Like Anthony Bourdain, I Never Thought I’d Live to My Thirties — and I Don’t Know What to Do Now

The strange liminal space after you’ve attempted suicide

Content warning: suicide

Since Anthony Bourdain’s suicide in 2018, much has been written about his struggle with mental illness, exposed in all its raw ugliness in the documentary Roadrunner.

However, the thing that has resonated with me most, as a fellow sufferer of mental illness, is something many don’t understand: the odd helplessness that comes with outliving your own predictions.

“I should’ve died in my 20s. I became successful in my 40s. I became a dad in my 50s. I feel like I’ve stolen a car — a really nice car — and I keep looking in the rearview mirror for flashing lights. But there’s been nothing yet.” — Anthony Bourdain

Like Anthony, I’ve had a tumultuous twenties, and as I creep toward my thirties, I have that same odd feeling: I wasn’t supposed to live this long. I wasn’t supposed to get here. When is the other shoe going to drop?

I was certain I would die before age 25

By age 18, I had been placed in a psych ward three times and had sampled a veritable mountain of medications. My behavior wasn’t that of a normal teenager testing boundaries: I was out of control, spiraling down a dark hole no one could plumb. Others in my school whispered that I must be a party girl because of my outrageous behavior, unaware that it was caused solely by a neurotransmitter rollercoaster that no pharmaceutical could stop.

An avid cutter since age 13, my arms were covered in deep burns and keloid scars that, even today, are the ghostly whispers of past pain. I would get fucked up on whatever pills I could find in the house — anything that could get me away from myself for a while. It didn’t matter if they were diet pills or pain pills: take enough of all of them, and you’re bound to feel something.

I remember standing in the bathroom late at night, watching my pupils dilate out of sync and hoping it meant that the pain would stop. Stop for good. This nightly drug cabinet raid eventually led to me falling down a flight of metal stairs during school; I lied and told everyone I’d just tripped. No one bothered to ask me if I was struggling.

As if it wasn’t enough that I was battling my own mental illness, the situation at home deteriorated into an absolute battle zone. My father’s drinking was so out of control that he would regularly call into work on Mondays with a hangover, imperiling the family finances.

His temper certainly wasn’t dampened by the cases of Budweiser he drank each week. Within only a short few years, he burned some of my most treasured belongings, dislocated my jaw, broke my nose, and told me that my bisexuality made me a “whore” who just wanted to sleep with everyone.

While my peers were carefully planning their careers, I was simply trying to get through another day, another week, another month. With all this chaos, it’s no wonder that I wasn’t able to think of anything beyond getting good grades and not dying.

And I never believed in the “it gets better” tripe — what if it was this bad forever? Imagining such a nightmare life made me believe that surely, death would be more welcome than this. Nightmares seemed more likely than any fairy-tale ending.

The future is a fantasy, so why not dream?

When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, most beyond the age of three or four have a pretty solid understanding of what they are and what they might want.

A boy might not grow up to be a firefighter, but there is some seed of his future within that aspiration: a desire to help others, to face danger, to have camaraderie and a sense of purpose. That determined girl who insists she’ll one day be president is asserting something powerful about herself: that she is a leader, one who believes in a better future and isn’t afraid to shape it.

I never had such a coherent belief in who I would be because I never really thought I’d be there to make it happen. Many of my goals were fanciful, informed only by my current interest rather than an unshakeable understanding of my identity.

I cycled through hopes of being an Egyptologist, a politician, a journalist, a mortician, an FBI agent. In eighth grade, when we were tasked with developing a budget for our adult selves, I based my project on the idea that I would be a sheep farmer in Scotland, despite having no experience in any of the required qualities.

I knew, deep down, that all of these futures were impossibilities. I’m never going to kick down the door of a drug den to rescue trafficked children, nor am I going to find myself yodeling down a glen to call my wayward lambs home. My assertions were cover stories, red herrings to toss at career counselors so they would leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m already living my career? My goal is just to survive.

Then, as now, I’m stumbling through the fog, trying to find the path that will lead me to peace. There are no road signs, no rest stops, and perhaps most importantly … no reservations.

I live without reservation

It’s fitting that Bourdain’s most popular work, the one that cemented him as a household name, was titled No Reservations. This acknowledged not just that Bourdain fearlessly faced outlandish circumstances and potent danger, but that he approached it without warning, without apology. He didn’t expect to get there, so why call ahead? He showed up for life unsure of what lay ahead, good or bad, simply embracing whatever came his way.

No Reservations resonated so strongly because it was raw, a genuine depiction of a talented, extraordinary man interacting honestly with cultures so unlike his own. Of course, there was preparation behind the scenes, but much of what was captured came off the cuff, through a willingness to approach anyone who came along.

I doubt that Bourdain or his producers expected to end up in the middle of a civil war or actually dine with Barack Obama in Hanoi. It is this unpredictable quality that fascinated viewers, even those with not a whit of interest in street food or the proper preparation of pig’s brain.

This is because it captures what life is really like: messy, unusual, full of strange plot twists and happenstance. Perhaps for most people, those twists are a mild bend in the road, but for others, they are hairpin turns that leave us with whiplash.

I won a prestigious scholarship to study abroad in Scotland in 2013; the next year I was hospitalized for a psychotic breakdown. A year after that I beat the odds and graduated from college, a feat that only 16% of bipolar patients manage to achieve.

I earned a Master’s degree after surviving a sexual assault — and I took my attacker to court and won. These are admirable achievements by most standards, but they are underscored by how much agony was overcome to attain them.

I think, perhaps, that I was able to do all this because, like Anthony Bourdain, I have always felt I had nothing left to lose. The underdog always fights with more passion because there’s no winning streak to destroy. I could throw everything at my situation, well aware that should nothing stick, I would simply walk away and submit to the call of the void.

That mentality has created some true magic in my life, one that those without severe mental illness cannot understand. It has given me something remarkable — the willingness to accept whatever comes, in whatever form it may appear.

I don’t know how my story will end, but that’s my superpower

There’s a secret that many of us really don’t want to acknowledge, one that has been lain bare throughout history. As Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Nothing is certain in this life, no matter how much we want to believe otherwise.

Walking through the mist of my life has become second nature to me, and I no longer question where I will be in five years. Does it even matter? I’m living now, and I will do what my intuition tells me is best.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the venerable Zen Buddhist monk who recently ascended from our world, wrote that “life can only be found in the present moment.” Recognizing this, we understand that the future is just a hope and the past just a memory. Now is the only time that matters, because it’s the only one that is real. It is this belief that creates real magic in our lives because it frees us to stop worrying about the phantoms of the future and focus on what is in front of us.

Hanh blessed us with this sweet reminder: “Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.” My life remains mysterious, a gleaming trail beckoning me around the bend. Anything could wait there for me if only I keep walking in that velvet dark.