This is the doctor who diagnosed me with my autoimmune disorder. He did so in a straightforward, compassionate-but-dispassionate way that allowed me to instantly accept that this crippling affliction had changed my life forever. His business partner's suicide was a complete shock. Coincidentally, the business partner also suffered from the disease that I have.

The doctor who killed himself left behind a wife and four children from two marriages. Two children are in college, and two are in elementary school.

My best friend killed himself in 2001, and my father was the longest suicide on record. He started killing himself in his late teens, and when he received his cancer diagnosis on January 16, 2013, he decided to lose his mind and make treatment of his disease impossible. Not only that, he put himself and the rest of us through a solid month of inconceivably horrific torture before he died. He was so afraid that he turned his death into what I can only describe as a Grand Guignol episode of The Benny Hill Show.

As someone who began seriously thinking about suicide when he was a child and who attempted it once, and as someone who's now lost two people to it, I know what I'm talking about when I say that the survivors never recover. Never. What we're left with for the rest of our lives is a sense of failure and guilt. We should've been able to do more.

This isn't true, but it's how we feel anyway. My friend killed himself twelve years ago, and his death is as painful to me today as it was the day I learned of it.

The two companion volumes to Ghosts and Ballyhoo--the novel Chasing the Last Whale and the dream diary Hallucinabulia--show what's been inside my head for my entire life. You'll be able to see the maelstrom, or as much of it as I allow to be seen. Most of my experiences, thoughts, and memories will go to the grave with me because there's no point in publicizing them.

If I can choose to not kill myself and then years later actually acheive permanent happiness despite being housebound and solitary, then there's hope for you. Even if you're like my friend and have an incurable condition, there are still options that won't leave your loved ones in pain that can't be alleviated.

I've been where you are. I lost absolutely everything. But I look forward to each day, because each day I improve a little more. I go to bed each night a slightly better person than I was in the morning. My goal is to stay on an upward trajectory, regardless of what happens around me.

The secret is to see the big picture, which is that despite how you may feel, there are those who care about you. They may not know you, but they care about you.

And that means you're never alone.

What I do now is immerse myself in beauty. I see beauty hundreds of times a day. Beauty--for me--consists of countless fragments, a diversification of my portfolio. Instead of relying on two or three factors for beauty, I now get a little of it everywhere. It adds up, and the risk is spread. What used to depress me terribly can now be offset by multitudes of acheivements like this, which I didn't know about until three days ago.

Slim Whitman lived to be ninety.

May all of you do the same.