PRETEND IT'S NOT ME

It is September 1995.

I am 32 years old.

I am sitting in my room at The Garden Court Hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica.

On the bed beside me are 100 10mg valium.

Across the room on a table beside the window is a large bottle of Ron Centenario rum, a crack pipe I made from an old Imperial beer can and a small baggie of crack.

This life has been a long hard journey, but I am finally at the end of the road.

Today I'm going to end all my suffering, but before I do I want to make sure I really am out of options, that my decision isn't based on a temporary lack of judgement, that I am not being motivated by revenge or emotion or stupidity.

I have everything I need to complete the job, everything except a clear understanding of what brought me here.

I am not crying or blaming anyone else for this situation.

I feel none of the animosity that defined my life for most of my life.

The regret and the shame I've lived with for so long seems to have disappeared, replaced instead by my hope for something better on the other side.

I am not alone. God is here with me and he's the only one who deserves an explanation.

I've heard that life is the most precious gift God gives us and that to destroy it is surely one of man's greatest sins.

But I refuse to see my suicide in those terms.

God and I are going to have a little chat and if I leave this room of my own free will or I leave it in a body bag, either way I'm going to try and understand all the things that have happened to me in this life and what brought me to this room in this country at this time.

I'm determined not to leave until I have come to some understanding.

I need a break through because break downs no longer accomplish anything.

I've spent my whole life trying to understand the origin of all the hatred and all the resentment that has poisoned my existence from the second I got here.

The most convincing evidence I have to support my suicide was how hard I tried to make my life work, how much I cared about people, how much I tried to help.

I've been down for the count so many times yet still Io managed to get up.

But how long was I suppose to wait before finding some measure of solace and comfort in my life?

This day had begun in Desamparados, a small working class suburb of San, Jose, the capitol.

Everyone had left for work or school, leaving just Mommy, Juan Carlos's brother Marcos, his niece Caroline, his nephew Jason and myself.

I had been on the phone to Bill's office in Toronto all morning trying to get the money I needed to pay off my debts. They were minimal, just a few hundred dollars, but the people I owed were good hard working Costa Rican's and they deserved to be payed.

By mid afternoon I realized no one would be sending me any money and they certainly weren't about to send me a ticket home.

Bill and I had known each other for 17 years. We met when I was 15 years old and he was a lawyer practicing international law.

He went from being a lawyer to teaching international law at the University of Toronto.

After that he got into politics.

When he was finally elected in 1992 after three tries he asked me to leave the country. He was married with two grown children so our relationship was dangerous, the risk of a public scandal too high.

I didn't want to go but I felt obligated, he assured me that when the dust had settled from the election he would come down to see me and we would figure out where to go from there.

I trusted him.

I knew what a brilliant man he was and how hard he had worked, it wasn't fair for me to say no.

I was a liability. And so I went.