“We need to normalize suicide” said a dear friend to me when I reported that another dear friend lost his daughter last week, age 21, to suicide.
Yes. She said normalize.
I received the news and had a familiar dis-ease in my body. Most death feels awkward to a degree, but offering condolences to someone who has lost a piece of their hearts to this form of departure from this mortal coil is much more difficult. One doesn’t want to see it, say it, be next to it, but by the same token it commands our attention and our vigilance: we take inventory of those close in our lives and ask, Are they okay?
How do I know? The condolence conversations are usually of few phrases, and the air full of avoidance, guilt, even shame.
Underneath it all for many is the sense of, Should I have done more? Should I have seen this coming? What did I miss?
It feels as though a suicide has the potential in the room to be a contagion, a stealth infector if we are not on our guard.
So, we defend ourselves, and that shows up as awkward post-death phrases that are empty and while well-meaning, inauthentic.
The truth is suicide is not acceptable. That’s why we can’t talk about it, acknowledge it, heal from it, prevent it. It is the Black Sheep of the Family of Death: you’ve got your car crash, you’ve got your cerebral aneurysm, you’ve got your old age, you’ve got your aggressive cancer. THOSE, we can mostly talk about.
But not suicide. It sits by itself at the card table in the dark corner at Thanksgiving. We struggle to find any meaning in a suicide.
Isn’t it interesting to notice the fact that in many cultures preceding our own, suicide was viewed as an honorable means of death, the ultimate sacrifice, even revered in some societies. The advent and spread of more “Christian” thinking, shifted that, and suicide became sinful and depraved.
There was a time when I was “suicidal.” I was educated, smart, reasonably intuitive, and to this day, I’m certain that I would not have labeled myself at that time as being “suicidal.”
What I was, was logical. Being dead was exactly what was needed in that moment, in those days. It made absolute, perfect, sense. It was clear to me, it was rational, it was obvious. And that thought is terrifying to all of us. We don’t want to think that Unthinkable Thing — that suicide is logical, clear, the only solution.
Who among us hasn’t been in that position, however briefly, of thinking, I Want to Be Done Now?
It’s normal for those thoughts to enter in and then leave, especially if you’re a teenager, and especially if you’re a teenager today. These are extraordinary times, and they call for extraordinary feelings. And some of those feelings consist of not wanting to be here to see how it all unfolds.
Isn’t that NORMAL? I am not particularly fond of watching the world burn, of watching a Civil War unfold, of watching decimation by my neighbors.
What are the anxieties of a 21-year old?
It seems to me that the real, true disease of suicide, and suicidal thoughts, is secrecy.
We are conditioned to keep our periodic thoughts of our own exit to ourselves, and that conditioning begins in childhood. Imagine being so caught up with the shame of having these thoughts in your own head, torturing yourself trying not to think those thoughts, then feeling guilty and ashamed all at once, then repeating that cycle over and again.
All behind the closed doors of your own mind. What could the world look like if our kids, our young adults, even our adult children, full of stress and angst about their own kids’ futures, could come to us, their parents, and say, I feel hopeless today. I felt hopeless last week. How can I continue on? And we could see up and over whatever our own pain in that moment might be to light up for them a path forward.
It is normal to feel hopeless on occasion. Hashtag, becausehuman.
And while I’m struggling, too, to find any meaning in the sudden death of a vibrant 21-year old woman, one maxim remains: all life has meaning. Death is a part of life, therefore all death, not just those deaths that I choose, has meaning. We ascribe words to suicide like “tragic” and “senseless” and “wasteful.” It occurs to me that those words perpetuate the shame, the blame, and worst of all, the secrecy.
How much better would we all be if we did normalize this conversation. Truth be told, this victim’s father, my friend, DID normalize this for me thirty years ago. I told him that I wanted to die, he said, Jen, that’s not you. Stick around. Those thoughts aren’t you.
Those remarks were in passing, one afternoon, in a skyway outside my psychiatrist’s office, when I was certain I was nuts and was done for. Undoubtedly, he doesn’t even remember.
David centered me, grounded me, reminded me. Took my pager so that I could be free from answering questions for a couple of hours. Saved me.
Let’s all make an effort to utter aloud our own periodic hopeless feelings. And let’s all oil up our periscopes to see up and over our own pain in those moments and help each other find a way forward. Let’s normalize suicide and suicidal thoughts and ideation in conversation.
Let’s bring those thoughts, those ideations, out into the open. That’s where the meaning lies.
That’s where prevention lives.
Jenie
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