April 24, 2019:
Although I thought about it constantly, suicide was not gonna happen.
There was my incipient Catholicism. Your life belongs to God, God will take it when that serves His purpose. It's not for you to arrogate that decision.
There was concern for my mother. The devastation my death would cause.
Most crucial, though, was my study of Lenin. The old Socialist movement considered suicide a dereliction of duty. It's not that different from Catholicism. Your life belongs to the revolution, that is, to the battle against evil. If you surrender that life you weaken the struggle.
This was profoundly helpful. It gave me an anchor to which I could attach my suffering. I felt a part of something larger than my personal pain.
So that it was my ability to contribute in a nontrivial way to the movement against the first Bush's Gulf War which began the process of turning me back toward the light.