Brightest Lights During the Darkest Times

Aug. 17, 2017
When our Editorial Director opened his mouth (virtually) and inserted his foot (up to his knee), it resulted in some feedback that gave him pause - and made him think. Then he did some research and started typing. This three part series is the result.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article isn’t being written, or even approached, with journalistic structure or professionalism in mind. The topic is suicide: awareness and (hopefully) avoidance or reduction. The statistics and data listed are gleaned from various sources and listed at the end. The rest of this is the result of input and comment from family, friends and coworkers along with a huge subjective filter that runs from my brain to my fingers – with a detour through my heart. It’s my hope – throughout the process of researching, gathering comments, collating and writing all of this – that it has some positive impact on the readers. I hate to think it, but some of the readers may be in a dark place and contemplating suicide to resolve their problem(s). Other readers may know someone who is thinking about committing suicide (statistically speaking, that’s almost guaranteed).  HOPEFULLY, some of this… any part of it, will help.  Last item: Some of this, because so much of it is just my articulated outlook, might aggravate you, anger you or insult you. None of that is my intent and I beg you to continue reading past anything that you don’t like to see if I suitably explain myself.

Part One: Background

Part Two: Suicide in the United States

Part Three: Bright Lights in the Darkest Times

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Background

As a police officer with more than thirty years of experience, I can honestly say I’ve seen a few suicides. While I’ve not seen one committed in my presence (thank God), I’ve certainly written reports on the scene after the fact.  I’ve also talked quite a few people (several dozen?) out of committing suicide. For all that, suicide as an action never really had much of an impact on my life.  It’s not for lack of exposure to it.

When I was in my late teens / early twenties, a relative of mine tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. It wasn’t a poor attempt just to get attention – although I do believe it was mostly about attention. That said, the arterial spray on the bedroom walls indicated that if proper action hadn’t been immediately taken, her “attempt” may have been successful. The question I would have had at that point – and likely for the remainder of my life – would have been: was that her INTENT?

You see, in a great many of the suicide scenes I had to write reports on, it was not the intent of the dead person to commit suicide. A great many of them were accidental. While I feel the same level of sympathy for the surviving family members and friends, I don’t feel the same wonderment as to why the person committed suicide. They didn’t mean to. It was an accident.

And in some cases of suicide I certainly understood the dead person’s rational in committing the act.  As an example: The elderly gentleman (late ‘80s) who had lived a full life (according to his suicide note), but at the time of his suicide had been battling cancer for the better part of two years and was slowly losing the battle. He was tired of the fight; tired of seeing his family pitying him; and tired of causing them anguish. He was even careful how he killed himself so that they could have an open casket funeral. His suicide note was very clear in his explanation and although he articulated his intent to save his family any further suffering, he clearly acknowledged that he knew they would suffer as a result of his suicide. He apologized for that – but felt it was the lesser of two evils as far as the potential suffering looking forward was concerned.

His suicide at least made some sense to me. At least he wasn’t crying out for attention or trying to create a pity party with some “botched” attempt. He was clear headed, and executed a carefully planned suicide to, as he saw it, the benefit of himself and his family. I understood that.

Keep all that in mind for this next part. I had seen suicide attempts as a cry for help or an expression of a need for attention. I had seen suicide as an accident. I had seen suicide, on very rare occasion, as a carefully planned and reasoned action (maybe two or three times in thirty years.)

In large part, the people who had committed suicide, where I’d responded to the scene, had done so due to a loss of hope or a sense of defeat related to three things: relationships, finances or work conditions. Let’s talk about those a bit.

It almost seems like a Hollywood cliché, but how many teenagers have we all heard about who are devastated over their most recent breakup? Hollywood has laughed at this and made movies about it (see the comedy Better Off Dead starring a very young John Cusack). Not to demean their relationship(s) in any way, but when you’re 30+ years old, the heart break of a 14-year-old just doesn’t seem as serious as your divorce was. Even in light of that, to the 14-year-old with the broken heart, romance and relationships can seem like a lost idea; never again to grace their life. What’s the point? Why go on living? No one wants to grow old alone, right? Fourteen year olds don’t even have a good concept of being autonomous yet, but they’re sure they don’t want to be. It’s the result of having so little life’s experience.

That outlook and experience isn’t restricted to teenagers. How many stories have we heard about couples who have been married for fifty plus years and when one of them dies the other dies within minutes, hours or days? We consider it romantic and feel so sad to see the couple die, yet we talk about how strong their love was that the second one to go died of a broken heart. If it’s possible to will one’s self to die, I believe that’s what happens. It’s not suicide, but it is (essentially) giving up on life; preferring death to life.

For all the ages in between, there have been people who committed suicide because they felt alone. Whether they were in a relationship or not, they didn’t feel connected; supported; cared for or appreciated or… something. In a crowded room full of their closest friends, they still felt alone. While that may well be the result of clinical depression or a mental/emotional instability (something we’ll discuss later), the end result is the same: they feel alone; just as the fourteen year old with the broken heart no one understands, or the 88 year old widow who just lost her husband of 70 years. They simply don’t see life as worth living without that ONE person in it.

What about finances; how much grief and aggravation does money, or the lack or mismanagement thereof, cause us? I’d say a lot. Financial challenges are often listed as one of the top three greatest causes of stress in contemporary life. It is also listed as one of the top three causes of divorce today. Certainly, some people don’t deal well with financial challenges. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the suicide rate spiked because of all the people who suddenly were either broke or heavily in debt. It’s an unfortunate reality of today’s world that you have to have money to live and the more of it you have, the more comfortably you can live. The downside is that a lot of people don’t ever plan to NOT have plenty of money once they have it and if they face unexpected financial strain it gets depressing, overwhelming, etc. They begin to feel like it’d be easier to die than to face their financial struggles.

And work conditions… Jobs are (obviously) so closely tied to finances that if a person is afraid of losing their job, gets a pay cut, has to compete to get a promotion… any of those things – then stress is increased. If someone loses their job, especially in an economy that was teetering on the edge of balance, finding a new one not only isn’t guaranteed but can be damned difficult for months at a time. Those months without income lead to serious financial difficulty. It’s a snowball effect that can overwhelm someone. I get that.

But for all that… no matter what has caused the distress, or emotional pain, or sense of loss… for all that, life is precious. EVERY day IS a new day and I’ve always been confused by people who gave up hope or had so little of it that the idea of committing suicide became more desirable than waking up the next morning. To make matters worse, we have seen celebrities – who we wouldn’t think have any relationship, financial or job problems – commit suicide for seemingly no reason at all.

My first recent history exposure to that was when Robin Williams committed suicide. I didn’t know much about the man beyond his acting and comedic career. As a general rule I ignore the mainstream media if they start talking about problems any celebrity has. Most of the time I see that as simple sensationalism, blowing something minor out of context to garner attention; which means ratings; which means inflated advertising dollars. So when Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, my first thought was, “Why would he do that? He has the world at his fingertips.” What no one knew until after the coroner’s report was that Williams was suffering with a form of dementia which had been previously misdiagnosed. With the discovery of that information, my outlook toward Mr. Williams’ suicide changed from, “Why would he do that? It makes no sense!” to, “I feel sorry for the man; suffering with (effectively) his own brain terrorizing him.” Suicide, at least, removed his suffering.

Most recently, and the event that sparked me to post a public comment on Facebook which resulted in some blowback that led me to this very article, was the suicide of Chester Bennington. With a wife and six children, the lead singer of Linkin Park, hung himself two months after his best friend’s suicide – also by hanging – on what would have been his best friend’s birthday. While Bennington had a previous history of drug abuse in his younger years, the coroner’s report cited nothing but alcohol in his system at the time of his suicide.

Once again, the outpouring of sympathy and statements of loss across social media were overwhelming. People who weren’t even fans of Linkin Park came out of the woodwork to post their condolences, sense of loss, fear for the condition of the world and how poor the world now was due to the loss of this great man. I honestly (and am somewhat ashamed of this now in hindsight) got tired of seeing so many people so devastated at the loss of a man very few (if any) of them knew. So you liked his music; cool. So he was a good singer; great. So he had made something of himself after challenges in his youth; fantastic! So… he couldn’t handle his grief and felt that in spite of having a wife and six children alongside a very successful music career his life was no longer worth living because of the suicide of his best friend?

That’s where I was in my head when I posted the following on Facebook (and if it angers you, I ask you to keep reading before you just close the page in frustration):

One day death will beat me, but LIFE never will. I have no sympathy for those who commit suicide and will not mourn their loss.

Yeah; I caught all holy hell from a few of my friends and family members for that post. It IS a very cold and calloused sounding statement. It also reads as a blanket statement about any and all suicides even though that wasn’t my intent. I DO feel that way about the majority of people who commit suicide. I apologize if that offends anyone, but as a friend of mine recently wrote in an email:

“When I am… surrounded by my wife and children at my funeral, when the people that matter the most are remembering the funny stories, or someone I helped comes to say something nice about me, or that I made a positive impact on them, that’s cool. Dying at your own hand isn’t. Personally, I think there’s a measure of cowardice in ending your own life, because it is a selfish act. You give consideration only to yourself and not even are thinking about the guilt, the devastating effects that a choice like that will have on the people that you matter to.”

After reading that from my friend, I had to agree. In considering how I felt about the act of suicide, I realized that I’ve always considered it a fairly selfish act that, except on very rare occasion, doesn’t take into consideration the impact it will have on others. THAT was the suicide I was talking about in my post. And the other motivation for my post was how many people seemed to want to understand and sympathize with a man’s suicide. It was as if they felt the need to glorify it if they could just find a way.

Why would anyone want to do that? Is that a coping mechanism? Glorify suicide? Are we collectively crazy? That was another motivator for my post: it bothered me deeply that anyone would glorify suicide. Praise someone for it? Feel empathetic about it? While I understand feeling bad or sorry for someone who chooses that path, I do not understand why anyone would think or say, “He was so brave to do that…”  Really? Bravery is continuing to face life and all its challenges.

My own personal outlook is that life is FAR too precious to willingly give it up, or actively take my own. But I will get into that farther down. For now, I think it’s time to move on to the data I’ve been able to glean about suicide, it’s cited causes and rates of occurrence.

Stand by for part two of this series…

About the Author

Lt. Frank Borelli (ret), Editorial Director | Editorial Director

Lt. Frank Borelli is the Editorial Director for the Officer Media Group. Frank brings 20+ years of writing and editing experience in addition to 40 years of law enforcement operations, administration and training experience to the team.

Frank has had numerous books published which are available on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and other major retail outlets.

If you have any comments or questions, you can contact him via email at [email protected].

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