SUICIDE A SILENT MENACE AND NEED FOR PROACTIVE MEASURES – Part 3
ATTEMPTS AT RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONS RAISED
- In attempting to answer the questions raised some samples of heart-breaking suicide notes would assist. There is something about the letters that these people left prior to taking their own lives, which have the power to stop someone abruptly. These are the last thoughts and concerns of people who felt unable to carry on with life. A large number of them are not the eloquent letters portrayed in fiction or on the television. But they are all powerful and upsetting. Read on.
a. The suicide note of Bill Zeller. I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can explain my reason. Since I’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.
My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. I feel like I’m trapped in a contaminated body that no amount of washing will clean. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally. Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.
I tried romantic relationships, the computer programming, the gym, interacting with people as well as alcohol and drugs to let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later. Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but honestly, it was better than facing my existence. Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. Later I told people I was gay as I wasn’t attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. If being gay wasn’t the answer, then what was? I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my sexual orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn’t feel “right”. In spite of these, the darkness will always be with me.
I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God, I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me, a house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around, parents who tell an eight-year-old that her grandmother is going to Hell because of this or that or parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it’s tiring.
Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending, I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen especially with my mom. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her.
Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live. All I know is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I should die.
To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far. I’m sorry for the pain this might cause. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.
To be continued…
