Turning violence into creativity

Last night I finished up Martha Beck’s book, Integrity. She spoke of people like Jesus and Gandhi and MLK, those who were facing violence, but instead responded with compassion, to use their suffering the threat/facing violence to spread something good, to create good from the crap.

Certainly something to aspire to.

After I read that, I kept thinking about suicide, as acts of violence, violence of self-harm as well as violence outward toward others, survivors. However much it is unintended, and even though the individuals are in pain and certainly the ultimate and most extreme act is self-inflicted violence. But to claim that the survivors, those left behind, don’t also endure grief and trauma from their violence, is simply not true.

Their choice of violence has wide-reaching effects, as it ripples outward.

But with these acts of self-inflicted violence, that is just the outer layer of what it appears to be. Acts of violence (not just suicide/self-inflicted ones) mask pain and devastation and heartache and such torturous mind and embodied pain, that the only available release seems to be, or is for them, at that time, to exit this life.

When protective outer layers are stripped down, it boils down to hurt. Anger. Desperation. That leads to many acts of violence.

Martha Beck also talked about how the rare ‘enlightened souls’ who have these satori / moments of truth and clarity, often times choose to spend their days in service to others. In care, in assistance, to help others, ease their pain, make the world a better place.

This resonated with me on a deep level, because those, who are having suicidal thoughts, make suicide plans and complete suicide, I believe, are in some of the deepest, most unimaginable pain.

And we don’t want more of them to happen.

This is why it is so critical to talk about it.

I get that it is not fun. That it is dark. Quite honestly, I have felt that at other points in my life. And if I were not someone who had to experience this, I don’t think I would want to spend so much time thinking about it, talking about it, writing about it.

But—it happened. Suicides became a part of my family’s story, and, by extension, of my story.

What is the alternative? We don’t talk about it? Allowing it to continue as a taboo topic simply leads to further stigmatization.

When we, society et large, don’t feel comfortable addressing the topic, so we don’t: ask if someone is considering suicide or has suicidal thoughts, it is akin to just encouraging the behavior, allowing it to happen. Sort of like offering them a vehicle to move along more quickly on their path toward self destruction, rather than slowing them down, or trying to stop them.

It is not fun to talk about suicide. But you know what is even more fun? Grief and mourning when someone dies that way and there is no going back. And I believe that this is true not just for family members, or friends, but even those who you know less intimately—colleagues, peers, classmates, neighbors, acquaintances.

Suicide shakes people to our very core. I saw this both after my father’s and my brother’s death. The shell-shocked expressions that people wore on their faces, the way their bodies, especially their shoulders, drooped with the burden that someone they knew could be in that much pain to self harm and exit this life.

I remember those affected posting online and reflecting, “I still can’t make sense of this.” Or, “I’m still trying to process this.”

It is so hard for us to understand, to make sense of.

Far, far better to talk about suicide than to pretend it doesn’t and won’t ever happen, that those battling the depths of depression will not act to end their pain and desperation.

Trust me, there is this sinking feeling in my heart and deep within the pit of my stomach every time that I hear of someone else who has taken their own life. Even if it is a celebrity, a random news story, clearly people who I did not know.

It’s a pain for the survivors that irrevocably changes you, that you journey with and struggle with forever; you spend the rest of your whole life with, burdened with these experiences, the stories and trauma that your body now knows, always trying to learn how to carry them. Then, when they get too heavy, trying to figure out how to adjust the load, to move forward, simply carrying the weight in a new way.

That’s deep, it’s hard, it’s sad. That’s why people don’t want to talk about. The world is hard and scary enough, so is other life pain. We have enough of that.

But that is just, undeniably the ripple effects of suicide.

That it is why it is so important to me to speak out, to work to advocate to de-stigmatize this, to do whatever I can so fewer people have to endure this.

I’m trying to create, to love and serve, to have that grow instead from the violence.