Suicide Prevention Week: The List

I was ten years old when I had my first suicidal thought. It wasn't a thought, really. It was a desire. I had a strong, unexplained desire to kill myself. I was scared and I didn't know whom to talk to about it or what to make that feeling go away.

Suicide has crept along after ever since then. I have lost three people in my life to suicide. The intimacy and intensity of those relationships varied, but each one of them impacted me. The trauma from losing someone you love or admire to their own self-destruction is incalculable. And you feel it in ways you would never imagine. And the hole that's left in the world, in your world, never completely mends.

For many of my teen years, I struggled on and off with suicidal ideation. But I knew no matter how much I wanted to kill myself, I couldn't leave the people I loved with the pain of my absence. I would not be another hole torn in someone else's tapestry.

Also during my teen years, (and I admit with a weary heart, even now), I had several friends who were extremely suicidal. I held friends in the middle of the night as they told me that if they killed themselves it would be part of God's plan. I heard, "When you're in so much pain, in that moment, you can't even think of anyone else". And yet, they kept fighting. When I asked my friends who were suicidal what kept them going, I heard various responses. Some said the fear of hell prevented them from killing themselves. Others admitted that they hoped there might be a better way out of their pain. All of them said: I love the people in my life too much to leave them behind.

And this, my friends, is so, so powerful.

Over the past three years or so, my own fight with suicidal ideation has returned with full vigor. A few months ago, I was at the end of my rope. I woke up every morning, wishing I were dead. Through-out the day my fantasies and ideations would accost me until I went to bed. The whole dismal tune would start up again at the rise of the sun.

I was beginning to think that I was nothing, that I meant nothing and that if I left this earth, it would be painful for some, but that in the end, it wouldn't make much of a difference. This was a lie and I knew it. So one particularly hard day when I had been looking up methods of suicide on my phone in class, I decided that I would fight this lie by making a list of reasons to live. A list of people. I started out wanting to make a list of people that I deeply loved, hoping to remind myself that these people I loved would be so hurt if I left.

As I started writing down names, however, I realized that I was writing down names of people that I barely saw. People I had only known for a few months. Names kept coming to me, and soon I had the most bizarre and broad list of people in my life all together on one page.  

I started to cry as I understood. I could have sat in that barely obscured hallway at school for hours writing name after name. Each and every person on that list, whether I was close to them or not, whether I had known them for ten years or ten weeks, would be affected. Just like I had been devastated by the suicide of a man I had only met twice.  

So, please, my friend, if you are struggling with any of this, if you feel unloved or unwanted or worthless, write a list of people in your life. Please see how much you are loved and cared about. See how many would miss you, and mourn you, and feel stabs of guilt over not having let you know just how incredibly special you are to them. If you are convinced that you have no one in your life who will be affected by your death (and you can trust me: you're wrong about that), then hold on to this: There are people you haven't met yet who will love you. And they need you to love them too. These people are your reasons to live.

The day I wrote that list at school with quiet sobs escaping my lips and streaming tears dotting my notebook, the custodian came down the hall. He was such a friendly man, always so kind to me. He saw me crying, and he stopped to gently touch my knee.

"Are you alright?" He asked me with very genuine concern.
I shook my head, but I told him, "I will be."

I was right.

Also-I added him to the list.

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If you or someone you know are struggling with suicidal ideation, there are resources for you. Please reach out:

Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1-800-273-8255

OR

Text GO to 741741 to reach a trained Crisis Counselor through Crisis Text Line, a global not-for-profit organization. Free, 24/7, confidential.