Suicide Sucks, But Let's Talk About It
Update 7/5/2017 After writing this, I received a phone call from an old friend who knew both the subject of this post and me. We had a long chat, and she helped me see that my friend's suicide was not in response to any of us. Her issues ran deep. They were completely independent of the situation I describe in this post, in which I ignored her because she got to be needy at a time when I was having my own issues. The original post is below. I haven't made any edits other than to write this quick update.
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Usually when I watch Netflix, it's because I have a day off and I'm too tired to do anything else. My mind wanders a lot, so I tend to play on my phone and miss half of whatever show is on anyways. It's one of those things that I do more out of habit because my daughter makes it hard to watch anything serious. She's at that age when she's too mobile to just lay on me while I veg, but she's not mobile enough to entertain herself. Thus, Netflix plays in the background as I, as my husband calls it, wrestle the octopus.
When "13 Reasons Why" showed up all over my Facebook feed, I thought it looked too deep to watch in the background. Also, I'd read on several posts that it was binge-worthy. I had no idea what it was about. If I had known it was about a high school girl committing suicide, I either would have watched it sooner or never at all, but it's surprisingly good for a show aimed at kids. I'm really not sure. It's a sensitive topic for me. No one likes talking about it, but... take this as an illustration: When my AP Spanish 4 teacher assigned it as an essay topic, I wrote one sentence acknowledging that I was forfeiting my grade, pushed the paper away, and spent the rest of the class period with my head on my forearms. Let's just say I don't like talking about it.
Writing this blog post doesn't mean that I suddenly feel like talking; it's more that I am starting to realize that it's less hard than living with what can happen next. Sometimes, people not wanting to talk about something can make it so much worse. When one of my friends killed herself at the beginning of my senior year of high school, I knew exactly what I could have done to help.
In "13 Reasons Why", a teenage girl leaves cassette tapes for the classmates who either did something to hurt her or knew about it and didn't help. I'm only halfway through the series, but I think the idea is that she wants to expose their guilt. They exposed private details about her life to hurt her, so she does the same to them with regards to their roles in her suffering. I might have this all wrong but, like I said, I'm only halfway through the series.
If my friend had left cassette tapes before her death, I wonder what mine would have said. I never bullied her, and I never saw her bullied, but she did reach out to me (sometimes when I was busy and sometimes when I wasn't), but I never made the time for her. To be specific, she was sweet but also clingy, and I was weird about "hanging out" with people. I had trust issues and anxiety issues, and I could only recuperate at home. In addition to all that, I didn't know how to tell my friends that without hurting their feelings. (For the record, I didn't even know that that's what my problem was) Instead, I just ignored calls and texts. Sometimes I even made up lies to avoid having to tell them that I just didn't have the energy for people right then. At the time, I didn't think I was hurting anyone. I was looking out for Number One.
Most of my friends didn't care, but maybe this one friend did. I'm not saying that I could have prevented her suicide - I didn't know many intimate details of her life - but I have never stopped wondering. She is my what if. Imagine The One That Got Away, but remove any possible feelings of contentedness that might come from life having working out the way it was supposed to. The One That Got Away wasn't my girlfriend, and we didn't go our separate ways and end up finding happiness; she was my friend, and she died, and I might have been able to prevent it.
I can relate to the character Clay from "13 Reasons Why" but only on one point. His parents think he takes his classmate's suicide hard because he's depressed and contemplating suicide himself, but what they don't know is that he just feels really guilty. I don't know why my friend killed herself. She didn't leave tapes. I didn't stand by and watch as classmates bullied her, and I certainly wasn't in love with her. All I know is that I was wrong to lie to her when I wasn't busy, and I was wrong to ignore her attempts at closer friendship. She reached out to me a lot in the months before her suicide, and I will always wonder why. I never responded except to say, <em>I'm busy</em>. I didn't feel like I had anything to give to anyone; I struggled with so much back then that I sometimes felt empty by the end of the day from so much fake-it-til-you-make-it and didn't want to make it any worse by taking on anyone else's problems. (Wow. That was really hard to admit just now.) I went through periods of depression, and I was made fun of. The difference is that over several years, my mom taught me how to cope. Not everyone learns those skills. They need help.
Sometimes I'm not very nice, but I will always work not to be a jerk because I know what can happen when you ignore people who are hurting.
"We all need it. Human contact." - 13 Reasons Why
<img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-75" src="http://spacedebris.thespintheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0021-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="525" height="394" />
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Usually when I watch Netflix, it's because I have a day off and I'm too tired to do anything else. My mind wanders a lot, so I tend to play on my phone and miss half of whatever show is on anyways. It's one of those things that I do more out of habit because my daughter makes it hard to watch anything serious. She's at that age when she's too mobile to just lay on me while I veg, but she's not mobile enough to entertain herself. Thus, Netflix plays in the background as I, as my husband calls it, wrestle the octopus.
When "13 Reasons Why" showed up all over my Facebook feed, I thought it looked too deep to watch in the background. Also, I'd read on several posts that it was binge-worthy. I had no idea what it was about. If I had known it was about a high school girl committing suicide, I either would have watched it sooner or never at all, but it's surprisingly good for a show aimed at kids. I'm really not sure. It's a sensitive topic for me. No one likes talking about it, but... take this as an illustration: When my AP Spanish 4 teacher assigned it as an essay topic, I wrote one sentence acknowledging that I was forfeiting my grade, pushed the paper away, and spent the rest of the class period with my head on my forearms. Let's just say I don't like talking about it.
Writing this blog post doesn't mean that I suddenly feel like talking; it's more that I am starting to realize that it's less hard than living with what can happen next. Sometimes, people not wanting to talk about something can make it so much worse. When one of my friends killed herself at the beginning of my senior year of high school, I knew exactly what I could have done to help.
In "13 Reasons Why", a teenage girl leaves cassette tapes for the classmates who either did something to hurt her or knew about it and didn't help. I'm only halfway through the series, but I think the idea is that she wants to expose their guilt. They exposed private details about her life to hurt her, so she does the same to them with regards to their roles in her suffering. I might have this all wrong but, like I said, I'm only halfway through the series.
If my friend had left cassette tapes before her death, I wonder what mine would have said. I never bullied her, and I never saw her bullied, but she did reach out to me (sometimes when I was busy and sometimes when I wasn't), but I never made the time for her. To be specific, she was sweet but also clingy, and I was weird about "hanging out" with people. I had trust issues and anxiety issues, and I could only recuperate at home. In addition to all that, I didn't know how to tell my friends that without hurting their feelings. (For the record, I didn't even know that that's what my problem was) Instead, I just ignored calls and texts. Sometimes I even made up lies to avoid having to tell them that I just didn't have the energy for people right then. At the time, I didn't think I was hurting anyone. I was looking out for Number One.
Most of my friends didn't care, but maybe this one friend did. I'm not saying that I could have prevented her suicide - I didn't know many intimate details of her life - but I have never stopped wondering. She is my what if. Imagine The One That Got Away, but remove any possible feelings of contentedness that might come from life having working out the way it was supposed to. The One That Got Away wasn't my girlfriend, and we didn't go our separate ways and end up finding happiness; she was my friend, and she died, and I might have been able to prevent it.
I can relate to the character Clay from "13 Reasons Why" but only on one point. His parents think he takes his classmate's suicide hard because he's depressed and contemplating suicide himself, but what they don't know is that he just feels really guilty. I don't know why my friend killed herself. She didn't leave tapes. I didn't stand by and watch as classmates bullied her, and I certainly wasn't in love with her. All I know is that I was wrong to lie to her when I wasn't busy, and I was wrong to ignore her attempts at closer friendship. She reached out to me a lot in the months before her suicide, and I will always wonder why. I never responded except to say, <em>I'm busy</em>. I didn't feel like I had anything to give to anyone; I struggled with so much back then that I sometimes felt empty by the end of the day from so much fake-it-til-you-make-it and didn't want to make it any worse by taking on anyone else's problems. (Wow. That was really hard to admit just now.) I went through periods of depression, and I was made fun of. The difference is that over several years, my mom taught me how to cope. Not everyone learns those skills. They need help.
Sometimes I'm not very nice, but I will always work not to be a jerk because I know what can happen when you ignore people who are hurting.
"We all need it. Human contact." - 13 Reasons Why
<img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-75" src="http://spacedebris.thespintheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_0021-1024x768.jpg" alt="" width="525" height="394" />
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