Hello there. Some of you guys may be familiar with my column here on Geek Devotions. Some of you may be familiar with my podcast, Victims and Villains. If not, my name is Josh and I’m the host of the Victims and Villains podcast. Our podcast is the marriage between pop culture and suicide prevention. At the beginning of this year, marked ten years since a friend of mine committing suicide. These past ten years I’ve devoted so much of my blood, sweat, time and tears to the cause of mental health. This October, I’m proudly releasing a spoken word album on my journey through my own mental health and the effects I’ve experienced through others. It is with the greatest joy that I premiere this exclusive, debut track for the Geek Devotions audience. This is “Faster, Cliff, Faster”. The debut album, Loser/Lover, will be available October 18th.
I want you to understand where all of this began
How the weight of silence is an avalanche
The blizzard is coming
The vision is blinding
White for miles and even if you dared to scream – no one would hear you
I imagine that’s what it must have felt like for you
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed that moment
A limbic system consistently on repeat
The projector must be broken
Open. Read. Dead. Dread. Silence.
The call it survivor’s guilt
and in some ways, it’s a small portion of every breath I’ve taken this past ten years
Bruce Wayne lying in a puddle of mom and dad
Pearls dance with blood
Under a symphony of street lights and wrong place, wrong time
But what if you had danced just a bit too close to the sun?
What if you had danced just a bit too close to wrong place, wrong time
As you were baptized in the lies of unworthy
and never good enough
Atheistic to the core
But that didn’t stop a bond from growing
Cut from the garden of light
And you the garden of darkness
But God has split the red sea
Called Lazarus and Jesus out from their tombs
Ushered in violence called it wind
Unleashed himself to dwell within our frames
So is it really that insane to say that the garden of darkness couldn’t cross-pollinate with the garden of light – eventually evolving into new man, new creation?
I never had the chance to even experiment or to form a hypothesis
Tongue-tied at every moment
Guess I must have studied Courage the Cowardly Dog a bit too closely
Because we’re definitely related
Bro, your smile was the Cheshire cat of every moment of every conversation
A cat that I’ll never get to see again
Even a decade out and I still can’t shake this weight
It’s amazing how much in common words have with bricks
The way they silence you
And take your breath away
Breath taker
The coroner has sadly seen this before
Suicide
My mind is a NASCAR track
and the person behind the wheel is Cliff Steele
You know before the robotic transformation
Best that there is and yet I still can’t make sense of it
Suicide
I guess I should have known from the way you dressed in winter wardrobe all year
That arms could have been grounds for cuts and scars
The way that mine are for tattoos
THESE BRICKS ARE GETTING HEAVIER!
Heard that worthless was a word that you were all too familiar with
Even from what I knew of you man
And to ears and faces that I’ve never seen, those hands I’ve never high-fived or ever will get the chance to high five
You
Are
Never
Worthless
You are worth it
Every breath, every step, every day
I’m sorry and broken that you had to go through that
To hear those lies
Until you eventually chose to go deaf by suicide
Suicide always feels fantastical
Until you’re left with nothing to say
You just cope
Faster, Cliff, Faster
Even a decade out and I still can’t shake this weight
Now that weight is more than just you
It’s those lifestyles of deception and abandonment
Those that believe this life has nothing left to breed them
Those who believe the lies
If I could pull the moon down to demonstrate your value
I would illuminate every fiber of my being
Every bit of my core to draw you the love you so badly deserve
No matter how hard this life gets
Please, please, please
Stay with us, stay with me
Understand your beauty
Understand your value
Understand that the hourglass eventually runs out
And that depression is the Hollywood stereotype of that basic white girl who is never satisfied
Suicide always feels fantastical
Until you understand the weight of its reality
It is a cancer that consumes everyone it can
Reach out,
Start a conversation
Cope with me
FASTER, CLIFF, FASTER!
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicide, addiction, self-harm or depression – please free feel to reach out. Use any our resources, call the suicide lifeline (1-800-273-8255) or text 741-741.