I think it is fair to say suicide is something we don’t like talking about. The only time we ever hear about it is when we are in grade school and the guidance counselor comes in once a year to remind us to talk to people if someone around us is acting suicidal. We ignore these messages and take the lesson as a free day to not learn about Abe Lincoln for an hour.
I also think it is fair to say that many people believe that someone they are close to will never consider it. Ever. But, it unfortunately happens.
Summer 2017 was like any ordinary summer, except I was going on this amazing weeklong cruise. Besides my vacation to look forward to, I held a job and complained about how much I missed my college friends because I lived a thousand miles from any of them. Everything was fine and normal until it wasn’t. My friend committed suicide.
He was a smart guy, kind hearted, and someone I never pegged to be suicidal. We snapchatted everyday complaining about work and how much we missed one another and how badly we just wanted to be back at school. This was so normal…until it wasn’t.
I got the call on my cruise. I froze and my heart didn’t know what to feel until it felt it all. I cried in my cabin for a couple hours on and off wondering what the heck was happening. All I wanted to do was go “home” to school where I knew I needed to be.
The last funeral I had attended was my grandfather when I was 6. There was no casket, no viewing, nothing to prepare me for what I was going to endure. The college campus had a different feel, Pennsylvania wasn’t as happy as I wished it could’ve been. I cried and cursed (in a church, forgive me for I have sinned) until I felt the slightest bit better. My best friend and I held hands and cried and felt every emotion we could.
The next few weeks were not any easier. I have dreams that he is there, I read the sympathy cards at work and for the first time they speak to me like the happiest poems used to. I walk around and try to be as normal as possible, but really I just feel alone. I am no long angry (because for awhile I was) but I am not numbed either. I accepted life for what it was and in the long run, his death has forever changed me.
We talk about suicide, sure. What we don’t talk about is the impact suicide has on the people around the person who died. No one thinks they will have to endure that. I never believed that I would be sitting in a Catholic funeral Mass with people just a few short months ago I saw at a frat house living it up. I thought I would be attending my friends weddings before our funerals. We don’t talk about the aftermath of suicide because it sounds selfish. There is no other feeling than losing someone who thought no one cared about them. The grief turns to anger, the anger into guilt, the guilt into tears. Rinse and repeat. We all went through it and are connected forever because of this tragedy. We will all never be the same.
