Suicidal Ideation, Realized and Otherwise

When I was sixteen, I briefly inhabited a mindset that had me contemplating suicide.  Besides the typical teenage hormones, my life existed in an unstable bubble.  I felt isolated from society.  I detested myself.  I hated my mother.  God ticked me off: surely He had abandoned me long ago.  And I had reached a point where I felt I would never lead my own life, free from the emotional and spiritual chains that were weighing me down, both physically and mentally.

Yet my outer demeanor remained bright and friendly at school, and in the rare social situations in which I was allowed to partake I was often the center of attention.  I could laugh and joke with the best of 'em.  There were aspects of life, of humanity, of nature, and of music for which I held a deep appreciation.  A strong fondness.  But all of that didn't seem enough, as it was more a taste of what I could have than what I actually had.  A reminder of all that thrived and hurried and honked outside of the bubble of my family life.  I had friends.  I was deep in the throes of young love.  The school I attended, it would now be called a magnet school I imagine, allowed me personal and intellectual freedom in my studies and my schedule.  I found it stimulating.  But I couldn't live there 24/7.  And I couldn't escape what was a toxic percolation of anger, fear, frustration and desperation inside me.  That followed me everywhere.

It came to a head one night in the privacy of my bedroom in the converted double-apartment in which me and my three siblings and my mother lived in Anchorage, Alaska.  The physicality of jumping from a bridge into traffic seemed to steep a price to exact on whatever poor driver, or drivers, might hit me or witness it.  We didn't keep a stash of medicines in a cabinet.  I didn't know anyone who used razor blades aside from those in an actual shaver.  Most of my dangerous dalliance with suicide existed as intense thought and scenarios.  All of which were intended to make my mother miss me and realize how much she had hurt me over the years.  I wanted to hurt myself in order to hurt my mom.  Not all that uncommon in a desperate teenage girl with serious unresolved issues.  Our mother's are the world, be it a world of sunlight or a world of darkness.

On that night, deeply distraught, furious with my mother -- she may have found my journal and had words with me over what was written on its voluminous angst-ridden pages -- my deepest desire was to be as far away from her and my crappy life as was humanly possible.  Death seemed the best fit for that.  All I had was Midol for my period discomfort and a bottle of Sea Breeze facial astringent.  I ingested what was left of the menstrual medication; I took several difficult swigs of the bitter cleanser.  There was yet half a bottle to polish off.  But waves of nausea wracked my body, as did waves of regret, and the meager contents of my attempt poured out into the toilet.  What if my brothers or sister found me?  They would be devastated.  And I realized I feared the pain of dying or the possible long-term effects of failure.  As an adult, I am most grateful for that fear and its ability to override my irrational feelings.  Though I continued to stew in my misery for quite some time, never again did I entertain self-inflicted death as the way out of my dilemmas.  As with my failure as a successful bulimic, I was also a failure at suicide.  If one is going to be a failure at something in their life, this would be in the top ten.

Unlike me, there are others for whom suicide eclipses any fear, love, beauty, any human appetite for which we are designed, and seek its finality through all failures until success is attained.  My brother, Gary, is one who has struggled throughout his childhood and adulthood with this.  Especially during his decade-plus long stay in the California penal system.  The worst episode entailed guards finding him on the brink of death, wrists slit, on the floor of his cell.  In and out of consciousness, he could hear the orderlies who lifted him up and away to the institution's hospital wing as they bemoaned his survival.  "Let the losers dies, man."  It wasn't until his body had battled the damage and won that his family learned of what had transpired: he called me after the fact, still weakened, but alive and deeply depressed.  Unless he had actually died, we would not have been notified.  Thus, no cards or letters to encourage him or steel him for what he would face on the other side.  Of all the horrific moments in his incarceration, this chapter was particularly scarring to us both.  Never to be forgotten.  As it stands now, suicidal tendencies are low on his list of issues in need of attention, but his illness and situation, plus the ease with which he'll abuse his body if he needs to do so because his danger parameters are widely stretched, keep it on the radar.  It is something that I've had to accept.  Reluctantly.

Two nights ago, the college roommate of a young friend of mine (a son to one of my Earth Divas) committed suicide after leaving a note on the pillow of my young friend.  "I'm going somewhere quiet to kill myself."  He also left one for his girlfriend of two-plus years.  He was well-mannered, likable, not prone to drama, and exhibited no outward signs of whatever inner turmoil had evidently been plaguing him.  This bothered my Earth Diva pal, as she worried how her son would accept and deal with this unfolding tragedy, because there was nothing to foretell this terrible life-ending decision.  But it is this very facade of 'all is well' that is often employed to mask the agony of the internal.  Whatever had taken root in this boy's mind, his very soul, whatever chemical processes may have occurred (I don't know all of the story at this point and I wonder about certain medications for acne or anxiety or studying that he may have taken which can cause suicidal ideation in otherwise emotionally healthy individuals) he wasn't seeking attention by acting out or looking for help.  He simply wanted to die.  And was quite determined to see it through.  No amount of frantic late-night searching for his whereabouts by police or friends was going to deter him.  He wanted someone to know he would soon be dead.  He did not merely set out to evoke feelings of sorrow or regret or pain and be rescued from his demons in the end.  He desired the end.

I think all of us attached to this, however three-degrees-of-separation that might be, wish to know the absolutes.  We want answers.  We want to see a definite progression, a cause and effect, which brings some degree of sense to the story.  The loose-ends, the unknown, the suddenness, the total and complete shock of it, the awareness of the widening ripples in the pond as the grief and acceptance wash over friends and family and local MTSU fellow students, the kids he helped at his local church, is all way too much in such a jumbled combination.  If the strands could be separated and identified, maybe reconfigured into a neatly braided timeline, a body of explanation with a clear beginning and middle to balance out the untimely agonizing end, maybe then it would be easier to swallow.  I doubt it.  I also doubt that any of us can will clarity into the situation for our own sake.  As much as my young friend will be hurting for some time, those stages of grief through which he will wallow, along with the girlfriend and the family members left to cope, all of us who bear witness and empathize, there is not a one who hurts more than the young man who felt so completely sure that separating himself from his mortality was the clear path down which to trod.

I mourn for society's loss of one who had yet to realize that his absence WOULD be a loss.