Something Sharp

Broken Hearts and the Path of Forgiveness

The following essay contains some violent descriptions and mentions of suicide.

When Cameron climbed out of his overturned Jeep, he was bleeding from his head, hand, and leg. He limped out of the window thinking—hoping—that he had just hit a barrier and flipped his car. He had no idea what had happened, but had a feeling that it was bad. “I was disoriented and wanted to get out of there before the police arrived.” So he walked away from the accident. Twisted metal and glass were everywhere. He was confused. As he walked away from the vehicle, he could not put together what had happened. It didn’t add up. He had one distinct idea that kept running through his foggy brain: find something sharp.

His thoughts jumped around as he tried to make sense of the situation:

Find something sharp.

I am missing one of my shoes.

I can’t find my cell phone.

Find something sharp.

I need to call a friend to come pick me up.

I usually have a pocket knife with me,

Find something sharp.

Where’s my pocket knife?

It’s normally in my front pocket. But it’s not there now.

Find something sharp.

There has to be something sharp around here somewhere.

That chain link fence has sharp ends.

Cameron walked over to the fence and began to gouge his wrists on the pointed tips. He was trying to kill himself.

Growing up, I always worried about the sharp points of chain link fences. Surely my shirt would snag or tear as I climbed over to play baseball or football with my friends. Maybe my shoelace would get caught on one of them as I jumped, and I’d fall onto my face. But that night those little metal points on the top of the chain link fence represented a very different fear for Cameron, namely, would they be sharp enough to fade him to black.

He sawed his wrists against the metal, wincing in pain but pushing through to complete the task. If he was really going to end his life, he’d need these metal ends to be much sharper. Eventually he saw blood coming from his wrists and decided to just walk down the sidewalk until it was “all over.” He heard multiple sirens in the distance. The road was lined with leafless, mature trees and he began to see red and blue lights flashing off of their overhanging branches.

Then there was a spotlight from a police car. And another police car. The officers got out of their cruisers and trained their handguns on Cameron. He was told to put his hands on his head and lay on the ground, which he did. He felt a knee on his back and then he threw up.

Cameron was arrested, lifted up, and put in an ambulance that had arrived. The EMTs patched up his wrists, head, and knee. One EMT drew his blood. One of the officers asked him to do a field sobriety test. He was too drunk to do one and told them so. He already knew he was over the limit. The officers put him in the back of one of the police cruisers. As he sat in the back of the car, he struggled to comprehend what was happening, and what was going to happen next.

It was not always easy for Cameron to recount the details of the accident, nor as you’ll see, the events that followed. It was often not easy for me to hear him explain certain things, things I was both curious to know as a writer, and yet devastated to listen to as his friend. But he never backed down from the difficult facts of his experience. He always spoke tenderly of the Williams family, and his own family. He seemed mature in every conversation. We had both grown up a considerable amount since high school, but Cameron had a deeper humility than I could then claim for myself. I wondered about that. I believe Chris’ forgiveness had a massive amount to do with it, and I think the years of therapy that Cameron received while in the Wasatch detention center played a major role, too.

The policeman drove Cameron to the public safety building in Salt Lake City, where he was fingerprinted. He was placed in front of a camera while they took one of those mug shot photos in which you hold up the placard with the date and other numbers on it. After that, he was taken to a small room with two chairs on either side of a small table. Cameron was put in the chair farthest from the door. A detective with glasses and a thick mustache came into the room and introduced himself.

The detective had a piece of paper in his hand that he placed in front of himself as he sat down across the small table from Cameron. He began to read the Miranda Rights. He asked Cameron if he understood each right after he read them, and wrote down his exact answer to each one:

“Yep.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

After the detective finished reading this piece of paper, he asked Cameron if he wanted to talk about what had happened that night. Cameron said no. The detective asked if Cameron knew what had happened that night. Again Cameron said no. He asked him if he would like to know what had happened.

“Yes.”

He proceeded to tell Cameron that he had caused an accident in which two children and a pregnant mother were killed. The father and remaining child had been taken to the hospital. The detective then told him that he would be charged with homicide and would spend the rest of his life in prison.

After the necessary procedures were done at the public safety building, Cameron was taken to the Salt Lake Valley Detention Center, or “DT” as he would come to know it. There he was strip searched (down to his underwear) and told to pull down his pants as he squatted and coughed. They gave him the uniform for the detention center (blue, jean-like pants with an elastic waistband, and an orange shirt) and took away the clothes he had been wearing, some of which were kept as evidence because of the considerable amount of blood on them.

Once Cameron was dressed, a member of the staff came to get him from the cell. They had a phone off the hook and informed him that his parents were on the line. He spoke to his mom first. He’d never heard as much pain in her voice in his life as he heard that night. She cried continuously as she was asking Cameron if he was okay. She kept telling him that she loved him, that nothing would ever change that. As Cameron told me, “That moment remains as one of my all-time lowest moments, one of the heaviest emotions I have ever felt, telling my mom what I had done and hearing it break her heart.”

His dad came on the phone next and told him he loved him. He promised he was going to be pulling out all of the stops to help him get through this. He was choking up the entire time. Cameron told them again that he loved them and hung up the phone. It was late, and everyone in the detention center was asleep. He was escorted to a cell in an empty unit. It was dark and he was still drunk. He fell asleep in the cell, still not realizing the full effect of what had happened.

It was gut-wrenching to hear Cameron recount the details of that phone call. I had spent so much time at his house growing up. I knew his parents as well as I knew any of my friends’ parents. They had hosted me, fed me, and transported me hundreds of times. They remain close family friends to this day. Sadly, one of their greatest fears was met when they received that call from the police in the middle of the night, something every parent dreads, informing them that their son was responsible for a fatal car crash.

A few days after the accident, Cameron’s parents came to the high school’s religious seminary and met with some of Cameron’s closest friends. A group of maybe ten of us circled up in an empty classroom and listened as Cameron’s parents, weeping, explained what had happened. There’s no playbook for how to handle those kinds of things. It was a raw, transformative experience for all of us. They let us ask them questions. I blurted out a dumb question, “Is Cameron happy?” Of course he wasn’t happy, although I suppose the naivete of the question had sweet intentions; I did have great concern for my friend. I think what I really meant to ask was if Cameron was okay. Cameron’s mom gently let me know that he was not too happy, that he was struggling to make sense of everything and just taking it one day at a time.

Unhappiness is something our brains can’t resist when we’ve made a mistake. Our thoughts oscillate nonstop between regret for the past and worry for the future, leaving little to no room for peace in the present moment. We often get stuck in this loop of negative self talk that prevents us from learning from our mistakes. Fortunately, a famous wisdom teacher shows us how we might break that vicious cycle:

When the teacher known as Jesus of Nazereth was teaching at the temple in Jerusalem, Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap Jesus into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” (John 8:4-11)

This is the pattern of forgiveness—when the demands for justice are answered with mercy. The same pattern applies to self-forgiveness. We have all three parts of the story within us: the woman (or self), the accusers (justice), and the Teacher (divine mercy). When we learn to quiet the accusers in our minds, we allow the inner Teacher to respond with love for the self. This is what it means to fulfill the law. The law asks what is right. The Teacher fulfills the law by responding with what is needed, and invites his followers to walk the same path. Until we’re ready for that path, may we take courage knowing that the Teacher is kneeling in the dirt next to us, waiting until we meet his divine gaze and through his love transform into new beings.

This essay is an excerpt from the book, Friend of the Devil: A Story of Mental Health, Mistakes, and Self Forgiveness, by Haymitch St. Stephen. The book can be purchased, and the author contacted, at stillpoint.life.

Haymitch St. Stephen is an artist, writer, and contemplative. He is the creator of Still Point: School of Mystical Design, a contemplative art studio and center for developing creativity as a spiritual practice.

Art by Paul Cézanne.