i never owned a kate spade handbag.
i never even watched one of anthony bourdain’s shows.
but i was well aware of both of them.
and suicide too has been well within my awareness.
when i was 15 years old, 40 long years ago,
i wrote a suicidal note of my own.
and in a rather bold-yet-desperate move,
i shared it with a very unlikely candidate.
a boy at my high school who i’d had a mad crush on.
his teenage-male response to my long rambling
stream-of-consciousness writing was unexpected.
and perhaps even helped to save my life.
two phrases still stand out in my mind.
in his boyish scrawl, he’d written
“i understood what you wrote, and it scared me.”
he also told me that he loved me.
of course, he only loved me as a friend.
he already had a steady girlfriend.
but he did care deeply about me,
and i felt it when i read his words that day.
i carried his reply around with me until the paper
it was written on became thin and weak,
and the writing blurred. i thought
i’d keep it forever, but it’s since disappeared.
i do, however, possess a handwritten copy
of the note that i wrote.
“have you ever thought about suicide / the word
itself is scary but moreso is the feeling”
eventually i was voted both class clown
and most likely to succeed.
i was drill team captain and salutatorian.
yet i had so many many emotional struggles.
my mom always believed in me though.
she told me again and again, “your time will come.”
i repeated those words to myself over and over.
“my time will come. my time will come.”
when my mom died years later, i suffered another very low point,
essentially checking out of life for a couple of years.
my nuclear family unit and my two best friends
helped pull me back from the abyss.
in my work at a hospital’s adolescent mental health unit,
i encountered suicidal ideation on a daily basis.
a few names and faces have hauntingly stayed with me,
brilliant and imaginative souls who tragically completed the act.
some seem to have it all, and we
wonder why they choose to give it up.
others haven’t yet realized their chance,
and we wonder what could have been.
life is hard.
life is precious.
we often feel alone and
sadly, sometimes we are.
darkness invades our psyche,
no matter our situation.
reaching out requires effort and courage,
no matter our status.
there often feels like no way out, except
the forever-silencing of our voices.
unimaginable pain, leading to an ending
so devastatingly heart-stopping-ly final.
the oft-repeated phrase has resurfaced.
“we never know what someone is going through.”
we can, however, become aware of the emptiness.
and we can always ask, then take the time to listen.
endnotes:
- another post i wrote four years ago, when the well-known comedian/actor robin williams ended his own life: goodnight, mr. williams.
- facial sketch above created by alexander lee
I myself have been on the verge of suicide. It was a very, very dark time. Thoughts were scattered!! Having my kids in the house at the time, was what kept me from moving forward with my decision.
I can so relate to your blog today. I feel very blessed to have made it through that tough time. Life is tough. Not easy at times. Trudging through …..not so easy either. I have made it….thankfully!!
You truly are a blessing to all who take time to read / listen/ and contemplate what you write!!! Thank you !!!!
Blessings April!!
I wish I would have known April! You see, I was in the hospit that year after my first suicide attempt with my wrists bandaged up so tight and still choking on the charcoal the er docs pumped my stomach out with. Perhaps we could have shared our pain and somehow made it back into the light together faster.
Silence can kill. ♡♡♡
As you know, I lost my dear brother John to suicide. And now I’ve lost my most precious child to the unseen wounds sustained in war. Two of the darkest times in my life. As much as I knew the pain left behind, after losing Erik, I found myself unable to stop the darkness. I am lucky, my daughter was there to get me help. But I learned why and how lonely and dark life can be. I learned that it’s about stopping the pain; not causing more pain to others left behind. I also learned that I didn’t want to die that dark night and I’m thankful my daughter was home to reach out to instead of letting the effects of a handful of pills take my life. I wish I could have seen my loved ones pain and been able to help. I wish I’d understood the signs. I wish they’d used the three words, “I NEED HELP”.
April,
I am so glad you shared your note with your friend and that he gave you hope. I couldn’t imagine life without you. Your family was so nice to let me stay with them until mine moved back to Kellogg. I work with suicidal students often. The pain is so hard for them. My grandfather committed suicide when my dad was 19.
I have been there! My divorce late in 1980’s pushed me to the bottom. I lost my marriage, my home, my business, my inheritance, my two best friends, my parents were gone, I had already had breast cancer and many surgeries, my sister and I didn’t talk, my youngest son was going down the rabbit hole and I had nothing left to give my older son. I ended up in the hospital having my stomach pumped! I really wanted to die! Don’t even remember how I managed to pull myself together after that. I moved across state and started over, with little to my name. I ended up living the most lovely, fun filled, single 10 years of my life in Redmond, WA. Sometimes a complete change is the only remedy. It was mine!
I think I’ve been prone to depression since my teens and my family has been affected. My paternal grandmother died that way when my dad was in grade school and after losing her mother as an infant to breast cancer, my Mom’s stepmother committed suicide when she was in high school. Thankfully my sister’s attempt failed.
In the past year my desire to end the pain has been a constant struggle. It seems ridiculous to say, but sometimes I think the only thing that stops me is that I worry about what would happen to my pets who provide unconditional love.
I also would not want my family to feel the pain of losing someone again. My mom died last August just 3 weeks after discovering she was sick. The man I was dating decided to end things in that time period, but provided no explanation. After giving him so much compassion and support when he needed it, the betrayal feels extraordinarily painful. I was depending on him.
All my family members have others to turn to it seems, although one brother has been incredibly supportive and kind. I feel like a burden depending on him to calm all the emotional storms that don’t seem to be subsiding.
When people comment they don’t understand why a person would choose to commit suicide, I often remain silent. In no way shape or form do I think it’s the answer or do I condone doing so. I do however, empathize and understand the great pain and darkness that is so hard to adequately articulate to others. Money, status, things, none of that is enough to fill the emptiness we all feel and cannot imagine would ever feel differently.
I miss my mom so badly that it hurts not only emotionally, but physically, mentally…all of it. It’s exhausting. I’m getting help, but it’s a long process and some are impatient in the way I need to process and grieve. That in itself has been hurtful.
For those of you who know me, I’m okay, don’t panic. As you know, a student of ours died in this way and suicide has affected our community in the last two years to an alarming degree. As a role model I wouldn’t add fuel to that fire.
Beautiful, just beautiful! Thank you for sharing such a relevant post and incredible perspective. <3
Thanks for sharing. Ive been to that dark place at times inside of my life’s tragedies. Several times I’ve had pain that felt unberable where I cried myself to sleep every night. A pain that felt as if a knife was stuck inside my heart. Every morning Id wake to this knife still stuck in my heart, a physical pain. Once after a tragedy, this pain lasted for a year and after two years, I gradually regained my strength to not feel this deep wound. Each tragedy seemed imposible to go through. The last, I felt like driving off a bridge, but as I drove, crying, it occured to me, in my logical mind, that if i didnt die, I would have caused myself even greater suffering. I then switched my thinking to my nurturing self and checked myself into a nice hotel, ordered room service, took a hot bath, cried alot and went to bed watching a movie:)
After that last painful life event, I realized I could survive just about anything. All my coping mechanisms, song writing, etc I realized I didnt feel that knife anymore after a tragedy. I now felt, above pain, felt ive won the final skills, to overcome deep pain, an ability to pursevere yet again. I realized that it is not that ever truly wanted to die, rather i wanted just that the pain die. Eventually, the pain does not have to win 🙂
This is so beautiful April! I am glad that that boy saved your life! It is scary to think about suicide and way more scarier to live through the struggles and pain, but the pain will eventually go away as long as we have the courage to live through it. Thanks for sharing your story and your thoughts!
Thank you for sharing this post and your very personal experience April. I am sure it will help many.. and knowing there will be brighter days ahead despite the tough ones is important. I hope your stories encourages others to share their thoughts and feeling with someone.