The S word. Hint: it's Suicide. ;

I’ve been hemming and hawing on this post for a while… should I write it? Should I keep it to myself? When is a “good time” to talk openly about it? Even for a cranky old goth kid like me, I dunno that it’s ever a “good time” to talk about the S word. 😕 But it’s got to be talked about.

I didn’t want to ruin anybody’s holiday by rolling it out last month, but I also wanted to get it out before springtime, because guess what? Contrary to popular opinion, springtime, not winter or fall, is, in fact, the peak season for suicide! I have a personal theory on this. I think it’s for the same reason that one of the side-effects of some anti-depressants is suicide. I think that people might feel worst in the winter, but are too depressed to do anything about it, and then with the burst of energy that comes with spring, well, you know.

What brought this on for me is this. In the beginning of December, I sent a little package and card to one of my Postcrossing friends. About a week later, I received a message, not from my friend, but from her mom. This has only happened to me one other time in my life, and I instinctively knew what it meant. I felt a pit in my stomach as I started to read the message. My friend - who was only 34 years old - had passed away. The cause of death was not revealed at first, but I knew. It was and is a terrible feeling. If you are contemplating suicide, you may think that nobody will miss you, that everyone will get over it and life will go on. While it’s true that life goes on, it’s not true that everyone will get over it. It’s a haunting pit and an empty spot in the universe that never really mends.

There are plenty of reasons why people don’t talk about it. It’s embarrassing. It can get you in a lot of trouble. It can force you into psychiatric treatment that may or may NOT help. Psychiatric care and antidepressants did not ultimately help my 2 friends who committed suicide. (Though they do help plenty of other people and who-knows-how-many friends who are still alive!)

I think that what haunts me most about the loss of people to suicide is that, with rare exception, it seems like their decision was made based on a faulty world view. I keep thinking, if only they could have waited it out a little longer, tried something new, seen the world through another lens...! I don’t know - ultimately - what was going on inside of their own heads, but I do know what my own journey has been like.

Yep, at various times in my life, I have secretly harbored suicidal thoughts, too. For a couple of years in the early 90s, I came so close that I actually drove around with the tools for the deed right in the back of my car! Ready and waiting. Different things have stopped me or shifted my perspective at different times.

The first time I remember thinking about suicide was when I was just a little kid. I didn’t fit in, life was stressful. and I just wanted to die. Because of the religious views that I was taught, I believed that the world was a dark and scary place and that it was literally destined for Hell in a handbasket! I wanted out. However, that same religion threw up a roadblock! It taught that any sin could be forgiven… except for suicide. Suicide was the unforgivable sin, because you would not be able to confess and do penance after the fact! According to the Church rules, all people who die by suicide go straight to Hell! They can’t even be buried in church cemeteries. And so, I didn’t do it. I figured, the whole point of wanting to be dead is to get to a better place, so, why would I do it if I was just going to Hell? I thought about it - a lot - but it was never a real option.

Later, in my teen years, as the stress, alienation and good ol’ teen angst rose, the desire to die and be done with it came back with a vengeance. I might have even swallowed a few pills that I wasn’t supposed to, in a timid pseudo-trial-run. I didn’t talk to my parents about it, and I sure didn’t talk to a counselor! I didn’t trust any of those people! But one night, it was so bad that I was starting to formulate a clear plan… and that was when I called the Suicide Hotline! It ended up helping me in the most unexpected of ways. The person on the other end of the line turned out to be… shockingly UNhelpful! I thought she sounded bored, asked me stupid questions, and left me with the impression that maybe I SHOULD do it! It was super weird. But the end result was, I hung up the phone and instead of feeling depressed, I felt really irritated and obstinate. I was like, “You know what? Screw it - I’m going to keep living! That was the dumbest phone call ever!”

As time went on, the faint thought remained in the background of my head. Life took so much energy. I just wished I could rest. It was hard to fight the thoughts. In my early 20s, I came up with a new strategy. It was kind of a “to do list" of life. My bargain with myself was, I could do it, but not until I had knocked off the items on my list. I had to prove to myself that life was TRULY not worth living before I made my exit. The funny thing was, I rarely made it more than one or two items down the list before I was back to feeling OK with life! What had seemed so solid and dark at one moment revealed itself to be an illusion in another moment.

I learned that the brain is a liar, in more ways than one. (A great book for learning just some of the ways the brain lies to you is Idiot Brain: What Your Brain is Really Up To.)

Although I may have only needed to go one or two items down the list, it doesn’t mean that the items were small. Sometimes, they were big - at least for me, at the time. For example, another close call for me was shortly after I had moved back to San Francisco, in early 2000. I had a gig secured as an independent contractor in another chiropractor’s office. He has assured me that he would “help me out” if I needed help with rent in the beginning, while I built my practice. I took the leap, confident that I could not fail, because he would help me. Against the odds, I even landed my own studio apartment! This was at the height of the dot-com boom, when it was near impossible to find an apartment in the city! I was over the moon. The rent was steep, at $950/month (which now makes LOLOLOL) but not impossible. When the other doctor asked me what my rent was, and I said “$950,” he laughed at me and said, “I’m not helping you out with that! That’s too much! You need to find a $300 room in the Mission!” To him, it was a no-brainer. To me, it was also a no-brainer. It may sound unreasonable or a little precious, but, as an extreme introvert, I can’t really handle living with other people. I need a lot of solitude to rebuild the energy that it takes for me to function at a high level in the world of people! I didn’t say it out loud, but in my head, I had a plan to exit life - if I couldn’t find a way to keep and sustain my solo life in my little studio apartment. I even wrote a will and stuck it to my refrigerator “just in case.” I didn’t know how I would swing it, but I did. I kept taking the next step into the unknown, and it worked.

Other near-misses came with the deep depths of postpartum depression, when I went as far as writing notes for various people, including a note to my son, to be read when he was “old enough,” which, in my mind, was 12 (!). I was fortunate to find a therapist around that time who helped me to muster the courage to take the action steps towards a life worth living. As I passed the danger zones and looked behind me in time, I thought, wow, things are not at all the way I thought they were! As my son passed the age was 12, I realized, wowzers, a 12 year old is still a kid. They can’t handle a parent’s suicide note! Gahh..!

At times, I thought, well, I just need to hold on until he is 18. This is the line of thinking that my uncle probably had, prior to his suicide. It seemed that he waited until his youngest was just out of the house and on his way to a solid career. Of course, it wasn’t “OK” at all. It was and is terrible for everyone. Now that my son is almost 19, I see that 18 is also no line of “they’ll be OK if…”

No, your people need you for as long as you can be around. Ironically, that therapist who helped me through the darkness when my son was so little ended up committing suicide herself shortly thereafter! I don’t know anything about what her journey was like, but I know that health care professionals keep it tucked away deep.

When I was in chiropractic school. I learned that among health professionals, dentists have the highest suicide rate and chiropractors had the lowest! What a bunch of suckers, I thought, why would they join that profession? I felt smart and proud to be in the lowest suicide rate profession! But not long after graduating, I got some new patients who needed to find a chiropractor since theirs had committed suicide. That was the first time I had ever heard of a chiropractor committing suicide - but it would not be the last. I didn’t realize until many years later that while chiropractors did indeed have the lowest suicide rate “among health professionals,” the fact was that ALL health professionals have a higher suicide rate than the general population! D’oh. Maybe it is the stress of helping other people all day? (I don’t think so.) More likely, I bet it is the stress of feeling like you have to hide it all the time and act like your life is so healthy and perfect - to “be a good example.” ?

One of the paradoxical things about suicide and depression is that their incidence is lower in places that seem to be more objectively “depressing” (such as poor countries) and higher in places where things seem “happier” (like wealthy countries). One theory for this is that if everyone is kind of depressed, then you don’t stick out as bad, and therefore the experience is not as bad. There’s that element of belonging again! Of fitting in, even if it’s a bit crappy. Not only do we live in a wealthy time and place, but social media exerts extra pressure since everyone posts only their best and most polished images. It can make a depressed person feel even more depressed or their own life to feel even more shabby and not worth living.

I’m not writing about my past experiences with suicidal ideation for sympathy, pity, attention or any of that. I’m putting it out there because I think it’s better if more people feel safe to have the space to talk about it. Less than a month ago, I got the news that one of my classmates from high school had also committed suicide. He wasn’t a friend, and I only dimly remembered him from back then, but when I read his obituary, I felt the same familiar pang of what a terrible and premature loss his death was. He had been so accomplished and talented! No doubt he had been struggling for a long time with the darkness inside, but it was largely his own secret, What could have been different had he been more free or safe to talk about it and get more help?

I can’t remember the last time I seriously thought about suicide. It’s been years at this point, which is pretty amazing, because it used to be the opposite! What made the difference for me? Many things have helped in different ways from different angles. At times, diet has made a big difference. Exercise has made a big difference. Sleep has made a big difference. Therapy helped at certain points on the journey, and NET has most certainly helped at many points on the journey! Taking bold actions toward reaching the life that I wanted to live has been maybe the most important thing. There’s nothing like action and evidence in the material world to jolt the mind out of “what if” hypothetical doom thinking!

If you are thinking about ending it, please keep working towards a different outcome. I don’t have any definitive answers. Everyone says, “Get professional help.” I’m sure you have already done so. If it hasn’t helped, try again. Your life is worth living, even if it feels like it’s not.

If you don’t want to talk to anyone, here is the Crisis Text Line. You can send a text to 741741 and text with a crisis counselor on any issue.

if you have a friend who makes offhand comments about suicide, don’t ignore it. Take them seriously.

Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do at all. But the first step to solving a problem is talking about it and getting it out of your head and into the open.

So… that’s all I have to say about that. ❤ RIP to KM. <— literally the first time I noticed that my friend had the same initials as me! 😮

-DK