Suicide
I learned that I lost an old friend yesterday from their choice of suicide. Not only was the news shocking, tragic, and hard to digest, but it also brought up many uncomfortable memories that had laid dormant in my psyche for many, many years that I'd rather have the luxury of remaining buried.
There's no easy way to write about this topic. Most people would rather avoid the conversation altogether because it's too uncomfortable, but we must talk about the hard things. We need to talk about how there are many people in this world fighting an internal battle for their life every day but you'd never know it because they're masking their pain with a huge smile. You might unknowingly have a loved one in your life who is contemplating suicide right now. You may be fighting this battle yourself.
My hope for writing this blog is that it provides some perspective and clarity around this difficult topic. And if you need it, I hope it helps you process such a tragic loss (new or old) so you may find peace and resolution.
This will be a very candid, open, and vulnerable blog sharing my life experiences and how suicide has personally impacted me. Please note that some of what I share may be graphic and triggering to some, so please use your discernment.
With the news of my friend's passing being so new, not many details are known to help explain why he chose suicide. The sad reality is that we may never know the reasons why he made the decision he did. There's some speculation, but nothing concrete at this point.
The choice to suicide is a deeply personal one and should be respected as such. They do not owe you a reason, or an apology, and there was nothing you or anyone else could have said or done to make them change their mind.
Please understand that their choice to suicide was not about you, it was about them. It was about them wanting to escape their pain. It was about them feeling like they had no other options and were at the end of their rope. But most of all, it was about them making the hard choice to take control of their pain and suffering once and for all by choosing to end their life.
You don't have to agree with or like their decision, but what anyone chooses to do with their life is 100% their choice. The decision to choose suicide is not selfish, it is not wrong, it is just a decision.
But there are real consequences to such a decision that leave those who loved them with many unanswered questions, regrets, and in some cases, lifelong unresolvable trauma as a result. The loved ones of those who choose suicide are often left with many unanswered questions and will blame themselves. They'll hold themselves responsible due to feelings of guilt for "missing" the signs or for not checking in on them more often. These sentences often begin with "If only".
"If only I had been there I could have prevented this."
"If only I had called more often maybe they would have felt less lonely."
If only, if only, if only.
In this case, "If only" is the mantra of regret. If this is you, please do not blame yourself or feel responsible for their decision in any way. Our minds trick us into believing we have power and control over people or situations when in reality, we don't.
If you're like me and trying to process a similar experience, I can only suggest that you feel and validate your feelings and eventually find compassion for yourself and your loved one. Finding compassion for another person while you are hurting can be difficult, but it will be the medicine required to help release your pain.
As I think about my friend, I wonder what he must have been feeling and going through to come to his decision. My only conclusion is that the burdens and pain in his reality must have been so inescapable, that his next best step forward in life was to suicide. The truth is, you never really know what someone is going through unless they share it.
The pain that I am feeling in my heart today is compounded by the remembrance of how suicide, and death in general, have touched me deeply and frequently since I was little, all starting with the loss of my father at only a few weeks old.
As I've been processing my feelings today, I was reminded of another friend whom I lost to suicide as a teenager. I can still recall the moment I learned of his passing like it was yesterday.
It was the day after Valentine's Day my freshman year of high school. I was walking with a couple of friends to class when I learned that my friend had died from the choice to suicide the day before. I was devastated. The details surrounding his death were so traumatic that this memory is forever etched into my mind. In this case, he left a note so we have clarity as to why he made his decision, but believe me, it didn't make the loss any easier to process.
Matt's Story:
I met Matt through my best friend because they were next-door neighbors and the three of us would frequently hang out. The morning of Valentine's Day, Matt was practically begging my best friend to skip school and hang out with him instead. She laughed it off, told him she'd see him at school, and then hopped on the bus thinking nothing of it.
Matt never went to school that day. When my friend arrived back home, Matt's younger sister heard an alarm going off inside their home and asked her to help her figure out what was going on. It was the carbon monoxide detector that was going off so the girls quickly opened all the doors and windows in the house to air it out and then called her mom. The girls were told to open the garage door and wait for her mom at my best friend's home. When the girls entered the garage, they discovered the source of the carbon monoxide as Matt was inside the car, cold, pale, and lifeless. He chose to suicideby carbon monoxide poisoning about five hours before he was discovered.
Matt's reasons for choosing suicide mainly surrounded his feelings of guilt and shame around his addiction to weed. He had recently come back home from treatment and relapsed the day before his death. In his note, he talked about feeling like a burden, how he felt like a failure, and that he decided he had made too many mistakes to be forgiven so suicide was his only solution. He also couldn't bear the responsibility of feeling like he was letting his parents down by not being able to stay clean from his addiction. This was his choice.
There was a previous suicide plan which is what prompted his treatment visit, but there were no obvious signs or indications that he planned to suicide the day he died.
As you can imagine, this experience had the most profound effects on my friend and his younger sister because they were the ones who discovered his body. My best friend also had a deep feeling of regret for not staying home with Matt that day and ultimately felt responsible for his death for a very long time. I remember the first sleepover we had looooong after Matt's passing and she awoke several times in the middle of the night with night terrors, screaming and crying, haunted by the memory of finding our friend that day as it relentlessly replayed in her mind when she was most vulnerable.
Honestly, I don't know if the pain of this one will ever go away for all those involved, but it did eventually lessen. For me, the memory and feelings of Matt's death are still easily accessible. The pain never really goes away, but it does become further removed with each passing year. On days like today, the pain of this experience is pulled closer to my chest but can be put back on the shelf anytime I'm ready.
The last story I want to share with you is that of a survivor of a suicide attempt. Be warned that I will share some pretty gruesome details, but they are important to the story. This story helped me gain perspective and understand what Matt must have felt on a deeper level, helping me heal the residual pain still left from that experience many years later.
Ursula's Story:
Ursula was a dear client and someone with whom I formed a particularly close bond. This is another one of those experiences that will be forever etched in my mind because of how profound it is.
On this day, I was super excited to meet with her because it had been at least two months since we had seen each other. She had been on medical leave so I brought her flowers and was so happy to see my client and friend. Nothing could have prepared me for what I would learn over the next two to three hours during the conversation that was about to unfold in her office.
Ursula's office was in the basement and I would always sit in a chair near the door. My face beamed as I handed her the flowers and we began catching up. It didn't take long for her to get up, close the blinds that looked into the other room, and ask me to close the door.
Suddenly, the carefree conversation became very serious as she asked, "Can I be honest about why I was on medical leave?"
I agreed and she proceeded to share with me that she was on medical leave due to her attempt to suicide a couple of months prior in that very room. I was shocked because I never expected her to say anything remotely close to that statement.
There was also some ageism and bias present around suicide because in my mind it was reserved for only the young or desperate. None of that of course is true as suicide knows no limits. Suicide touches all races, ages, and tax brackets. It doesn't discriminate nor is it an exclusive club, the only price of entry is willingness.
Ursula began describing in graphic detail how all the events unfolded that day. Listening to her story I probably looked like a combination of a wide-eyed deer caught in headlights and someone ugly crying after a bad breakup - eyes bulging with a steady flow of mascara-bleeding tears streaming down both sides of my face.
What she shared with me is that up until that day, she had never thought about suicide as an option for herself. Not once. There were no struggles with her mental health that she was aware of either.
On that fateful day, she had been at work for maybe two hours when her choice to suicide was made. She had been sitting at her desk working at her computer when the thought of ending her life suddenly popped into her mind. She described her thought as being "I'm going to finish this order I'm going to kill myself." Like it was a natural and practical choice or something she was checking off her to-do list.
There were no overwhelming feelings of sadness or doom, no premeditated suicide plans, and no feelings whatsoever about her decision really. It was just like any other day and just another item on her agenda. This challenged another belief that I had about suicide that it's always premeditated, is carefully considered, and there will always be warning signs to somehow prevent someone from following through. Boy was I wrong.
Ursula went on to say that after she finished her order she then began coming up with her suicide plan. It took her all of 15 minutes to decide what she wanted to do, gather the supplies to do it, and then execute her plan. I mean this was quick.
So after making sure no one was in the basement, she got up from her desk, went into the next room, grabbed a box cutter, and sat back down at her desk. Without another thought, she began slitting her wrists. She stated that she slit them so well that blood started splattering all over her office and pooling around her rather quickly.
After waiting a couple of minutes, she began to grow impatient as death wasn't coming fast enough for her. So as she sat in a pool of her own blood, she moved on to Plan B - downing the almost full bottle of Tylenol sitting next to her computer at her desk.
Ursula waited another couple of minutes hoping the combination of blood loss and overdosing on Tylenol would do the trick quickly, but it didn't, so she moved on to Plan C - injecting chemicals. I don't recall what she injected, but after injecting herself with something toxic from the room next door, she walked outside the building and began climbing the nearby hill, lying down in the grass waiting for death to come.
Well, God had other plans.
Before I continue it's important to mention that only a few months before this day, an employee of hers chose to suicide on that very same hill near where she was currently lying.
So as Ursula was lying in the grass, staring up at the clouds (yes this all happened midday), an overwhelming sense of peace and calm washed over her. Then she was visited by the spirit of the former employee who recently died in almost that exact spot. She said he didn't say anything to her, he just sat beside her. There was a knowing that he was communicating that it was not her time, but she didn't recall any actual words being exchanged.
The next thing she saw was a nurse from her building charging up the hill with EMTs and then she slipped out of consciousness.
Ursula surviving not one, not two, but three suicide attempts is nothing short of a miracle. The nurse who saved her wasn't even on duty that day. It was a Saturday and the nurse thought she had left something in Ursua's office the previous day so she was just popping by to check. When the nurse walked into Ursula's office and saw all the blood everywhere and the bloody empty Tylenol bottle she knew Ursula was in trouble.
As the nurse called 911, she followed the blood trail all the way through the basement and then outside. Thankfully for Ursula, the steady flow of her blood loss was the very thing that ended up saving her life. The nurse happened to locate Ursula on the hill because she kept being hit in the eye by a beam of light from something shiny reflecting light from where Ursula was lying, drawing her attention to that spot. There was nothing shiny on Ursula to explain this and she was lying flat on the ground so this was another miracle of divine intervention that helped save her life that day.
I have heard a lot of amazing stories depicting the miracles of God and I have my own to share, but this one is by far the most profound. This story is 100% true and only helps confirm that God is real and miracles really do happen.
Ursula did get her liberation from her pain, only she didn't realize she was in pain until after healing from this experience. Her lifetime of buried emotions and pain from a very emotionally abusive marriage all bubbled up to the surface from her subconscious and manifested into a suicide attempt.
The truth is, we can all only deny, push down, or try to mask our pain for so long. If we don't confront and deal with the very real pain we all feel throughout our lives, it will inevitably rise and might manifest in ways we wouldn't consciously choose for ourselves, such as suicide.
If you or a loved one are having thoughts of suicide or struggling with your mental health, there are a number of free resources and emergency hotlines to help you.
The national suicide and crisis lifeline is 988. Call, text, or chat - someone is available to answer your call 24/7 and there is no shame in seeking help, even if you're questioning if you need it.
While there's no foolproof way to know if a loved one will choose suicide, some of the common warning signs to be aware of are:
Isolation/Withdrawing from friends and family
Saying goodbye
Giving away belongings, especially cherished items
Making a will or other end-of-life arrangements
Risk-taking behavior/Recklessness
Extreme moods swings
Disruption in sleep patterns
Increase or decrease in appetite
Ideation of suicide
Loss of interest in personal hygiene
While discussing this topic in my trauma-informed certification course, one of the biggest indicators stressed to us to know when someone is serious about their choice to suicide is that they will have a solid plan. Do not ignore the other warning signs, but if someone expresses their plan that includes how, when, and where they plan to suicide, seek immediate professional help via the 988 crisis line or another emergency service provider.
Prioritizing your mental health is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Learning about and understanding your emotions and your story helps you unravel the many complex and confusing emotions that create overwhelm.
I will never know what any of my friends were truly feeling in the moments leading up to choosing to end their lives, so I am only left to imagine there were deep feelings of helplessness, shame, guilt, grief, sorrow, pain, despair, loneliness, and a sense of overwhelming darkness. When the darkness of our shadow and pain consume us, it's impossible to see the light. It's impossible to see a way forward. There is simply nothing but darkness. Pure and utter darkness.
While I have been fortunate to have never been in the position to make the hard decision between life and death for myself, I have struggled with my mental health and I'm not ashamed to admit that openly. It wasn't until I was forced to prioritize my mental health in 2019 that I was given the opportunity to liberate myself from the many years of repressed pain, emotions, and trauma that had been collecting and brewing under the surface since basically birth. Had divine intervention not entered my life, my story could have been very different. I could have been one of these stories.
Life is truly the sum of our choices, the chances we take, and the changes we make. Courage, compassion, and willingness are the medicines needed to help us overcome any obstacle or painful experience.
There is never anything in your life that you'll experience that you can't overcome and come out better on the other side of. There is always a way out. There is always support. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. All you need to do is lift your head, look around, and call out for help if the darkness becomes too much to bear.
