Words I Hate

I hate these words:  “Suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem”…or…”Suicide is a quick solution to a temporary problem.”

Granted, my perspective of having watched my son’s obvious downward spiral into mental illness over a span of well over five years, closer to seven, is not always the norm. I watched Erik fight and fought with him to battle his illness and try to get better, day after day, year after year.  The heartbreak of watching your child go through this is difficult to describe.  It seemed like it lasted decades, not years, and the despair and loneliness of someone with schizophrenia is beyond description. 

I think the above words were only said in my presence two or three times, but those times took every modicum of restraint for me to not lash out at the person, and scream at them that they had no idea what they were talking about.

To be fair, I understand that from the outside there may suicides committed by a seemingly successful or at least well functioning person, in response to what may be seen as a typical life circumstance.  However, the fact that suicide is their response means that there are realms of information we don’t have about that situation, and quite frankly, people need to not say the victims took an easy way out!

Using my guideline of “logical”, if someone commits suicide, the logical thought should be that something fierce and horrible was going on in their minds. 

On another page in this blog, “The Enigma of Suicide”, I wrote a long time ago about this, but it always bothers me.  If the instinct for survival is so strong in the “normal” person, that people survive being lost in a blizzard for a week or sustain difficult treatments when battling cancer, or continue on after severe injuries of losing limbs or being paralyzed, then clearly our reflexes, as well as our desires, tell us to go on living at all costs, and provide us with the motivation and stamina to do so.

The flip side of this then, at least to me, is that if someone is able to actually take the significant action of putting a gun to their heads or a noose around their neck knowing they are taking their last breaths of life, how dark and deep is that despair within them that they are able to complete this act?

How many times have all of us felt like “giving up” or that it just “isn’t it worth it all”, yet as horrible, sad, or depressed we may feel, never come even close to truly trying to end our lives?  How much worse then, how much pain then, do these poor souls have who feel the only way out is give up their very lives?

What I also hate about these attitudes or these expressions is that there is an inherent suggestion that we are somehow better than those who “took the easy way out”.  We are not better than them.  There was no better person than my son.  He was kind and sweet and provided me years of joy by being my son.  He was dealt a horrible hand of having mental illness which snuck up on us in his late teens.  He tried so many doctors, counselors, rehabs, and medications that I lost count, and every time it seemed he gained ground, he relapsed into a more progressive stage of the disease.

So I would beg of everyone, let’s not allow ourselves to think that this is just a ruthless act of a lazy or inconsiderate person.  This is the act of a person who knows more sadness, despair, and sheer pain than we could possibly imagine.  And once we try to imagine it, or imagine trying to walk a mile in their shoes, forgiveness becomes so very easy for how can we be angry that they could no longer endure such pain? 

So let’s let go of our judgments, let’s let go of our anger, and let’s let go of our guilt.  The person we lost took the only action that seemed possible to them at the moment, and could not bear another minute of excruciating mental and emotional pain. 

We are still here to forgive, love, and embrace life because we are fortunate enough to have that indomitable will to live, in spite of our sadness.  We can breathe for those we lost, and with them.  And we will.