Violating the (Life) Contract
by completing Suicide
I recently heard author Sloane Crosby say in an interview, on suicide:
“I think people are scared, which makes sense. It’s petrifying. We have all agreed, whether you’re a religious person, whether you’re not, doesn’t matter who you are, we have agreed on some baseline level that we’re all going to live through this thing together and it feels like this frightening breach of contract and it feels like, “Did I ever really know that person?” And then you have so much ego involved in it. It’s just this swirling mix of all the worst emotions. And so people are just scared to even discuss it. I think it’s getting better. This isn’t the 17th century. We are allowed to discuss it.”
So there it is—
Those who have completed suicide have violated the contract that life is hard and brutal sometimes but we’re all in it together.
They have instead chosen to exit this life.
In this interview, on We Can Do Hard Things, Abby Wambach admitted that she is afraid of death and therefore that is probably why she doesn’t admit that suicide is an option
It makes me think of the quote that I heard from the suicide documentary, that we’re afraid of suicide, of death.
This is understandable, and yet, it also still continues and perpetuates occurrences of suicides.
We won’t work towards mental health advocacy and do meaningful and the important and much needed work of suicide prevention if we don’t acknowledge that it happens, and all too often. Much more frequently than we are comfortable admitting, especially since rarely is anyone comfortable in talking about it or admitting to suicidal ideation, attempts or loss.
But we also won’t work to lessen them unless we talk about it more openly and work to prevent it.
I also appreciated this quote from the interview:
“To be gobsmacked by suicide, to consider it in need of forgiveness is to deny what the world is like for others to decide that darkness exists in service to light, that darkness is the glitch, and lightness is the control because that’s how it is for you.”
~Glennon Doyle
She hits at an important part of suicide—the need to forgive those who did it, who completed suicide and left us and affected others. Obviously, those who lose someone to suicide experience anger and resentment, at points, certainly hurt that the person chose to leave, to exit. To leave us behind.
I think though this quote also speaks to society’s notion, certainly religiously, that many faith traditions hold, that to complete suicide is to commit a sin. Perhaps even a moral or unforgivable sin.
But—it is true, as the above quote says as well. We cannot. ever. possibly. understand what another’s reality is like—their lived embodied existence. What it is to be in their body and mind.
It is so simple, so obvious.
And yet we forget it so often.
Cast judgment so readily, so easily—
Forever comparing another’s existence to our own.
Because we know nothing else.
It takes a great deal of humility, reservation, insight to instead—practice the pause.
And try to listen and understand another’s reality and existence as entirely different from one’s own. To hold space for that. Possibility.
It reminds me of some wise words I had heard author Michael Singer say:
We know so very little.
Even all we know—a whole lifetime’s worth, it is such a mere drop in the realm of the universal existence, of the universe.
If we think or operate any differently, it is entirely ego.
I think we would do well to remember that.
Especially where suicide is concerned.
I was reminded today of why many rarely talk about suicide.
I know this but forget and frequently am reminded:
It makes other so very very uncomfortable.
They don’t know what to say. They get quiet, change the subject.
Or relate to their own deaths of natural causes, which is always different.
And I am pretty confident to talk about it, know it’s important. I acknowledge it.
And still—
I hate to make others uncomfortable.
Then we are left in the same old sad situation—if we refuse to talk about it then nothing changes.
To first address and work to solve a problem we have to admit that there is one.
Suicide happens. A lot.
I wish it didn’t.
It hurts. A lot. For those left behind.
We need to talk about it more.
Even when it is uncomfortable and hard and we don’t know what to say.
