A bummer of a night to cap off a bummer of a day. I am on a serious deadline here, and I just cannot muster my energies for the grand task. I turn my attention to the welter of pages in front of me and instead of a laser beam of focus, there's a lame aerosol mist. I'm like the Glade plug-in of thinkers. Fucking sucks.

And to top it off, I came home to a terribly upsetting piece of mail, mailed by a friend of mine who lives across the Atlantic. I mentioned him in a blog a couple of months back–a basically great dude who is going through a massive midlife crisis compounded by extended unemployment and heatbreak. Mostly heartbreak. Over a much younger girl with whom he carried on a largely imagined relationship.

He's on the upswing, which is great, but there are still troughs. (I've been on long-distance suicide watch five times now–very scary shit.) During the last one, he kept saying it would give him great peace to know that "if anything were to happen" to him (and that's code for what?), P would get this letter he'd written her. Clearly, he wanted me to volunteer to be postangel general. Old reliable discreet Salt, woman of her word. I knew what he was angling for but couldn't take the bait. Not at first. The idea of enabling him here chills me to the marrow.

But he wouldn't let it go, and we are old friends, adults, plain dealers. So instead of shutting him up, I heard him out. And then I asked him to hear me out. Again I laid out every reason I could think of–and that's a shedload–for why ending it would be a colossal mistake: his own talents and promise, his great capacity for enjoyment and friendship and love, his many loyal friends, his batshit parents (who do love him), all the amazing things that likely lie ahead for him. I told him what his killing himself would do to me, and, yeah, how it would totally backfire with P. (She wouldn't see him as a great love that she was dumb enough to throw away, but as an exploding bullet that she was lucky enough to dodge.) And then I told him that if was really sincere about not hurting himself, but just found himself thinking about accidents the way one does when any and all bad things seem possible, he could send the letter to me and I'd safeguard it for him and forward it in the event of an accident. I gave him my word, but also told him that my fondest hope was to hand it back to him the next time we meet, when we're both in a better place.

That was three weeks ago and he's definitely doing better (he's gotten a few much-needed confidence boosts, for one thing). His emails show glints of his old humor and perspective. It makes my heart smile.

And yet today, there was that big old envelope in the mailbox (along with bills and the previous tenant's AARP membership renewal and a catalogue that sells everything from scooters to dehydrators to mandolins to something called the "purple passion pillow"). I opened it and there was the preaddressed envelope to this girl, and a note for me. It wasn't a suicide note, but it took it upon itself to perform some of the actions of one, in the event of that accident. So moving and beautiful as it was, it also gave my imagination a hard shove towards the dark.

I don't know why I've rambled so much here. I'm sorry. I'm just so tired tonight, and my heart feels heavy.