Are there that many?

Or do they just appear to me - accidentally or purposefully?

Photo by Nong on Unsplash

I ask myself that question above a lot.

Because I have many students who appear in my classes, and I learn that they have lost someone close to them through suicide - a parent, a sibling, a girlfriend.

Not only do they have me as an instructor….

But they end up sharing this with me - even though it’s not usually aloud. It’s through an e-mail or through their narratives, journals, some form of their writings.

I know that both are true- suicides are incredibly common.

So much more common than we want to admit -

It only stands to reason that I would encounter many who are survivors of the loss of someone due to suicide.

But also -

They didn’t have to tell me.

And, given the stigmatizing factors surrounding suicide, it’s a bit surprising that they do.

I think it’s just further evidence that those who have lost someone to suicide are just so hungry for support, validation, solidarity, someone who ‘gets’ it -

Especially when so many others seem to be unable (and unwilling) to do so.

I’ve said it before on here, but it’s very accurate and it’s worth repeating -

We—humankind, perhaps, but I’ll say at least in American society—don’t do great with support about the survivors of a loved one’s death, and allowing people to grieve in their own timeline and on their own terms. Eventually we want them to ‘get on’ with it.

But with suicide - it’s different.

On the one hand, it may be complete less tolerance from the beginning - because others don’t want to talk about suicide or admit that that unthinkable death could have happened.

It certainly feels that way for many. Again, it’s due to the stigma and this misguided notion we have that those who completed suicide have “violated a religious contract” or have violated some sort of life-contract that “we are all in this together.”

Those who complete suicide are often mislabeled as selfish.

There are layers and levels of this stigma.

Essentially, though I think that onlookers and many people understand that those who have lost someone to suicide are never going to ‘get over it’, that also doesn’t mean that they still are willing to think about it, communicate about it, etc. -

This is why the grieving journey can be an incredibly lonely place for suicide survivors.

This is why we seek out community with others who can ‘get it’ - or as close we can come.

I think each loss is unique - I certainly can’t imagine losing a child to suicide. Or, a partner of 50 years to suicide -

Even though I have more experience with suicide than many, with 2 members of my immediate family dying to this disease (father and brother). There are still experiences with suicide unrelatable and unimaginable to me.

To return to my initial question, I also wonder about some sort of divine, unspoken, intuitive solidarity that emerges amongst us -

Do we gravitate toward one another? Because it’s a loss that others can’t understand and because so many others are unwilling to try?

Is this part of our unique wound where that light can get in - to provide us with tools to carry through in this life despite having lost a loved one to suicide? A most painful loss? To at least be able to find others?

Yes, yes, yes, to all, I think.

Part of our spirit connects to those others, recognizing a wounded soul of another -

And through the modern age of the internet, we connect, across states, countries, world-wide.

This is one of the blessings - the bright sun, the shining spot in the tornado (or hurricane or tsunami or earthquake) of suicide loss - because, honestly -

If I lived in an era where I could not read about suicide loss and trauma, and I didn’t have the internet and books connect to other people who had experienced similar losses, if I didn’t have those tools, I am not certain I would be here today -

I still grapple with the losses of suicide. Because though I am adamant that depression is a disease, that those who attempt and complete suicide have mental illnesses no less grave than cancer, there is still that damn stigma - that we live amongst in this world, that we daily grapple with…

And though I know that, I’ve read that, I believe myself educated and open-minded enough to embrace that, it still doesn’t take away the pains of the stigma from suicide loss.

Because the rest of the world doesn’t embrace those truths.

In my memoir I refer to them as “micro-aggressions of mental illness” or “suicide slights.” (I guess more like slicings; often times there doesn’t seem to be much “slight” about them, but in this case I’m using it as a verb, not an adjective).

And, much like micro-aggressions that we are perhaps more familiar with, from racial undertones, overtones, etc, -

Both can be described as “death by a thousand paper cuts.”

So, perhaps, as survivors continue to walk through life, there is some part of our hurting spirits, our wounded souls, that takes solace when you encounter another soul who has the papercuts -

They are fellow beings with their own wounds: some are bleeding, and some have scarred over, and others have ones festering with infection because they never got cleaned through and through -

I sometimes watch commercials and see depictions on social media that try to portray what it looks like to live in depression. Like, someone’s aura, if they have depression - that dark cloud looming over them. Sometimes they’re depicting cPTSD or PTSD.

What would the visual look like for suicide slicings?

The problem with these suicide slights of papercuts is that they don’t end.

You perhaps don’t realize it until you’re in this position, but any day, you’re just living your life and people make so many judgments about those who complete suicide; so, so many comments about their personalities, their character, their faith or religion or lackthereof, their intelligence, their self-centeredness, or “the type” of those who do this.

(Which is false, of course, all of it. Anyone is capable. But we perpetuate those lies to make ourselves feel better that - in the words of Kendrick Lamar - ‘they not like us’. We or I or my family or my kids could never do that - insert more lies and false senses of comfort to distance myself from those experiences and that pain.)

There are also endless references in movies and tv shows.

For me, personally, so many scenes of gunshots to the head - to take me back to how my father and my brother died.

And, so on and on.

We all carry grieving when we’ve lost someone - we know that.

But suicide survivors carry that AND face the constant stigma of the loss of their loved ones.

And even if you don’t buy into the ‘mental illness is a lesser form’ and not physiological (another lie), you are suddenly thrown into this WTF with the regard for suicide, and willing or unwilling, you find yourself deep into advocacy and prevention and de-stigmatizing the suicides -

Both in memory of your loved ones -

But also as a survival mechanism for yourself.

Trauma leaves you feeling godforesaken, and when it’s connected to a suicide loss, that you feel gobsmacked by, your world is reeling.

It’s been a little over five years since my brother, Jeremie died, less than five years after my father did, and only now, does it sometimes feel like the world has stopped spinning. (Spinning like vertigo, not spinning like the Earth doing it’s normal rotating on its axis.)

We all need to feel less alone in suicide loss and survivorship.

Because it’s a hell of a load to carry.

I am glad my students open up and find me.

I can only validate that their loss is an especially painful one that not many people can or ever will understand. And to encourage them to find other communities of support, and therapy.

Because, again, not many others will even begin to try -

In suicide survivorship, solidarity.