Suicide Note

A close friend of mine called me the other day crying. She confessed to me that she had tried to commit suicide for the second time.

When I got off the phone I couldn’t help but feel that I knew the second attempt was coming. After learning of her first attempt about 3 or 4 months ago, I watched with empathy, pity, and disgust as she drunkenly continued to spiral downward towards anywhere that didn’t remind her of herself.

I think about her a lot. And not just because she’s attempted suicide, but because she is a painful reminder of the struggles I’ve endured and seen so many people endure. I remember one summer, I was 16 years old watching my father quit marijuana cold turkey. I watched him go through withdrawal symptoms – insomnia, lack of hunger, anger, suicidal thoughts. Wide-eyed, I watched him pull hair out of his head and punch himself in the face screaming about how he wished he could die. Another time, my father had been screaming at my sister for something stupid, as usual. She started having an anxiety attack so I stepped in and told him to leave. Surprisingly, he complied; and once he was out of our way, in between sobs she exclaimed that she had thoughts of stabbing herself in the stomach. “Sometimes,” she gasped, “I wish I wasn’t alive.” My sister was only 8 years old.

If any of these people – my friend, my sister, and even my father – ever succeed in committing suicide, I would be in a great deal of pain. Whenever anyone commits or attempts suicide someone will be in a great deal of pain. It seems to me that when people want to leave this world we are bound to in life, they don’t realize that their death, and even their suffering, affects everyone else – however intimate or strange everyone else may be to them.

Don’t get it twisted: Suffering is the universal language.

I want to share my own suicide note with this good friend of mine, and anyone else who is considering walking the tight rope between life and death. I hope my attempts at making any sort of connection aren’t futile – or even worse, cheesy – as my intentions couldn’t be any more sincere.

Dearest friend(s),

I have been watching you very closely, listening to and feeling your pain. I notice each self-deprecating remark; each time you say, “Oh, I’m alright,” and then avoid eye contact. I hear how closely you analyze your food intake and criticize everyone else’s supposed “visible happiness.” Each story of drug intake and each confession of emotional rollercoaster rides find their way to my core, where many of my own wounds are still open and sore. I know that you are suffering, because I suffer too. In fact, I know a lot of people who are suffering.

Too many of our friends, lovers, and family members know too well how to hate themselves, but not how to love themselves. Easily, we slip into blaming ourselves for not knowing how to find enough control to search for happiness. And before we know it we start torturing ourselves. We are professional teachers, perpetrators, and victims of loathing and self-hate.

To be honest with you, all of this self-hating, depression, and suicide has become very limiting and boring. I’m sick of hurting and worrying all the time. The bad news has gotten redundant and, now, predictable. I can only feel so much pain before it starts to drive me nuts. I understand that you are suffering, but you have to know how hard this is on me as someone who has already endured and survived these same struggles; and as someone who has seen many people deal with suicide and depression.

I’m calling us out: We need to start using our imaginations for something more innovative, productive, interactive. We need to visualize and create a new perspective with which to view ourselves and the world: a perspective that is not focused on destruction but creation.

The only thing we need to be destroying is the horrible lie we have been made to believe, the lie that claims we deserve to suffer, that we live only to suffer, and that we all die alone. We need to re-create – or give birth to – a self which acknowledges and appreciates the fact that our existence is predicated on the existence of others. If we have the power to destroy our own lives, we, too, have the power to create our own lives.

And if we can create ourselves over and over again, then anything is possible. Why would we want to run away from this exciting and pleasurable opportunity to explore the limitless possibilities of the worlds we already inhabit? We can die some other time, in a less painful, hateful, and lonely manner. And when that time comes, we can cross over together.

May our journeys through existences never end!

Maad love,

Angelica A.