Hold On - Good Charlotte
While there may be some personal interpretation and thoughts in this post, I will not speak to my personal experience with suicide. I do believe that it is a subject that we seem to be afraid to talk about and that does need to change. We need to be aware of what to look for. In my layman, unscientific opinion most thoughts of suicide come from loneliness and hopelessness. If we didn't feel alone, would we want to go away? As children, when we are in pain, we want our mothers near. I think that this carries on throughout life. When we feel pained we want someone near to understand, to hear, to show us hope or just to be.
This song by Good Charlotte is a perfect example of this and through the words we can feel and find hope. There is only one line that bothers me and that is: "We all have the same things to go through". Very generically speaking we may have to go through similar experiences as rights of passage. But no one can really experience it in the same way or with the same results. Nature vs Nurture and looking at things from my perspective with my soul and thoughts.
But there are a couple of very specific reasons for the timing of this blog besides just opening a dialogue on a sensitive subject. Recently, a local boy with whom my son played baseball back in the day committed suicide. Word got out very quickly and spread like wildfire on facebook. Just as quickly a "RIP page" was set up and people were invited to share there fond memories and sorrows. The things is, they had him dead and buried and although his prognosis was not good, he was very much alive. By the end of the day the numbers of that group reminiscing grew to 500 strong. I want to know where these people were in his life? There are always signs...we need to pull our heads out of the sand and know what to look for. If this boy felt the love and strength displayed on-line would he have reconsidered his actions? We will never know. The unfortunate post-script here is that although he hung on for a time, he did pass on to the land of the angels.
Additionally, I came across a round table discussion on suicide on TV the other day. While I thought the premise of open dialogue was great, I believe that there were some parts that were a mistake to air. There was one guy (a celebrity I did not recognize) that was speaking on his personal experience with suicide. He went into very explicit detail about his feelings and thoughts before making the decision, where he was, how he did it, how it felt. He talked about feeling peace and pain free. That is precisely what suicidal people are looking for! In his words this "role model" told everyone how to get what they were looking for. If I was sitting on the fence and considering this would have pushed me over! This was not necessary to the focus of the conversation and if it needed to be there it should have been balanced with equally poignant thoughts on how it was a mistake to have tried and that the same feelings were achieved in other ways. Don't tell me how great it is going to feel while I am dying...tell me how great it is going to be if I keep breathing.
One last thought...Is it possible that if we didn't think there was a better place to go to, maybe we would stay here? If you need a better place to be, call me I'd like to be there for you and you can be there for me!
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