Dominick Rizzo had it all the quintessential American Dream. But, for some reason, it just wasn’t enough.
Growing up in Albany and then Guilderland, where he graduated from high school, Rizzo lives with his wife and two children in the very home where he was born. At age 30, he works at a retirement community in Slingerlands and talks with the confidence and experience of a person nearly twice his age.
Rizzo said it has not always been this way, and his writing is a testament to those struggles. In his first book, The Spiral Staircase of My Life,` published by Author House, Rizzo outlines through poetry his transition from a teenage boy to the man he is today.
`Friends, family ` I had everything. I had love, cars, a job, the college I wanted I went to,` Rizzo said. `The point I really want to [make] is that depression just comes to some people. There’s no reason; you can’t help it.`
He said a `chemical imbalance` led to his depression and ultimately his suicide attempt in 2007, which is why Rizzo is donating all of the proceeds of his book to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
From a young age, Rizzo was a `cutter,` a type of self-mutilation that can be associated with depression and other disorders, and had anger issues that led him to seek anger management counseling. But it was the isolation and over-analytical self-pity that got the better of Rizzo, not the anger, he said.
`I was a quiet and shy person. I had certain friends I would communicate with, but I was always the listener, the silent one. I was a very negative person,` he said. `There’s always that stigma, what’s his problem? Why is he behaving like this? Why isn’t he laughing? Why isn’t he going out to the parties and doing this?`
The first serious incident occurred when Rizzo was a young man and was getting ready to go out to a nightclub in Albany. He didn’t go after a friend made a comment about the clothes he was wearing.
`I cut myself,` he said. `I actually cut my face with a razor when I was 21 above my eyebrow. It’s embarrassing to talk about, but I did it.`
More than half a decade later, Rizzo was in anger management counseling and felt as if some people were treating him as a loose cannon. He said the looks and comments from loved ones made coping with his issues even more troubling for fear of propagating suspicions he would `fly off the handle.`
`I was going through anger management, and it was really good. It was working,` said Rizzo. `I realized I was changing, but people around me still thought I was that ‘rage-aholic.’`
It all came to a head inside of Rizzo’s head one day while he was putting up a pool in his backyard with his younger brother. Like many home projects, things didn’t go smoothly.
He described the isolation he felt when people would treat him like a patient in counseling and saw the simplest of irritations as rage.
`And when they walk away from me, it’s like, ‘I’m fine; I’m changing and you guys don’t see that,’ and it made me frustrated,` said Rizzo.
It was in 2007, just after his first son was born, that the multitude of emotions surfaced and overpowered him. For Rizzo, not being able to complete a normal family project like putting in a backyard pool became the symbolic dynamite to his dysfunction and the impetus to what happened next.
`I became struck by that, and I came in the house and I remember thinking ‘I’m just gonna go to bed, I’m just gonna lay down and go to sleep,` said Rizzo. `And I saw the knives, and I just buried the knife in my wrist four times.`
Rizzo’s wife and younger brother brought him to the emergency room, after which he was sent for a psychological evaluation, he said.
`Seeing your father cry kind of wakes you up a little bit,` said Rizzo. `Then getting in the safety vehicle, when you get in the back of a passenger car and there’s a driver and a nurse in the front and a nurse next to me, and I look to my right and the door handle was broken off so you couldn’t get out.
`I realized, ‘Wow, I’m going to the psych ward now,’` he said.
Rizzo said the experience helped him realize that he was not only hurting himself but those he loved.
He then made the courageous decision to turn his personal crisis into a positive endeavor by piecing together several notebooks of poetry he had written since his early teens. The poems chronicled his life’s journey, good times and bad, which Rizzo described as `a culmination of my 30 years here on this earth.`
`I was ashamed and scared and embarrassed,` Rizzo said of his suicide attempt. `And then I started the production for the book ` it was already written, but I started to put it into book form.`
Rizzo’s story is not uncommon, but his story of success and hope is one that should be heard, said Sam Messina, a Bethlehem town councilman and former suicide crisis hotline counselor.
`It’s time that the issue of suicide and depression come further in the social eye,` he said. `It impacts society and it can impact any individual.`
Messina said suicide has been appropriately described as `the perfect storm,` when not just one incident, but a chain of events can lead to despair and a feeling of overwhelming emotional pain.
`It gets to the point for some people that the pain of going on with life is greater than the fear of death,` said Messina. `The heartache of some of the callers is so great. They feel isolated, but being able to talk to someone confidentially can be very powerful.`
Messina said Rizzo is living proof that some can be saved, but warned that is not always the case, which is hardest for families and loved ones left behind who feel they could have done something to prevent it.
`Some suicides cannot be avoided, even when given a second chance and with the best of intentions from a supportive, loving family,` he said. `But although suicide is not always avoidable, sometimes it is, and people need to know that there is help and support for them out there.`
Messina serves on the board of directors for Family and Children’s Service of the Capital District, a not-for-profit that is the area’s oldest counseling and family service, but no longer works as a hotline counselor.
Rizzo said he overcame his inner demons by letting them out and not bottling up his feelings.
`Communication is what I’ve learned. For a guy, it’s not always easy,` he said. `It’s a simple as, ‘This is what happened.’ And usually once you say, ‘You know, I had a bad day at work,’ it usually just comes right out.“
