When you hear of another one..
that awful, sinking feeling
This afternoon I went to the Farmer’s Market here in Hopkinsville and got a few vegetables. I offered some to my neighbors. One neighbor refused my corn on the cob and told me that she would be out of town for a week. Because her brother completed suicide yesterday.
It is always the same to me—that horrendous sinking feeling.
As I heard her words, my whole body responded. I felt a bit like a balloon deflating.
I didn’t know her brother; this neighbor and I aren’t even that close.
But still—
My reaction was not performative. It came from a place deep within my very soul, the essence of my being—
Of someone who gets it.
Perhaps we may call it the solidarity of suicide (survivors).
And it’s a terrible club to have to join.
She mentioned she understood the place that she was in with addiction. And I said, but still—
“It is so hard for the ones who are left behind.”
A former professor of mine said this to me after learning about my father’s death. And, quite honestly, they were the only words that comforted me at all.
Because they validated and witnessed my struggle. My pain. My loss. The grief and weight that I was carrying and would forever carry.
It touches a place deep within me—my heart just breaks to hear of yet another family torn apart by suicide.
I think often—why must these keep happening? Why do we not have better structure and support to help those in depression and/or struggling with addiction?
And yet, I also know—
If someone wants to complete suicide they will find a way to do so.
I just wish that—
More people cared before they had to care about it. I wish more people worked to prevent it rather than just those of us who have lost someone or who have survived our own attempts or struggled with our own suicide ideation or depression.
I wish that we weren’t only reactive when it comes to suicide but that we also were proactive.
Sometimes it is heart-wrenching to me, though perhaps entirely representative of human nature that—
We really only are capable of truly empathizing and caring about a loss once we ‘get it’. And often times we only are able to get it when personally touched upon it.
Certainly there are exceptions to this. I hope there are more than I can see or recognize right now.
But still—I am yet again reminded of my life’s story—
I never intended for it to be so shaped and heavily defined by suicide. I am not happy about that. But I was not given a choice.
We may think this wouldn’t happen to my family members or friends but it could. It does. All the time.
Suicide is hard to face. We don’t want to admit that people can be in that much pain. Perhaps that is why we continue to stigmatize and pass judgment on those type of people who could off themselves.
We try to protect ourselves from ever imagining that we too could face that loss.
Perhaps some people use it as a protective shield.
But I don’t think it works. It’s not fool-proof.
And ultimately, it does nothing to prevent these deaths from continuing to happen.
All the time. Every day.
10th leading cause of death in this country, for adults. A higher likelihood for younger folks.
It’s devastating.
I firmly believe that when we love someone and lose them to death, even if it’s old age and a long life well-lived that we never ‘get over it’. Not if we loved them. We simply carry on, with the load of loss.
But, it is different with suicide.
Suicide deaths haunt you.
I have no other words to describe it other than that.
And perhaps that is why I ache deep inside when I hear of yet another one who has lost a loved one at their own hand.
