If you are feeling suicidal, please get help. If you are considering harming yourself,
please don’t. National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255
suicidepreventionlifeline.org. https://www.facebook.com/800273talk/ If you have lost someone to suicide, please
visit this link and go get help. https://afsp.org/find-support/ive-lost-someone/
In 2017, 47,173 Americans died by suicide. That’s out of a total of 2,744,248
deaths. According to the American Foundation
for Suicide Prevention, that’s 129 suicides per day.
In almost every other type of death, there is someone or
something to blame. If a person dies of
cancer, one can blame the cancer. When a
person dies of a car accident, one can blame the car or the weather or the
other driver. With suicide, who do you
blame?
In our society, blame is very important. Whenever anything bad happens, the first
thing we do is put our energies and resources toward finding out who is to
blame. The continuously rising rate of
tort and class-action lawsuits is testimony to this fact. Conversely, in this country and in our
society we have a very difficult time blaming the dead person for their own
death when it’s a suicide. This is ingrained
in our culture. Almost always, people say
don’t speak ill of the dead, and discussing their nefarious actions, or
mentioning that maybe they are the ones responsible for their own deaths is
rarely well received. It’s as if by
dying they have washed the slate clean, and now we are not allowed to remember
what ugliness this person may have committed.
So where does that leave us when people take their own
lives? In our desire not to blame the
dead, it seems very common to blame the living.
Visit any support group for survivors of suicide loss in person or on
Facebook or anywhere else on the web and you will see a startling number of
significant others, family members, or friends being blamed for their loved
one’s suicide.
What’s cruel about this behavior is that the person being
blamed is also coping with loss and guilt and anger and confusion. To have to also cope with the hatred being
directed at them for the actions of someone who now cannot take the blame or
make any explanation is unkind to the point of cruelty. Since the accuser is
rarely silent in their accusation, this blame often becomes a very public
affair, leaving the grieving and blamed individual isolated and lacking
support.
There are times when someone does bear some responsibility
in a suicide. The media reports
situations where someone was bullied which lead to suicide, and even cases
where a person has directly encouraged another person to take their own
life. But in the grander scheme of
almost 50,000 suicides per year, that is the smallest percentage of suicide deaths.
Suicide is inexplicable.
Most people could not imagine NOT wanting to survive. Folks would preserve their life and other’s
lives with all of the strength we might have left. Suicide is not logical. Logically, we would all want to live to be
100, or longer, and be blessed in our lives all the years we live.
But for some reason, something goes wrong in some people’s
brains. Though almost every individual
can report a moment where they considered suicide, most folks take another
path. For the individuals that succeed
at suicide, that other path never becomes apparent.
At the end of the day, the person responsible for a suicide
is the person who took their own life.
Not their mother or father who wasn’t always a perfect parent. Not their sibling or best friend who didn’t
return their text. Not their wife or
girlfriend who broke up with them last week or who simply didn’t see the
signs. Not their boss who fired them. Not the policeman who gave them yet another
DUI ticket last night. Many of us face
these sorts of problems and do not decide to end our lives over
it.
Suicide takes planning, in most cases. It requires deciding in advance how you will
die, where you will die, and how you will transport yourself to that
place. Even in the case of “spontaneous”
suicides the individual has typically talked about suicide and discussed their
own potential death with at least one other person. The suicidal individual must have considered their
options. Supplies must be purchased and
many times hidden. In almost every
successful suicide at least one failed suicide attempt was made in the
past. Suicide is a
premeditated act.
Applying a little bit of logic sheds light on the futility
of such blame. Typically, the ones
blamed are the people closest to them.
For instance, a significant other is often blamed for breaking off a
relationship with the other person. But
realistically, should they be held hostage in this relationship; forced to stay
or someone dies? In the weeks and
months leading up to a suicide, the individual usually becomes more and more
erratic, and their behavior can be dangerous to those around them. Doesn’t the individual have the right to
remove themselves from a damaging and potentially dangerous situation? Blaming them for self-defense is illogical,
and frankly, mean. Applying the same
logic to almost every suicide where those left behind are blamed will likely yield the
same results.
Conversely, with other self-destructive choices, we rarely
blame others. For instance, if
individuals were racing their cars or driving drunk and had an accident, we
wouldn’t blame the spouse who didn’t get in the car with them, or the store
clerk who sold them the alcohol when they were still sober. We would blame the individuals themselves who
made the poor choice. When a person is
skydiving or rock climbing and suffers a fatal accident, we don’t blame their
parents or their girlfriend or boyfriend for encouraging them to engage in this
activity. When a criminal robs a
convenience store and is shot by police, we might think it’s probably partly
their upbringing, but we largely blame the criminal for his own actions. Risky and dangerous behavior often ends in
death.
So why is this not true of suicide? Why is it so hard for us to hold our own spouses,
children, and loved ones responsible for their own deaths when suicide is also
a risky and dangerous behavior?
We will not be able to solve the problem of suicide until we
start pointing the fingers in the right direction. We can’t talk about how to prevent it unless
we can stop looking at the failures of others and start talking about what was
going on inside that person. We can help
each other, support one another, and love each other through the grief, and through
that try prevent others from that dark and terrible path.
It is perfectly reasonable to have an argument with a loved
one and expect everyone to be alive at the end of it. It is perfectly reasonable to go to sleep on any
given night expecting your loved ones not to harm themselves. It is perfectly reasonable to break up with a
significant other and not have them end up dead over it. It is perfectly reasonable to anticipate that
other people want to live. It is
perfectly reasonable to miss a call, ignore a text, or loose touch with a
friend and not have anyone die because of it.
Blaming someone, or yourself, for a suicide is not helping anyone in any
way.
Please stop blaming people for suicide. Please stop inflicting this hatred and
ugliness on others. Everyone who
experiences a suicide loss is faced with the same hurt, pain, and sorrow and
guilt. Tremendous crushing painful
guilt. It doesn’t make anyone a bad
person to be honest about the loved one who hurt themselves. It’s not speaking ill of the dead to speak
the truth. It doesn’t mean you love them
less or miss them less.
It does mean
that we can begin talking about a cure for our mental illnesses, and healing
and growing together. Placing a gentle
and honest responsibility on the individual for the choices they made will help
everyone heal, and help society begin to understand this terrible epidemic of
self-hurt that has come over us.
Thank you for reading.
Shalom.
