Touched by Suicide

The first time suicide ever crept into my consciousness was in college. It wasn’t my own suicide that I contemplated, it was that of a complete stranger who dialed my number out of the Ithaca phonebook.

I went to Ithaca College, but Cornell was a notorious breeding ground for pressure, attracting the best and the brightest from the world over, sometimes from cultures where the pressure to be perfect was the norm. It was my junior year. I was living in a single. My phone rang, waking me at 3:00 a.m. A timid male voice was on the other end. He could have been a pervert, but he wasn’t. He told me exactly why he was calling. He planned to end his life, and I was the chosen random person from the phonebook who was either going to push him away and over the edge or let him talk in hopes that a late-night purging would make it alright enough to want to live another day.

He asked no questions about me, so I believed the situation to be exactly what he said it was. Neither did he give me any clue about his identity. This is back in the day of landlines and phonebooks; I really had no idea who I was talking to. He talked; I listened. I wasn’t trained. I didn’t know if my encouragement was going to be discouraging; I didn’t know if asking him to consider the pain of those left behind was going to be motivation to carry out his plan or invoke empathy. So I tried it all. We talked in circles. It was kind of like talking to a drunk, when no matter what you say, it’s always a bad idea. But it went on this way for a couple hours when the line went suddenly dead. No tying that conversation up into a neat little bow. I never knew what happened. I didn’t hear anything on the news or in the paper the following week, but these things can be kept quiet. I just hope that the call wasn’t so random, that he called me because it was God’s intervention. I wasn’t going to be the one to hang up.

I’ve thought about that night only one other time recently, but it came bubbling up to the surface because we lost a student to suicide today. I’m not at liberty to discuss much; I just know that a young woman took her own life and with it so many unanswered questions.

Thirty years later, much has changed about technology, but very little has changed (for the better) in regard to mental health. I have so many questions. Are children not taught that life can sometimes be very disappointing, that people can sometimes be very disappointing and even cruel, but all situations are temporary? Do we place too much emphasis on success and not enough on the importance of “failure?” In asking ourselves or our children to be perfect, do we sacrifice the notion of being kind? Being kind to ourselves and to others? Why do we get hung up on being smartest when it’s OK to be smart “enough?”  And the same goes for pretty, thin, rich, clever, funny, talented. When did “adequate” take on a connotation of lack?

I do not know this student’s circumstance. I just know that I am saddened by her choice. With all my older, pearly wisdom, I would want to encourage her to just give whatever it is the miracle of time. Surrender to the means but not the end. In our greatest times of suffering, human beings have found enormous strength, will, and creativity—none of which might have been possible without such brutal suffering.

In an attempt to understand this young woman’s life, I found myself on her Facebook page. I saw references to mental health, but I saw far more photos filled with joy and friends and cool experiences, a smart and witty person who must have been really neat to be around. Were all those things facades to mask over pain, because we don’t want to be the one to bring everyone else down with our human bouts of sadness? What we learn as we grow older is that sadness is an inevitable part of life, but it doesn’t have to define us. She will never understand that for herself. Instead she leaves tormented family and friends in her wake, rewriting so many others’ tales of sadness.

I’ve never contemplated suicide, but I have suffered through depression. I found myself in a counselor’s office when dealing with grief, not once but twice. The first period was when my father died. The second time was when I grieved the death of my marriage. Ironically just weeks before my marriage ended, my husband told me he was depressed. I asked him what he was going to do to get to the core of it. I thought that was a reasonable question. I asked if he would go to counseling, and it was flat-out rejected. Some foolishness about his high security clearance and that his medical record wouldn’t be kept private. It was an excuse. I told him what my counselor said to me once, words I’ll never forget: “I don’t worry about the people who end up in my office; I worry about the people who don’t.” I encouraged him to confide in his doctor. More excuses. Did he want me to fix him?

When we assign the power of our own happiness over to another human being, we lose all self-respect. And when we have no self-respect, there is nothing left to lose.

Soon after my husband assigned his happiness over to me to fix, a task I was doomed to fail, our marriage disintegrated. He quickly found someone else and I became expendable. When the person you loved and trusted most becomes someone unrecognizable and does the cruelest things you could ever imagine, it sets off relentless questioning. What was real and what was not? Will this nightmare ever end? How do I go about redefining myself without the moniker of Mrs.? What will become of me? Whose name do I write down now as the Next of Kin? Suddenly my identity was shaken.

I was still recovering from a head injury and now I had to deal with a far more injurious blow to my heart. I didn’t wish to end my own life, but I thought about how death would have been a welcome end to the absolutely horrific and seemingly endless pain. 

I remember my darkest day very well. It was Memorial Day; I had filed for divorce two weeks before, and on the Saturday of Mem Weekend, I treated myself to a massage. I paid for it with my debit card, which was still tied to our joint checking account. He was still using it too. We weren’t supposed to close accounts per temporary orders. A lifetime with someone reduced to a stranger telling us how to handle our affairs. When checking the account online the next day, I noticed that my massage was indeed debited, but there was another charge from the spa for double the amount. My card must have been swiped twice by mistake or something. I left a message asking that they check their transactions because my account had been charged twice, and on Memorial Day, I got a call back saying there was no mistake. I came in on Saturday, but the Mr. came in right after with someone else. Of all the places he could have taken the Miss, he took her to the place that was my sanctuary. I was mortally wounded. I was inconsolable. How could this be happening? I had nothing sacred.

My home became a fishbowl; my life became a fishbowl. Everyone saw me suffering. I was mortified; I was embarrassed. I was heartbroken, an utter wreck. I was in the middle of my 51-nights-with-two-hours-of-sleep-or-less marathon. I dropped 23 pounds in 30 days. I developed a tremor like a Parkinson’s patient. On this particular day, I would have welcomed my death. But I wasn’t going to do it. I cried in bed, alone, distraught. I picked up my cell phone. Who can I call? The East Coast time difference was killing me. I couldn’t wake up my sister, brothers, or friends. They would panic. I started to text people, feeling very needy. “You awake?” No reply. I started with the A’s and found success with the S’s.

“Be with me in my time of suffering and I shall never forget your kindness...”

Sue didn’t text back; she called immediately. Sue knew what suffering was all about; it was a different kind of suffering, but suffering is suffering. We think others won’t understand our despair, but we don’t give them enough credit. Sue heard my weak voice calling from the bottom of the well, and she extended her hand, encouraging me to crawl out, hand over hand. She couldn’t fix me, but she could be present. That’s all we can ever ask of another human being, and it turns out it is Enough. We just can’t be afraid to ask. Be with me in my time of suffering and I shall never forget your kindness, nor will I be unwilling to do the same for anyone else in need. It really is a gift to be THAT person, one of the other things we discover if we are lucky enough to get older.

I had plenty of difficult days after that but never quite as bad as that one. That was my rock bottom. I took lots of baby steps. I made lots of calls. Lots of repetitive storytelling and purging and being vulnerable and imperfect and uncertain. We crave certainty when absolutely nothing is certain.

While I would never choose to live through that again, I would say a resounding YES to the end result. Without pain, we don’t fully know happiness. Without disappointment, we don’t fully know empathy or compassion. When we don’t fully surrender to the process of healing, we will rip the scab off over and over and never fully heal. I will never assign my happiness over to another human being. I will never surrender my power to another human being. The moment I do that, I cease to exist.

I struggle with patience more than anything else in my life, but I have seen with my own eyes that when we want our lives to be better, we’re the only ones who can make that happen. It requires time, courage, a willingness to be vulnerable. I might end up making a mistake. I will make mistakes. But God willing, the sun will rise tomorrow lighting the way for a Do-Over.

And because we can never say thank you enough to the people who help us on our darkest days, thank you. You know who you are. And I love you with every fiber of my being. I’ve got your back any time. Let me have that honor.