Suicides This Week...

Two suicides by celebrities this past week. I didn't know either of them personally, but something about such public review of peoples issues after they've taken their own lives is so insensitive. People taking to social media and popping off about how so-and-so was such a selfish coward, "they had money and fame and family... what a whiny selfish baby to do that!" It pains me to see such hateful speech towards someone who was obviously in enough emotional pain to end their own suffering. Money and fame and family will only get you so far. Sometimes people run out of hope and simply can't do it anymore... and who are we, the fickle masses, to judge?

Publicly discussed celebrity suicide always makes me catch my breath. It triggers me. I can't help but think about Jen, a highschool friend who killed herself by shotgun shortly after we graduated from high school. I can't help but think about RJ, my ex boyfriend who experienced ultimate suffering at his own hands for 3 days before his body finally gave up. And I think about Joe - finding his huge form gently slumped against his roommates bedroom door in the hall way. Freshly showered and naked, his hands lightly resting in his lap. The shot gun next to him on the floor. The side of his face that remained intact was relaxed, peaceful even.

Then I think about my own distant dances with suicide. By the standard of compassion (or lack thereof) people would simply roll their eyes, say I was acting out for attention, and that I was just an angst loving teen who just needed to knock it off. That's what the response would have been if anyone actually knew. That's the response I witnessed towards others when they were public about their self harm. I took half a bottle of Vicodin once - a long time ago. I threw them all up shortly after, but I had swallowed them all, one by one. I used to be a cutter. When there was a threat of being found out, I played it off that the designs I was carving into my arms and legs were just "body modification" as I wasn't old enough to get a tattoo. In reality, the designs were trial runs of how much pressure and force it would take. I was a bulimic. At my smallest I weighed 85 lbs and my kidney's started to fail. I smoked for a brief period. Marlboro Reds. "Cowboy killers." All of these things were dances with death, invitations to die that I mailed and delivered to myself.

Yet, I didn't.

Instead I sought help. Quietly. I have never been one to broadcast whats going on inside me. Even now that is partly true - this blog is pretty much my own personal soapbox, and I'm aware of how very few eyes glance over it.

Initially seeking help was a bit of a disaster, but I kept trying. Kept advocating for my own mental health. As I grew older and faced more and more complicated and difficult issues, I learned to navigate without my previous self harm coping mechanisms. I continue to keep on keeping on.

My current state of mind is a much healthier one, even as I stare down the tunnel of a life sentence of chronic pain. At times I still feel weak, but overall, I am so much stronger and healthier in my mental health. I am so much more self aware. I'm so much more open and voluntarily vulnerable, even when lingering fears of judgement move in the shadows. I've learned that it's okay to not be okay sometimes. I've learned to trust in Something Greater. I've learned to hand over my end of days to The Creator - death will come for me when my time here is done, with or without invitation.

So for those struggling with the loss of your loved ones by suicide, or triggered by the loss of these recent celebrities taking their own lives, I offer John O'Donohue's poem, For the Family and Friends of a Suicide. Now is the time to be gentle with each other as we each mourn our own losses, as we each process our own dances with death.