There is your life before you experience suicide and then after. And both, emotionally, are radically different. Beforehand you logically know someone taking their own life is, and you can imagine what it would feel like if you knew someone who did that, but it is all hypothetical. Even if you’ve known someone who has died, it still isn’t the same. Because that death, whether it was from natural causes or, God forbid, because of a violent act, it wasn’t because of that person’s choice.
I can still recall the day I found out my best friend was dead. Out of respect for her family and her memory, I will refer to her only as T (I guess I should disclose first that T was bipolar. I have no idea if this had anything to do with the outcome or not.). T and I met when we both worked in Florida at the same place. We both had the same quirky sense of humor and had similar interests. We just got each other. Even after I got sick and had to move back home, we would text each other or talk on some kind of internet messenger every day. I learned it second hand from a mutual friend of both of ours when she committed suicide. He’d posted something on social media but it was kinda cryptic, and the fear started to creep through my veins. I picked up my phone and started texting people, first T, but I wasn’t getting any answers. So then I started with other people we both knew, including him. He was the first one who answered. I remember asking him what was wrong, and knowing that it was about T. He said it was, and that she was dead. They’d found her at her home. That’s still all I know. I never found out how she’d done it. I was told there were notes, but I was never told what was in them. When the news hit me, it felt like my insides went cold, and then I started freaking out. The tears started falling, and I went to find my mom to tell her.
The days after I got in touch with her aunt (who also lived in Florida) and found out when the funeral would be. My mom and I made arrangements to fly down that morning for it and then fly back that day right after. But its all the time after that when everything starts to sink in and it really started to affect me. I mean I was already starting to feel the guilt and pain when I heard it happened, of course I did. When they played Amazing Grace at the funeral I remember that was when the dams broke and I just started crying after being able to keep my composure most of the day. Its just, when you have the time after and you know you’re never going to hear from them again. Its that time when you replay everything in your head and you realize that those stages of grief actually exist.
I’ve dealt with death before, more than I care for to be honest, but until T’s death, I’d never really experienced someone taking their life on purpose (drug overdose excluded. That was less purposeful and more accidental), someone deciding that they just didn’t want to live anymore and that that was it. The rest were from disease, old age, etc. I kept thinking to myself that maybe if I had kept my phone on me maybe she could have texted me and wouldn’t have done it, even though I was 2000 miles away. Maybe I could have texted or called one of our mutual friends and told them to keep an eye on her. All these questions would constantly flood my brain.
I couldn’t listen to Stuck In A Moment for about two weeks to a month after it happened. I kept going to listen to it, but my finger would hover over the play button and I couldn’t hit it. I’d known what the song was about for a while, I think a lot of fans did (for those who don’t, Bono wrote the lyrics about the death of his friend, the lead singer of INXS Michael Hutchence). I knew it was going to hurt when I listened to it and I wasn’t ready for it, and then when I finally did listen to the song, it was weird because I expected to cry but I didn’t. I did feel that emptiness of loss and understood all the words that were being sung.
Three years on, though, the song keeps having more impact on me whenever I listen to it. More of the lyrics keep meaning more to me.
There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find a decent melody
A song that I can sing in my own company
Those opening lines speak to me now more than ever. Who I am now, what I’ve become, maybe what everything up until now in my life has made me, I’m not quite sure.
I will not forsake, the colours that you bring
But the nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing
I am still enchanted by the light you brought to me
I still listen through your ears, and through your eyes I can see
T could very much be like a rainbow on a stormy day. And when I say that we just got each other, we really just, well, did. We could be silly together but we could tell each other anything. I know I said all of this before, but I feel like I have to mention it again. She left me changed for the better.
Could I have the argument with T that the person in the song is having with their friend? I have that conversation with myself almost daily. I know that she isn’t in the agony she used to be in anymore, she isn’t dealing with the constant change in meds, but I can’t help but wonder if she just held on for a little longer if it could have just gotten better.
I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm till you discover how deep...
I wasn't jumping... for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all
I’ve been really low, especially when I was at the point where I was really sick and I could barely get out of bed. I would think that I would be better off if I was dead. I never got to the point where I would actually take my life, though. I don’t know why.
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
I do sometimes wish she could have heard this song, though.
People say you can talk someone out of doing it, committing suicide, now I’m not so sure. When someone has finally made up their mind that they are going to do it, I’m not sure how much talking and counseling is going to help change their mind ultimately. I hope to God that I am wrong about that. Maybe that’s just me trying to appease my guilty conscious about not being able to save T. What I do know is that once you have known someone who has killed themselves, it changes your life forever. You always carry a piece of them with you,but instead of a polished stone or a photograph, it feels more like a shard or shadow.
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