September is Suicide Awareness Month.
When you’re someone who struggles with mental health issues and isn’t afraid to talk about them, there’s a certain expectation placed on you during times like this. You’re supposed to use a platform like this one to talk about your own experiences with suicide and share the fifteen hotlines meant to keep someone else from going down the same dark path you did. All the eyes that look to you being a role model for speaking up seem to be boring holes into your head.
It’s hard to marry my desire to be open about my experiences and my reluctance to share some of my most personal struggles with people who barely know me. The truth is, despite my position and desire to be an advocate for mental health, I don’t owe it to anyone to discuss any parts of my mental health history just because it’s a particular time of the year.
Stop expecting me to talk about my suicide attempts just because it’s September. It’s up to me when and how I share my story publicly. It happened. I tried to kill myself, I spent a month in the hospital, I’ve gotten better. I don’t have to dredge up some of my worst memories and write them down for the internet to gawk at once a year.
Suicide awareness is important, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did. But by placing an expectation on me and other mental health advocates to drag out our suffering and put it on parade, you’re saying that you’re entitled to the gory details of the worst time of my life. You’re asking me to relive every terrifying moment. My suicide story isn’t something for the internet to rubberneck at, it’s something for me to remember whenever I get low – I don’t want to go back there.
Just because I tried to kill myself doesn’t mean I owe it to anyone to talk about it. I can raise awareness of the signs and predictors of suicide without providing some mental-health themed entertainment for strangers. If you really want to know about what happened to me, ask. Otherwise, realize that the mental health struggles of people on the internet don’t exist for your viewing pleasure – no matter the month.
