“But they were fine!”
“They were so happy . . . . . Almost the life and soul of the party . . . . . They were always there to help everyone else and seemed so capable and together . . . . .”
How could someone be fine, and OK and even happy one day, and added to the statistic of someone who has taken their own life the next?
It just doesn’t make sense. And let me say right off the bat, it might never truly make sense. To you.
Kate Spade’s father said in one of his first interviews following her suicide:
“Well, I just don’t know what happened. The last time I talked with her, the night before last, she was happy planning a trip to California to look at colleges. She doted on her daughter.”
A Tale of a Thousand Lives
I’ve been working in this field for a long time having lived through my own suicidal episode in the last 90’s culminating in calling the Samaritans in September 2000. I remember the day well. I kept the volunteer on the phone for over 4 hours, which was longer than their official shift.
I know that about the shift times because the following year I became a Samaritan volunteer, answering the phone to anonymous callers and seeing visitors at the centre on St Johns Road, Watford. I don’t remember their voices or their faces. Names are also irrelevant.
What follows here isn’t about a specific person, it’s a smorgasbord of the thoughts and feeling and outpourings both heard and felt over the past 20 years.
It’s a subject that rears itself often even for those not directly touched by suicide when yet another celebrity who appeared to “have it all” takes their own life.
What’s that about? Why when you’ve got all the material trappings and markers of Western would ‘success’ would you end it all in such dramatic and often brutal fashion?
I may document this all in a book one day. For now I just want to say a few things, which can’t help but be mass generalisations because as human beings we are complex creatures:
- For the family and friends left behind it’s often not about you. In fact it is sometimes to protect you because the ‘suicider’ if that’s even a word, thinks you would be better off without them.
- There isn’t always a ‘big thing’ or catalyst that tipped them over the edge, it could be a slow accumulation of events, like that kids game Buckaroo, where something seemingly insignificant is the last straw.
- The situation can feel hopeless, like there is no way out. In that moment that is their truth even if you could have “easily” helped them to sort it out or offer an alternative perspective.
- Related to point number 1 they often don’t do it because they hate you, those closest to them, they do it because they love you. I know it sounds like a weird juxtaposition however when you have it explained to you it actually makes sense.
- If there’s a ‘situation’ in the mix other emotions can get swirled up in there; guilt, shame, embarrassment, fear, all of which can feel too difficult to conquer or even face.
I’ve had clients who are all still here who had those moments of clarity and realised the devastation that would be rained down upon their family and friends were they to go through with it.
Is There Another Perspective?
I remember in my early 20’s when my partners sister was going to the funeral of a friend who died. They turned it into a celebration because he was so miserable when he was here they decided to celebrate his liberation from the darkness he lived in. I wasn’t in this line of work at the time however I remember finding their take on the whole situation fascinating.
There is a fundamental question I ask if the subject of suicide is on the table during a Breakthrough Coaching Session. It was a distinction I figured out for myself when contemplating all the ways to go; “Rope? Not with my Brownie knot tying skills. Wrists? Nope. Too squeamish. Train line? Gosh no, I couldn’t face all the angry commuters!”
It might now sound tongue in cheek however it was an actual conversation I had with myself back then.
We’ve all been given one life. Ours to, rules and regulations of our prevailing society aside, to do with as we choose. If you are still here what do you choose to do with yours?
I’m not for or against suicide. It just is, and I don’t ever see my job being to try and talk someone out of it. For me it’s about that fundamental question and clarity such that the decision, whichever way it goes, is made with a broader perspective than the darkness of the now.
Don’t know why I felt compelled to write this today. I may cycle back add more later. For now we’ll leave it there.
Yours,
Marilyn Devonish
The NeuroSuccess™ Coach
E-mail: marilyn@tranceformationsTM.com
Website: http://www.tranceformationstm.com