20: Death and the dying, part one

It was a wonderfully sunny day in May. The day I died. I remember, because it felt so appropriate; The world waking to life, while I was walking away.

We had just moved to a new town, in the south of Denmark, my boyfriend had landed a great job. We had agreed that the first to get a job after finishing school would be the one deciding where we would live. It could have been anywhere. I was excited to begin our lives here.

That afternoon, I think it was a Friday, I was supposed to leave for the weekend to go on a course in how to help refugees as a volunteer. I didn’t want to go. Looking back, I think I must have sensed something was not entirely right.

He was in the kitchen. I think he was sitting at the antique wooden table in white washed oak that I had spent my days scrubbing with lye. We had the upper floor of a red brick villa from the 1930’s. It was a living room and kitchen in an open floor plan, so really just one room functioning as both. A bed room. A bath room with a dark wood cabinet. His father’s wife had commented how it was perfectly sized to double as a changing table. I had nodded and smiled, knowing we were actually trying, although we hadn’t told anyone just yet. Behind the house was a little garden. It was still a little too cold, but when the sun fell just right, it was the perfect spot to sit and read, there among roses, probably from when the house was built. He had a car. I had a bike. We had it all.

I wasn’t depressed. I had never been so happy. I thought I had finally arrived.

That afternoon I told him I didn’t want to leave for the weekend. I really wanted to just spend some time with him. He had been gone a lot, and we hadn’t seen each other. I could just stay, I offered. He didn’t look at me. Suddenly I knew exactly what he wasn’t saying. The silence was so loud. I wanted him to actually say the words, I told him, you’re going to have to say it. Still, I didn’t expect those exact words. And truthfully I probably didn’t really realize either just what he was saying:

- I want you not to be here at all, he said.

Right in that second the whole world disappeared. Solid forms melted and the colors were gone. It felt like I was in an elevator that dropped way too fast. There were no thoughts. Only reaction.

I turned around, walked away from him, and left the room. He yelled after me that I couldn’t leave now, I think. I said I was just going for a walk. I would have said anything to get away. My trust in him, gone. My whole world, gone. I was on a ship that was sinking fast, and I needed to get away, now.

Before I went out the front door, I went into the pantry. I grabbed a bottle of pain killers we happened to have sitting on a shelf there. We had just one kind, just ordinary medicine for headaches. Nothing strong, in my country only the mild stuff was over the counter, and that was all we had. We had it in a huge bottle, just for practical purposes, so no one had to run to the pharmacy too often. They changed that since, but back then you could still get painkillers in the family size bottles. Still I worried it wouldn’t be enough.

I grabbed a different bottle, too. I didn’t really drink. What we had was more his. Not that he drank either. I don’t even know why I grabbed the bottle. I think I might have wanted anything that could numb me. It was vodka. The bottle was 2/3 full. I think I also found a random box of apple juice from the fridge.

And then I left. I just walked out the front door. No thoughts in my mind, pure reaction. I didn’t run. I walked calmly away.

I don’t recall any conscious thought until I reached the water. I have no memory of how I got there, I must have walked down through the city, passing tons of people on the way. The water wasn’t far from where we lived. It was a beautiful little town, water always just a few minutes walk away. I passed the harbor front on the way. They had a jazz festival happening, tents had been erected and live music was playing to the sound of happy people and beer bottles. I smiled. Nothing felt more appropriate than to be send off with a harbor side jazz party and happy people. I felt like it was a recognition of life in the face of one that was ending, and a celebration of the life that had been; mine. A send off party of sorts. I never wanted gloomy faces at my end anyway. No, this was perfect.

I found a bench that overlooked the waters. It was so beautiful. The water was calm. People were cheering in the background. The sun reached me through the leaves of the tree I was sitting under. I was ready. I had never been so ready for anything in my whole life. And I was thankful. As I sat there, I said goodbye. To the water, to the sun, to the air. The world. I remembered things I had experienced in this life time. Looking back I had done a pretty good job, I thought to myself. I had climbed a mountain in Africa, held tiny newborn babies, stood at the bedside of a dead relative to comfort a parent. I had learned to speak German and French and English, and I had lived in both France and Germany to educate myself on other ways to live this life. I had been a friend; If I had been a good one would be up to others to judge. I had tried, that I knew. I had also tried to be a good girlfriend. That apparently was something I definitely was not good at. This was my fourth serious relationship to come to an abrupt end. But I was not sitting on a bench with a family size bottle of pain killers and a three quarters bottle of vodka in my arms because I had been dumped.

No life is that simple. No death is that banal.

It had been the words. But of course not the words, but what they signaled: You are unwanted. You do not fit in here. We don’t want you here at all. Not just him, but all the people who had come before, who had said the same.

I’m sure my boy friend wasn’t aware, he did not say what he did out of malice. Obviously he could have decided to talk to me about where we were at a very long time ago. Instead of ending everything just like that on an afternoon in May. But he was not a harmful man, none of what happened was his fault.

Of course suicide is never anyone’s fault. You can’t actually make anyone commit suicide. Despite popular opinion. Yes, you can harass people into feeling like all is lost. And you can most definitely have responsibility. That one is very important, suicides do not happen in an empty space. But fault is a whole different ballgame. I don’t believe in assigning blame. Not for anything. Accepting responsibility is something else all together.

Without realizing it, the man I loved had echoed the exact words I had heard people say to me every time they kicked me out. The first to say them of course was my Father:

- You don’t fit into the family. So your mother and I have decided to send you away.

Which they did. Or rather the authorities did, I was removed from the home and placed into boarding schools by the authorities. My parents told everyone two different stories: Either the one where they send me to live at schools were I could work on my musical talent (I didn’t have a musical talent). Or the one where I was a very troubled teen who needed extra special help. None of their stories were true. I was removed because the situation at home was causing me severe harm. That didn’t keep my parents from reframing the narrative to one that fit them better. I actually don’t blame them. I also never lived with them again. I was 15 years old.

Next up was my uncle, my mother’s brother. I had come into their home when my father send me away. They lived close to the boarding school I had been sent to, and sometimes the school closed. I came to them when it did, not wanting ever to return to the abuse of my parents’ house, having nowhere else to go.

Apparently by the time I had reached high school, so a year or so after the initial exodus from my parents home, my uncle had seen a little too much of me. I still don’t know why exactly he said those words to me, though:

- You know, we are not your family, right?

Because actually we were. Family, I mean. We were blood. He was my mother’s younger brother. I still don’t know what I did wrong either. I spend my waking hours cleaning their house, ironing his shirts, picking up his children, my two cousins, from Kindergarten, even changing their diapers. Which I did very willingly, too, I loved them. My aunt said I was like their older sister. But I guess, basically I was the au pair except with no payment – just barely being allowed at his table and to sleep in one of the kids’ bed. They even received money from my mom for having me. Not that they needed it, they weren't poor. It destroyed me when I learned they hadn’t taken me in because they somehow actually like me. They were paid off. Even if it was ‘just’ money for groceries. I mean, I was tiny, it wasn’t like I ate them out of the house. Maybe that was just me being naïve. But I would have really loved for actual family to take me in because they were family. Just to give another human, that they were in a position to really help, a place to exist. Of course I had hoped this could have been a place for me to be allowed to grow up, among people who didn’t beat me or yell insults in my face for no apparent reason. It was all I wanted. Just to be allowed to be. Did I let my guard down too much? Did I watch television one night, where he didn’t want me to? I don’t know. I stopped coming around after that. I don’t think my cousins ever knew why their ‘big sister’ was suddenly gone. We don’t have contact today. I miss them. But I am also very aware of how they would have grown up hearing the ‘company line’ of stories of what happened, which was in perfect line with my parents story: I was a troubled teen.

Being a child of abuse, you quickly learn where to find the human interaction we all need to survive. After my uncle decided to let me know he didn’t want me around, I became very good friend with a boy from my class. High school was boarding school as well, so I still had the same problem with school closing on holidays. No one seemed to put the facts together that the reason I was there meant that I actually had nowhere to go when school closed. It was a combined school, so both kids that lived on campus and kids with real homes where there.

Morten was more than a friend to me. I was so in love with him. He seemed so wholesome to me. So when he asked his mom if I could stay with them a little, when the school was out and my boarding home closed, I was elated. They lived in this beautiful little thatched house in the country side. I remember summer days there. Watching the the yellow of endless fields start, right where the deep green hedge surrounding their huge garden ended. The cat lazy in a sun beam under roses. His parents so kind to each other. His older sister gorgeous and smart. No sexist slurs. No violence. Just friendly banter. Oh how I wanted to belong here. I remember their living room, a whole wall of books, did they even have a wood-burning stove? I think so. I know his Dad smoked the pipe. I daydreamt about staying, ebing invited in. I loved it there so much. But one night his mother, too, voiced that sentence to me:

- We’re not your family. You know that, right?

And just like that I was out once again. Overstaying my welcome. Not wanted. Out in the street again.

More came after. Basically every single time I let my guard down and let myself think that maybe. Maybe here. Maybe I could belong. They would offer a new version of that same sentence: We are not your family. You don’t belong. We don’t want you here. 

I just needed one. Just one family. Or one person. I still think about how my life would have been so different had just one family said, hey, stay, you’re safe here, you don’t ever have to worry again that you will be kicked out. Here, you can breathe. We want you. We are your forever family. 

I kept trying. I’m afraid I still do. And I still fail. This year alone no less than 3 mother figures have torn any illusions I might have harbored to tiny shreds for me to watch fly away, wishing I could disappear with them, just tired to my bones at how this seems to be a life long cruel game. 

This is often the time where new people in my life say 'oh, but now WE are your family!'. I know they mean well. I do. But PLEASE. If you ever hear yourself utter that sentence to anyone, you need to be ready to freaking for real adopt them. Like write up some serious paper work and be ready to have them share a last name with you. It might be a nice thing to say for you. But really it's like going to the pound and take a puppy out to cuddle it for a moment. And then get up and leave. You feel great. A little sad, because poor puppy. Did you stop to think just how that same scenario must have been for the dog? No? Well, do take a moment right now then, I can wait. Yeah, not so great, right? 

So please stop doing that. Both with puppies and with real humans. Don't be family for a sweet second. The only one that feels good to is you. The rest of us, sure, for a moment, it's all bonfires and melting marshmallows. Until you decide you're done. And we're back in the cold, the scars from being abandoned one inch deeper. 


*

Before that afternoon where my boyfriend became yet another one on the long list of people who preferred me not to be there, I had thought that this time, with him, I had really arrived. I truly believed that I never had to be alone again. I thought this was it. Finally, I could relax. I had found a family. He was my family. We were trying for a baby. We would be family together.

Then he said he didn’t want me there at all. Not just that our relationship was over. Or that he was leaving. No. It was me. He wanted me gone. I'm sure he meant just out of his life, or the apartment we shared together. But to me it sounded like he meant I needed to be gone entirely. Like not exist. All of my being was rolled back to a time, where I remembered someone meant exactly that. Where someone else was actively trying to simply eradicate me from existence. I wasn’t just unwanted as a girlfriend. But on a much deeper level - as a person. Not just in that relationship. But at all.

When the world disappeared, I disappeared with it. Everything just gone. It felt like my entire being was annulled. Another set of eyes looking at me, seeing nothing.

It was the famous final drop. I had nothing left. I couldn’t do it again. Not again. I couldn’t eternally be that person people preferred wasn’t there.

So I left.

But not by any kind of even remotely conscious decision. All of this is what after rationalizations. When it happened, it just happened.

I know that is a very stubborn and equally common misconception: That suicide is a choice. It’s not.

I’m sorry, but it’s just not. Hold on, because this is so controversial. But I truly do not believe that even the ones who ponder suicide for years, and who writes carefully worded goodbye notes are making a choice. I simply do not accept the premise that you can compare a life that ends in suicide with one that doesn’t. And say that it is a choice like deciding what socks to wear that morning is a choice. It really truly is just not that simple. That would be like saying underpriviledged kids make the choice of becoming uneducated. Or drug addicts make a choice to become addicts. Because hey, they could have just decided not to.

I’m sorry, but that is not how anything works. Not a single thing in life is that simple. If you think so frankly you need to check your own privilege; If you think people in seriously rough circumstances could have just chosen something else, you need to stop talking and start listening.

No suicide is ever a choice in the way that they could have simply NOT done it. There will always have been years of things happening that lead to that moment. Maybe the person was in extreme physical pain. Maybe they were in extreme emotional pain. Maybe they were bullied, maybe raped, maybe a ton of things no one knows about.

Because here’s the shocker: We do not know everything about each others lives. Even the ones the closest to us.

If someone dies from suicide they were in pain of such extreme levels it was incompatible with breathing. 

No one can know exactly why. No one can judge if they would have done differently if they were in that situation. Because you do not know. No one knows. Except that one person who was actually living that life.

Let’s have some respect for the lives people lead that were theirs and no one elses. Let’s not try to control people who aren’t even here anymore, saying they should have just stayed.

If they are gone, then it is time to come to terms with the fact that however much that hurt, that they are gone. It makes no sense to put them down, when they have become unable to answer.

I think that is one of the many reasons suicide is such an extreme taboo: The ones it happens to cannot talk. They can’t explain. They can’t point to the fact that no, they didn’t die to hurt anyone. They died because they were in pain. Extreme pain. Pain that in the end killed them. After they fought it as long as they possibly could.

Maybe if they could talk, if they could explain what happened, the world would be less harsh on those who can’t defend themselves.

When you take a moment to stop and think, this is even worse than kicking someone who is already on the ground. This is kicking someone who is gone all together.

It’s not ok.

It helps no one.

It doesn't help you, who is doing the kicking. You are just left alone with your anger and resentment, no room for wondering what actually happened. Or to grieve your friend/ parent/ child/ loved one. Just abuse and a closed heart left.

It doesn’t help the one who died either. He or she is gone. The time for help to them is over.

But it certainly does not help the family left behind. They have to bury a family member, and are grieving. Now they also have to listen to others tear their loved one down.

And people can be extremely vicious when it comes to this kind of death.

Over the years of me talking publicly about suicide, I have heard many stories about how others react to a family members death by suicide.

I have heard of families who have to send their children to school after the funeral, telling them to lie. They have had to lie about how their parent died. Because if they said the truth, they would be met with the same old kind of abuse I have heard as well again and again:

How could you? It’s the most selfish thing anyone can ever do. You never thought about the family. You're a horrible monster, you're sick in the head, only someone insane would do something like that.

Imagine children having to hear at school that their father was just weak, or a monster, a horrible shit, who never loved them, if he did he would have stayed. How anyone can be so cruel is beyond me. 

I have come to wonder, if the way people react to suicide really says more about them than it does suicide. 

To me it does point to a wide spread lack of knowledge in general about why suicide happens, and who it happens to (hint: It can happen to anyone. There are groups who are more at risk. But given the 'right' circumstances, no one is excempt). I do think reactions say something about privilege, too. How some people seem to be able to grow up and believe they can know everything bout a person other than themselves; About what they had to live through. About their pain. About their struggles. bout whether or not they did 'enough'. What is that, really? What is enough? 

Is enough when they do not die from suicide? If that is how you think, I am glad you're here. Because we have work to do. For now let me just say that suicide actually happen to people even if they work their behinds off tryng to survive. I think this is one of those beliefs that has it's roots in the thought that we can actually control everything in life. And that if we work hard enough we will always succeed. If that is your thinking you need to begin waking up a little. Because that is simply arrogant. Right now know: That is not how the world works for a lot of people. Claiming they should have just worked harder is about as oblivious as Marie Antoinette asking why the hungry who didn't have bread didn't just eat cake instead.

I do believe it is also an easy way of of having to contemplate your own mortality. It people who die from suicide are labelled horrible monsters, you never have to look at that place in yourself, where you are afraid to die. Or maybe even the place in you where thoughts of suicide have happened to you, too. If they are 'other', you can assign all of that uncomfortableness onto them. 

But death is actually the only thing we all have in common. You are going to die. There. I said it. But if you truly begin to know that - intimately understand that death is real - that is when you can also fully come to terms with the fact that right now, this second, you're alive. Right now. So now, knowing you're going to die, would you change anything? Is there a dream, you'd been holding off on? What would you really regret not having allowed yourself to do, knowing death is imminent? 

The ancient ones were unsurprisingly right: Memento Mori. Know you're going to die. Not to bow your head in depression about the finality of things. But to really LIVE while you're still here. 

Knowing death lets you know life even more. 

And then there is this: I think talking smack about suicide has become one of the easiest ways to assign the darkness of the world. It’s the ultimate Othering on the biggest level. And the ones who do it are kind of the only cowards around - it's not the ones who die from suicide who made 'the cowards choice', but the ones who assign all this horror onto them. Because the dead can’t talk. It's a very one sided conversation.

Well, I’m talking. That is one of the reasons I’m doing this. Even though I have faced the worst kind of abuse, too, being honest about what happened to me.

People can’t speak from the grave.

But I went, only it didn’t stick, so I am speaking.

And guys, this needs to stop.

Please.

The shaming, the abuse, the horrible things people say – it needs to stop.

Assigning shame has one purpose: To make you keep your head down and be silent.

But in this case silence literally kills.

It means that this one kid, who would have benefitted from calling a help line doesn’t dare to, because he is afraid of being ridiculed.

It means that your friend who is going though a hard time and who might have found solace in talking to you can’t muster up the courage, because she is scared you will yell at her.

You know how people always say this sentence when someone dies from suicide:

- Oh, I wish she would have just said something. I wish she would have just reached out! I would have helped!

Would you? How? By telling her to think of her kids? That isn’t helping, that is simply assigning shame.

Maybe she did reach out, too. Maybe you just never noticed. Calls for help can have a myriad of forms. Because the truth is this topic is so extremely shameful most people who reach out actually do not say 'I am at risk of suicide, please help me'. No one does that. You can't expect anyone to either. Also it might happen from someone you would not necessarily recognize as a suicide prone person asking for help.

Because – this might come as a surprise: Suicide does not have a look. You cannot look at someone and know they are about to commit suicide.

Your friend might not look depressed at all.

Because depression is not a look either.

And also – again, just like in my case – you do not actually have to be depressed for suicide to happen.

There is no script.

So what do we do?

We start by breaking the taboo. We start by making suicide something we can actually talk about.

That way maybe the ones who would actually benefit from the help available do not have to be scared to ask for it.

How do we do that?

We stop the shaming immediately.

We stop calling them horrible names. Right now. That is never ok.

If you did so in the past I truly hope you now read this and begin to realize how that is hurting a lot of people. Not just the ones who die from suicide, but their families to. You might think you were being supportive to the families by saying that person who died was a coward for leaving them. But you are not. 

You’re really, really not. You are bullying a dead person. Who cannot answer you. 

Here’s what you can do instead. You can realize you are grieving. You might be angry that someone you loved is gone. That is ok. Grief has many forms, and it needs to be taken seriously. But be careful that your grief does not turn into harm to others. The one who died didn’t leave anyone out of malice. They just didn’t. It might be hard to understand. why they are gone. But you know what? I think that is the case every single time someone dies. Even from old age, it’s still hard to come to terms with the fact that a person who was just here now isn’t.

Let’s give grief room.

Let’s focus on the life that was lived. The love that existed. Let’s know that all those hurtful words that might fight to take the stage – they are a thing of the past, because we know better now.  

Let’s know that suicide is not the death of cowardly monsters. It’s just death. Lets’ focus on grieving the human being. Not the way they happened to go.

*

It is important to stress that many suicides can be prevented.

That is why it is so extremely important to advocate help lines and talking without the stigma, shame and the taboo holding anyone back.

And talking does not mean giving all your pent up ignorance and hurtful slurs a field day. Like an acquaintance of mine thought it did. He was sure that when I was talking publicly that meant I should now be able to take anything, and that he had free speech, so he could say whatever he wanted. And that happened to be every single hurtful thing in the book. No, I did not leave that room feeling respected and heard. That is not the way, friends.

It is important to speak about this. But it is equally important to know that words matter. WHAT we say matter. And saying someone is selfish, a drama queen, just out to get attention, doesn’t really mean it if she is talking about it, doesn’t really mean it if she survived etc etc. NOT the way. None of that is actually real. It’s prejudice, ignorance, and it’s hurtful and only contributes to harm.

If you can’t deal, and do not want to talk please just say you have a hard time with this, but that you love your friend and hope they can stay on this Earth. Tell them to please seek out a help line.

*

Ironically I have come to see suicide as a survival mechanism. It is the organisms way of finding a way out from a situation incompatible with existence. You’re in such extreme overpowering pain that an escape door opens, and you take it.

That was what happened to me. I didn’t think. There was no suicide letter. I had no conscious plan on how I was going to die. It was pure instinct, pure action.

I have later been told by experts that apparently that is typically male way of dying from suicide. Pure action.

Males are also known to be the ones that more often than not succeed at their suicides. Several reasons are normally listed. One being that males often have no hesitation once they get going.

That was true for me as well. I meant it. It was no call for help. I was done. There was no second thoughts.

Which is why I say this was the day I died. Because it was not an attempt. The only reason I didn’t succeed was pure coincidence, that's what they said at the hospital the next day.

I had swallowed more than enough pills to kill a horse had we randomly had the other kind on our shelf. I had arrived at the hospital too late for them to do anything. If we had happened to buy the other kind, I would not have been here today.

And yes, I do acknowledge the extreme irony of me now being ill with chronic headache. An illness for which there are not enough head ache medicine in the world. On days where my humor is darker than usual I can’t help but joke that you would think I got inundated the day I tried to kill myself with the stuff.

*