Suicide

Suicide. For most people it is impossible to understand how someone could take their own life. The only way to have even the tiniest glimpse of understanding is to have been there yourself.

I have been suicidal and have a family member that has attempted suicide and other family members who have thought about it. I never tried but gave it lots of thought. This occurred during my Middle School years. It started not too long after moving to Pennsylvania. I was in 4th grade, had just gotten a horrible hair cut--I always had very long hair and had gotten a "pixie" cut, I guess that's the cute name for it. A substitute teacher mistook me for a boy and it all went down hill from there.

I had a hard time making  new friends. I went about it all wrong. I had a fake confidence that came off obnoxious. I can remember when I would go to the chalkboard to do a math problem I would sign my name Ann Smith the Great. I did end up with a small group of really close friends but I kind of felt like the mutt. Believing they were with me out of pity. I had horrible orange hair that I never washed (why bother I was so ugly anyway). Tons of freckles. I had to start wearing glasses in 4th grade...four eyes. My teeth were yellow. I was small for my age. And I wore ugly hand me downs from the 70's. These are all things I remember begging God to change. To top it all off, my younger sister had tons of "boyfriends", she got "married" several times, walking down the aisle of the school bus. She was the pretty one and I was the smart one.

I think it was 6 th grade, maybe 7th, there was a suicide pact by some girls in the grade ahead of us. One survived and got held back to our year. She always dressed in the bathroom stalls in the gym locker room. The gossip was she shot herself in the stomach because she was pregnant. The school and community's reaction was stupid. They banned wearing bandanas, because these girls used to wear them--WTF?!?! Is THAT what made them want to die?? At a church dance the Queen song Don't Try Suicide came on...there was a hush and then it was immediately banned from ever being played...Would THAT stop us from thinking about it?

There were other suicides but none in a pact so they didn't get the fanfare that these girls got. Adults didn't want to acknowledge the problem because why? Would that make the rest of us get "bad ideas"? NEWSFLASH! I had already thought about suicide....when God wouldn't fix my vision or my hair color or give me the "curves" a girl was supposed to have, I would beg him to just take me, I didn't want to live being ugly anymore.

There weren't guns in my house, or pills, these were the main ideas I had on how to "do it". We didn't have the internet to give me other ideas...I didn't even consider hanging myself or carbon monoxide poisoning. I did think about slitting my wrists but was afraid I wouldn't die fast enough. Would I have been successful had I grown up now...with so much access to information that could "help" me?

What saved me?

Running saved me. At the end of 8th grade the high school Cross Country coach sent a note stating that my time in the 800 yard (meter--I forget what we did back then) was really good. Would I consider running for the team? I did. And I was good....better than even he expected. I placed 2nd in the county my freshmen year. Finally I was more than just smart...because that was not something to be proud of. I was good at a SPORT! I ran track in the Spring and was good at that, too! I was one of a very few that got a Varsity jacket in  my sophomore year. Better still, I met a boy on the team...a boy who liked me! And just like that the suicidal thoughts were gone!

Even with all the money woes I would experience in college. Even with the boyfriend who cheated on me for 8 months before I found out...NOTHING has ever brought me back to the despair I felt in Middle School. Now with hormones raging with Peri Menopause... I have fleeting suicidal thoughts, but they make me laugh...because I LOVE my life and I know that it just hormones fucking with me and that in a few minutes or hours the thought will pass. But back then, there were days, weeks and months were I just wanted to stop hurting...stop being ugly. Stop feeling alone. Survivors of suicidal thoughts or attempts try to verbalize the darkness but you just can NOT understand how dark it is...how hopeless everything seems when you are there and usually the thoughts compound each other and keep making things seems worse. You can't find reasons to live. Even thinking about the pain you will cause your family makes you feel weaker and proves your thoughts that you don't deserve to be alive.

People say what could make a child so unhappy that they could think like this at such a young age...they haven't lived enough to have enough problems to warrant suicidal thoughts. Those people don't realize that your self esteem can be so low and you don't see that one day you will grow past the ugly stage. One day you will find someone who makes you feel beautiful all the time. One day you will find someone who doesn't see any flaws or loves you in spite of them. All you see ahead of you is more days filled with taunting "Red headed sped, freckled face freak". "I'd rather be dead than red on the head" and I did feel that way...I wanted to be DEAD.

I am thankful that I didn't know about other options or that access to ways to kill myself in rural PA were limited. I am grateful for that note from the running coach. I still believe the school could have handled things differently and maybe that young boy, with the memorial in the back of the yearbook, the one no one knew about because he killed himself alone, maybe they could have helped him. Because me not wearing a bandana certainly didn't help him.

It is talked about more today... a girl at my son's high school killed herself and the school offered counseling but is that enough? What can we do?

When actors, good looking, successful, actors are killing themselves have we really found any sort of solution to help people? Doesn't mental illness still have a stigma attached to it? Look at our soldiers...no one talks about the suicides of those that come home. One tiny article here or there but no real discussion. We hear about the deaths from military choppers going down but no one reports on the daily suicides going on. What can we do?

I was lucky...running was my answer...and only because it boosted my self esteem...what if I had sucked? It would have just been another failure. And I wouldn't have had the confidence to flirt with that boy and the darkness would have still been there. And one day it may have figured out a way to win. Rick Springfield gives the darkness a name, a persona...it's Mr. D. In his autobiography he describes his depression vividly, with such truth and honesty. I know because I had a Mr.D and he was constantly telling me I didn't measure up and pointing out all of my flaws. He is still haunted by Mr.D, at 64, after a lifetime of successes. I am so fortunate that I "outgrew" my Mr.D...or learned to tell him to fuck off and he did. I don't even think I had suicidal thoughts all of my years in therapy. The only time I really remember wanting to die was in Middle School.

Even with my fleeting hormonal thoughts, and my past with suicidal thoughts...I have a hard time understanding how someone doesn't want to live as long as they possibly can. Every day brings with it new possibilities, new higher heights of happiness. The good far outweighs the bad and every day takes me miles away from that dark place and that's why it's easy to question how someone can take their life...because I am so, so far away from that lonely, tired, ugly girl.

Some Stats

Taken from suicide.org :  Approximately 30,000 people in the US die every year from suicide --this is about the same amount that die from the flu...you can get a flu shot from every damn pharmacy but who talks about suicides and how to stop them?

750,000 people ATTEMPT suicide...that's 3/4 of a million people---that's a LOT of unhappy people! And this is WITH all the damn antidepressants people are on! 1 out of 25 that try succeed.

It is the THIRD leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 24! And there have been suicides of children under the age of 10!

More people die from suicide than from homicide.

 In 2009 the number of people who die from suicide surpassed the number that die from motor vehicle deaths. (According to the CDC)
FOUR times as many males kill themselves than females! Although 3 times as many females TRY!

If you live in a home with a firearm you are 5 times more likely to die by suicide.

In 2000, according to a Dept of Health report, among 12-17 year olds, every day 2700 youths attempted suicide that is 2 attempts per minute!

Suicides rates are even higher among homosexuals--30% of all  completed suicides among youth are by homosexuals, perhaps with society's acceptance this number can decrease but waht about the other 70%-how do we help them?

Why do we have a war on drugs but no war on suicide? Why are we so affected by mass school shootings when we are losing children every day to suicide?