3: Letting go of belongings - and of belonging

11 years ago, I died. I didn’t know it at the time, but it changed my life. Funny how that works. It was suicide. And just before anyone jump to their guns, could I just say this one thing? Let’s not. This time, let’s not.

This is an invitation. To you, who always thought suicide was the choice of cowards and an obvious hostile act. To you, who had thoughts of suicide, but never dared say them out loud, out of fear of being called a coward and accused of hostile acts. To you, who lost someone. Who may be still carrying the rage that covers the deep sorrow of loss. You don’t understand, how could they? Why did they leave? To you, who went through suicide yourself. Who knows that it's not choice; Like deciding which socks to put on in the morning. You, who knows that saying suicide is a choice is a very unfortunate simplification at best. 

Suicide is the last frontier. It is a topic so incredibly seeped in deep shame and unbreakable taboo that more often than not it’s simply not talked about at all. It’s the thing, we think will go away, if we just shut our eyes tight, plug our ears, and ignore it. But it doesn’t, if it did, it would have happened a long time ago.

The thing is, if suicide is the last frontier, I am it’s native population. I live in these lands, I know their secrets. Because it happened to me. Yes, happened. No, I could not just have NOT done it. Yes, it counts even if I’m still here. The time has come to start listening to the ones, who were there themselves. Who lived in the bodies this happened to. The only shocking thing really, is how this is not common practise.

Right after it happened to me, I was shocked at the massive wall of silence I walked straight into. No one spoke to me. Then I began researching. And my shock only grew bigger and more mind numbing:

In the library I couldn’t find a single book written by someone who had actually experienced a suicide on their own body. When I Googled ‘suicide survivor’ I got a ton of hits. They were all for relatives. Now, please know, I am not saying relatives shouldn't have website and support groups. I am only wondering where are the sites for those who aren't relatives? For the people who went through the experience themselves? I did not find a single website directed at the men and women, boys and girls who had actually been through suicide themselves. 

Not ones that didn't look like the opening page of a medical journal with long lists of all the things that were wrong with us. Not a single one where I felt anywhere near seen as simply a human being who had been through something incredibly frightening and hard to come to terms with. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time turning to a place that looks at me with the unsaid understanding that something is seriously wrong with me mentally. Obviously. How else could I have experienced what I did, right? Wrong. I'm here so say that even if a person has a ton of mental illnesses it still does not excuse talking to them like they are children. And also that suicide happen to people who do not have mental issues at all. It is as complex as the people it happens to.

When I tried to speak, I met the stable list of things, I later learned are actually not true, but very common and very stubborn misconceptions: ‘If you didn’t die, you didn’t mean it’, ‘it was just a cry for help’, ‘you are clinically insane, must be, only someone insane would do that’, ‘I just don’t know how anyone could want to harm themselves like that’, and my personal worst ‘I have no respect for those that don’t succeed’. That was a medical professional who left me with that one. Only months after it had happened. No, not helpful.

I am here to tell you, we need a new way to talk about suicide. Because what we are doing isn’t helping.

I am here to start that conversation.

I have lived with suicide being part of my life for 11 years now. It is like living with a deadly disease, I am not allowed to talk about. But if I can’t talk, then please tell me: How am I supposed to figure out what this thing is? How am I supposed to figure out how to stay alive?

I know I am supposed to keep quiet.

Suicide is shameful.

But you know what? I don’t accept that. Neither should you.

Shame never helped anyone. Just think back, make a mental list of other human conditions that have been considered shameful, and ask yourself: Did that help? Think about when the AIDS crisis struck. Remember the shame that stuck to the ones affected? Did it help?

Suicide is not an illness. Depression is often something that leads to suicide. But suicide can happen with no mental illness present at all. Physical illness can lead to suicide. The truth is there are as many reasons for suicide as there are people who perish. None of them would have benefitted by being shamed.

I started talking publicly about suicide and the need to break the taboo five years ago. What met me more than anything was a surprise that I would speak at all. Isn’t it interesting how we almost startle at the mere thought that we could listen to someone who isn’t a trained medical professional or someone who have lost? That us, the ones it happened to, have a voice and actually know how to use it, too? 

Is it the shock of realizing how used we are to talking straight over the heads of those who live this? Like we are already gone? Or that we should know just how badly we will be stigmatized by openly admitting; Yes, I have been through suicide. Or that we are perceived as so crazy we can’t possibly have anything worthwhile to contribute? I could point out just how patronizing this is. But the truth is, that I get it. I know exactly how massive this taboo is. It’s so big that it swallows us whole, so we become invisible; Us, that live in it. We are still here, but we have become ghost already. Here, but not. 

But we are here. We do have voices. We have faces, too. We look like you. Because we are. We are everybody, suicide doesn't discriminate.

I am here to talk. It’s been a while since I stopped being ashamed. What do I have to be ashamed of? Shame is nothing but a social construct. And if there is anything I know about social constructs it is that they can change.

I believe in us. I believe we can talk better. That we can learn, grow, pump those powerful muscles of empathy and realize this corner of our human experience is way overdue for a complete makeover.

In a world where you are expected to bow your head and be silent in shame, talking honestly is a radical act.

I am here to be radically honest. About suicide. What lead to it for me. How it is still in my life. All of it. Not for me - none of this is for me or about me. 

Sometimes you look around the room, and notice no one is talking, only to realize that this one is on you, no matter how uncomfortable that makes you. If we all think someone else is going to fix what ever strikes us as unjust and harmful, the world had stopped turning a long time ago. The time for hiding is over. The time for heckling is, too. It’s time to talk. I know we can. 

In the end the conversation about death is ultimately ALWAYS a conversation about life. For all of us. 
 

*

Oh, also I sold everything and hit the road with no end date. Did I forget that part? Quick run down: 41 years old, no husband, no kids, not even a parrot, chronically physically ill so no job, and now: No address. No bed room, no bath room, no shelves of books or potted plants. Not even a couch. I’m on the road with nothing but my backpack. A tiny little thing with just the bare minimum, perfectly sized for the overhead compartment of a plane. That’s it, that is my life now.

What makes a human? Is it our things? Is it our work? What we wear? Where we live?

Or it is what we say? What we fight for? Who we meet and how our hearts live in the world? What we dream of? And what we live?

This is the story of a pilgrimage. Of hearing an ancient call. Of resisting it with all you got for years and years. Until it makes no sense anymore, and you just go.

This is how I survive suicide. By honoring the call. By looking at all the darkness no matter how painful it might be. By knowing that is the only way the light will find its way in: By standing in solidarity with all that hides in the dark. Not shaming any of it. Just being there. No fighting, just honest existence. By breaking boundaries that were in place too long. By looking at myself – and seeing all of us.

*

I held the key for a moment longer than I had to, before I let it go. It landed inside of what used to be my worn, grey mailbox with a loud bang of metal against metal. The mailbox was the middle one in a cluster of 9 in the tiny space under the stairs of my building. It still had my name on it. But it wasn't mine anymore.

- Officially homeless.

The thought passed through my brain like an empty plastic bag down a deserted street on a windy day. All that was left now was to open the buildings front door and walk out, knowing I would have no way of getting back in. To my surprise it was easy; such a monumental thing to do, but with the feel of an every day occurrence. I had opened that door thousands of times over the past ten years. But never like this; knowing it would be the last time.

The grace of the moment was the sun. Warm rays of reassurance caressed my naked arms after I heard the door slam shut behind me and I grabbed hold of my bike that now contained all my worldly belongings. It was packed to weigh down a loose air balloon, it was so heavy. I had to pack more than I would be bringing with me on the trip out in the world, because the first stop as a newly minted homeless person was just a few hours outside of Copenhagen. I would be staying with a sweet family of Mom&Dad + 4 children, to hopefully capture the birth of their baby #5.

Still, hauling this ridiculously heavy bike up the hill towards the train station in Valby, I was suddenly faced with the obvious lack of belongings. I might have my cameras with me, and maybe a pair of shorts more than I really needed. But I no longer had an apartment to put those cameras in, when this job was done. There was no shelf to place my shorts on, when I didn’t need them anymore.

It had been even more obvious this morning as I turned to the other side on the flimsy air mattress on my bedroom floor. Except it wasn’t my bedroom floor. It now belonged to a 20 year old girl named Camilla, who I had never met.

My bedroom didn’t belong to me anymore.

I was sleeping on another persons floor.

The thin blue air mattress and a couple of tea lights were the only things in there. Yesterday had been the day where the movers finally showed up, and they had taken everything else to an old barn out in the countryside for storage. Not because my things were valuable enough to keep stored in case I returned some day.

Just because I figured that if I found a place I wanted to live again, I would need some practical things, and however cheap Ikea was, it would still be way too much money for me if I had to go out and get everything new. So I kept a few of my old things, like knives and forks and the table I had made myself.

Today was Thursday. The movers were supposed to come Monday, but they never showed. So I was given the gift of two more days with all of my stuff in boxes all around me. The day they didn’t show, I simply collapsed. I had been packing for three days straight to get it all done (on top of the months prior to this day, from when I sold the place bac in February. Now was June 1). I was so beyond spent I could barely stand on my feet.

The movers were supposed to be done already Monday. When they didn't, it was all I could do to not fall asleep right on the kitchen floor. I looked at my bed. It was supposed to be in storage now. Instead it was here. I crawled back under the covers and was asleep, drained, before I had time to judge myself for wasting time on sleep.

The rest of that day I was a ghost passing through the rooms like either I or they weren’t really there. That wall used to have gorgeous photographic art work on it. That wall used to have the pencil drawing of my great-grandmothers sister done by her husband as a study in the nude. It was such a gorgeous drawing, I loved it dearly. Now it lived in a different storage room, actually all of the things that held meaning to me now lived in that small locker. Basically all I would be really sad to have stolen could fit in a 1x1x1 meter locker. So weird.

And now everything else was ready to disappear from my apartment as well. But for now it was staying. Two days more at least. I had two days more with my stuff. Maybe. If they didn't show up again, I wouldn't just have time with my stuff, I would be in deep piles of crap.

And then it hit me. This was a gift. I had gotten the gift of the pause.

I had worked so intently on getting things done, that I hadn’t taken a moment at all these past months to realize what was happening: I was leaving it all behind. I was packing up everything into brown cardboard boxes, neatly, organized, but all of that surface level structure was a ruse. What I was doing was anything but. The packing was just the front. What I was really doing was the reality just inches behind it: I was jumping and in from of me was the biggest free fall of my life.

Or maybe not the biggest, I had experienced so much upheaval already, so much loss, so much change.

But this time at least, it was all by choice. I had chosen it all myself. I was in charge, this was happening because this is what I wanted.

That didn’t make it any less wild. But I didn’t have to let it all go today after all. That meant that right now, I could take that fact in: That I was letting it all go. All of the things I had surrounded myself with. Put pieces of me in, like tiny treasure chests, revealing myself to the world and to me through my belongings.

Now they were going away. I would have nothing left than a backpack small enough to bring on an airplane as carry-on. Everything else: Gone.

If I was all I had surrounded me with - then who was I when all of that was gone?

Sun was painting a square on the boxes closest to the windows as I walked around in between them; a square that got increasingly oblong as the day passed. All of my little apartment faced the buildings park-like garden, and wafts of smoke from my neighbors grilling was sneaking in through my open windows and the door to my tiny balcony. The screams of angry babes, the exited chatter of girls sunbathing and studying on the grass.

None of that belonged to me. But then none of that ever had.

Then it really hit me.

All I had ever wanted was to be one of those people out there. The normal ones. The ones who sunbathed and studied with friends. The ones who finished schools and got good jobs, careers even. The ones who got married and had babies.

For so long that was the only hope I had, it was the one things keeping me alive; That one day, I would become pregnant, that one day I would become a mom. That one day, I would have a family of my own.

I would belong.

If I gave birth to them, they would be bound to me, they couldn’t just get up and leave.

I would have given birth to belonging.

Except of course they could leave, and of course that was never a great reason to become anybody’s parent.

That didn’t change the fact that seeing children left me feeling empty and useless for not having any.

In the shower I collapsed completely. On my knees, forehead on the floor, I dissolved in tears as the shower poured hot water onto my aching back.

I finally realized what this gift of the pause was carrying for me. It was a neatly wrapped box full of grief. I was grieving all the dreams that were living inside of these empty white walls. The first dreams of finally being safe in this apartment after too long living on couches and in other peoples homes, when they left for their family vacations. 

But the truth I couldn’t fully feel in all of my body before, was that really I was grieving the suicide.

I had come here after that, to this apartment. That meant that there was a timeline. A before and after. I had come here after. After what? After I died. After I woke up again. After I only two weeks after I had left all together landed a new job on a newspaper editor, facing a summer of uncertain living situations. I had had no safe place to retreat to. I had nowhere to go to land in this world again, to take in what had happened, to find out how I could make sure it never happened again. Noone talked to me about it. I didn’t force them, I barely understood anything myself, I was in a daze.

Only months after that I collapsed. My body gave out. I just couldn’t. Concussion. Chronic. That was 11 years ago now.

And now all of that; finally I was stepping out of it.

Out of the dream that I would be successful at work. That I would meet a great new love. That I would have a family. That I would somehow make my parents proud. That I would somehow finally be the girl, they wanted.

None of that happened. So much else did. None of it what I thought would be happening when I celebrated my 30th birthday.

And I realized I wasn’t only grieving the life that never happened. I was grieving the dreams. And I wasn’t only grieving all the babies I never had. I also grieved the mother who never was. Not just the mother I didn’t become. But also my mother who could never be a mother to me, however much that was all she ever wanted.

None of us belonged anywhere. Not here, not anywhere. And nobody belonged to us. We were dust in a draft from an open window.

That Wednesday night, after the movers finally came, and we together had moved all of those boxes into storage, just another Wednesday night in Copenhagen, I curled up on my blue air mattress on the floor that still belonged to me a few hours still, and again, I cried.

The next day, Thursday June 1^st to be exact, was the first day. The day where my apartment wasn’t mine anymore.

The morning sun outside the window that didn’t belong to me either was painting squares on the abandoned wall where art used to hang.

Just like the apartment was empty, so was I. Here the place where my dreams had lived. But no one can live in dreams. If you do, by definition, you’re simply asleep. I was finally ready to step out into the open air of not knowing what was coming, and stand in the warm sun of living life awake.

I let my key drop to the bottom of the mail box, and closed the front door to the building. The very, very last time. And then, as I walked away in the grace that was the sun, I knew what I had known for a very long time, but never lived fully before:

I was not my apartment. I was not my things. I was not even this body who was experiencing leaving this apartment and those things behind.

I didn’t have a home, I never truly did.

And still deep inside me a silent smile was forming. I was living my truth. Finally, I was free.