his many professional friends had deep appreciation for his talent.  Ignoring that aspect of his life, he undoubtedly was possessed by thoughts of killing himself as a solution to his wife's infidelity and his cognitive-emotional reaction to it.

When people are depressed they want their outward circumstances to validate their inward experience, lest we be forced to acknowledge that our inward experiences are based on an exaggeratedly negative response to our outward circumstances.

"I know to you, 
it might sound strange,
but I wish it would rain!"

Penzabene doesn't acknowledge that many people wish it would rain and hate for spring to come, because bright days and sunshine are the antithesis of the dark anguish ["gloom"] that we feel inside.

"Lord, oh Lord, I want to go outside 
(A lovely day!)
But everyone knows a grown man ain't supposed to cry.

Keeping feelings locked up within ourselves, and feeling to "wrong" to have these feelings at all leads to shame and prevents the depressed from recounting these feelings to trusted friends or family members, pastor or psychotherapist.  And yet Penzabine shows some little bit of compassion for himself, saying:

Listen!
I gotta cry, because crying relieves the pain.

As a person who has suffered greatly with depression, for good reasons and for no discernible reasons, aside from the illness of chronic major depression itself, I know that crying can be a way of acknowledging and expressing the pain I feel inside.  But, for Penzabene, crying really didn't relieve the pain. It just became another wedge between him and the people around him:


Effectively, Penzabene didn't think he could go outside properly if he was crying.  If, however, it was raining, then no one would notice his tears, and so in that case going outside, crying, would be acceptable.

Raindrops can hide my teardrops, 
and no one need ever know 
that I'm crying, crying, when I got outside.   
To the world outside my tears
I refuse to explain,
How I wish it would rain!

I've had the same experience where some come Boston wind helped "explain" (but really only hide) the reason for of my tears.  Later, the Temptations with Smokey Robinson would sing, "Tracks of My Tears":

So, take a good look at my face!
You'll see my smile looks out of place!
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
the tracks of my tears.

So many songs about the interior and exterior self, about dissembling feelings of hurt and pain.  And all to what purpose, so much dissembling.  In the case of Roger Penzabene it helped not one bit.  And yet Penzabene was so depressed that it was impossible for him to dissemble any longer.  As Smokey Robinson would later sing, in "Tracks of My Tears":

Outside I'm masquerading!
Inside, my hope is fading.
Just realize, that since you put me down,
My smile is the makeup I wear since my break-up with you!

And yet the levels of pain and depression and abilities to interact with life and engage with others, as expressed in these two songs show the extent to which each person depicted has let depression ruin their connection with humanity.  In "Tracks of My Tears," Smokey Robinson sings,

If you see me out with another girl, acting like I'm having fun,
Although she might be cute, she's just a substitute because
You're the permanent one.

At least the man in Tracks of My tears continues to go out with women with whom he laugh and have fun, and eventually get over the loss of the loved one who very possibly is never coming back.  In the Penzabene IW song, Penzabene says his response to the deep hurt inside is to isolate himself in the belief that they pain will NEVER go away.

My life is filled with doom!
So, day after day, I stay locked up in my room.

Going out and trying to have fun is a better coping style than staying locked up in one's room.  With time and involvement with life, the pain of separation is eventually replaced with other involvements and activities that prevent us from becoming so detached from life that life itself no longer seems endurable. 

The message of these songs would seem to be that, if you get dumped by a woman or a man, it's far better to express the pain to someone else and then at least try to maintain contacts with life.  If the depression is so serious that we are considering suicide, we need to see a psychiatrist and get the medicine and talk therapy necessary to find some relief from that pain before or while our pain is so deep that we are considering suicide. 


Most people recover after being jilted.  The quality and potential for recovery may lie in the ability to stay connected to others and to reach out for help, from family, community, church and/or a psychiatrist and a medication regimen with a place to talk openly about the pain, the suicidal ideation, and the strategies that can be used to survive a break-up.

The Temptations were so brutally honest in these songs about how it feels "when you put me down", that these songs deserve an answer to the questions that they pose:  Psychiatrist, psychologist medicine and talk therapy, with continued connection with support systems can mean the difference between a life "filled with gloom" and leading to suicide or a life that maintains connections with a support system after a break-up, so that suicide does not seem like the only option and alternative.


Another lesson about when it is appropriate so seek psychiatric help:  If you realize that your

eyes search the skies desperately for rain

then you may need medication and talk therapy until that emotional emergency goes away.