For Suicide Awareness Week: The day I found out my best friend committed suicide
The day Mark died, I didn’t know. All I knew was that Tuesday, March 22nd was a weird day.
I remember saying those exact words to the RN I share an office with. I had a few cases at work that day that were just odd — like my conversation with a veteran with paranoid schizophrenia, telling him no, you should not get a lawyer for the $400 million a man who calls himself God told you through the television. I remember having a discussion about suicide and encouraging that person to keep up with her mental health treatment and applauded her on her strength to get help. I remember telling her she could talk to me if she needed it; after all, something Mark told me years ago has always stuck with me: “Katie, you’re always the first and last person I want to talk to. The first, because I know you’re always here for me. The last, because I know that even if I feel I don’t have anyone left to talk to and we haven’t talked in a while, you will still be there for me when I need it.”
If only I had been able to have a conversation about mental health with Mark that day. If only I had known he needed it. If only he had remembered that I was the first and last person he could always talk to. So it goes.
That day I got a text from my then-fiancée-now-husband saying “I think my truck just got totaled.” And I ended up spending two and a half hours on a street corner in Compton-Gardena-LA waiting for the LAPD to show up, only for them to tell us that they wouldn’t do anything because no one had gotten injured in the crash.
That day I also found out the person who was supposed to be my Maid of Honor’s dad had a stroke and was in the ICU.
That day I remember saying to several people, “What the fuck is up with today??”
Now I know. That day was the day that my world turned upside down.
On Wednesday, March 23rd, I woke up to a text from a good friend I hadn’t talked to in months: “What happened?!” I thought maybe she had seen my fiancee’s Facebook status about his truck getting totaled, so I gave her a brief recap.
She replied, “I got a text from my ex last night saying Mark killed himself.”
“What?! No. Seriously??”
We texted furiously back and forth for over an hour. I was in total denial. I thought it was some horribly cruel joke. I looked on Facebook for some sort of clue as to what was going on. I called Mark’s phone 3 times and sent him a text, “Hey man, are you okay?” Mind you, it was about 6:30AM, so I halfway convinced myself he wasn’t answering because it was still the middle of the night in Hawaii so obviously that’s why his phone was off and he wasn’t responding. My hands were shaking as I made breakfast and got my lunch ready for work. I mostly held it together until I went to wake my fiancée up for work. As soon as I saw him I started crying and also immediately tried to stop crying, “I just heard that Mark might have killed himself and I don’t know if it’s true, and if it’s not true, I can’t afford to take any time off work so I’m going to try to go to work.” So I left for work.
At every stoplight on my commute I was looking for more clues and messaging mutual friends to see if anyone had any news. I didn’t want to call Mark’s dad in case it was just some cruel joke, not to mention it was only 7AM at this point, and I know most people don’t have to be up and at work by 7:30AM like I do.
I get to work, put my purse and gym bag down at my desk, and bring my lunch to the break room. My friend’s ex finally texts her back and she sends me screenshots. I can’t handle not knowing for sure anymore, so I call Mark’s dad.
“Hi, it’s Katie… I’m hearing something bad happened to Mark.”
“Oh, Katie… Mark killed himself.”
My legs give out.
I start crying and apologizing to his Dad as he starts crying too and tells me what happened. Mark had been drinking more than usual lately. He had been drinking that night and shot himself. We console each other, he tells me Mark had talked to him about my upcoming wedding less than a month away. I’m still sitting on the floor and I’m still crying even though I’m trying to be as strong as the man who is telling me his son killed himself. Trying to be as strong as the man who had also lost his wife a couple years prior.
By the time we get off the phone, I’ve managed to pull myself together. Okay, maybe not completely together, but I’ve managed to get up off of the floor. After we get off the phone, my hands are shaking as I text my supervisor, “I just found out one of my best friends committed suicide. I just got to work but I think I need to go home.” She texts me back immediately telling me it’s okay to leave, and that she is here to help however she can.
The walk back to my desk feels like it’s through a fog as thick as molasses. My body is in slow motion as I take my purse out of my desk, trying my hardest to cry silently so as not to disturb the nurses who share my office. One of them hears my sniffles and asks the three words that open the floodgates that had been mostly holding back the swelling surge: “Are you okay?”
There’s no holding it back now.
I manage to squeeze out a “No” as I collapse in a crying, shaking, hysterical heap into my chair and both office mates jump out of their seats. Now I have two nurses concerned and taking care of me; one has thrown the contents of a Manila folder on the ground and is rubbing my back and fanning me with the empty folder. I find myself in the most comforting place on earth: being held against a black grandmama’s bosom (those of you who have been there know the healing qualities of this place are real).
In the midst of the overwhelming emotions, while I’m shaking uncontrollably and crying hysterically, I have a bit of an outside-looking-in experience. I’m still in hysterics, but my mind shifts to the realization that all those actors who react like this in movies and TV shows aren’t overacting after all. Because these are real emotions, a real, visceral reaction, and in this moment I have no control.
After a few minutes, I can breathe well enough to tell the nurses what happened and that I need to leave. Of course, they’re not entirely sure I should be driving in this state. I text my friend Peter, who happened to live just around the corner from where I work, “I’m coming over.” It’s just after 8AM now. He responds, “Okay.” No questions. I put in my leave from work, ask a colleague to cover for me, and head to my car, still walking in a fog.
Now, I’ve known Mark and Peter since we were about 11 years old, maybe 12. We swam together, and the three of us grew up together getting into trouble over the summers. We were pretty much inseparable. More likely than not, if I’m sharing an anecdote from my past, Mark and/or Peter were involved. So as I walk up the stairs to Peter’s apartment, I’m crying again, because now I have to tell him what happened.
All we can do for a few minutes is hold onto each other and cry and cry and cry.
Once we’re cried out and staring into space, trying to wrap our heads around the meaning of life when Mark’s not in it, Peter says, “Okay, we’re getting out of here. I know where Mark would want us to go.”
“The beach?”
“No, the bar.”
“Peter, it’s only 9 o’clock. There aren’t any bars open right now.”
“Oh I know a place.”
So we go to the bar down the street that’s already open at 9AM. It’s as depressing as you can imagine, and we aren’t the first ones there. Peter orders two Jamesons. One for him, one for Mark. I order a beer. Before each sip, Peter tinks his glass against Mark’s glass. With each tink, more tears well up, because I miss him. Half of my adolescence is gone now. The other half is sitting next to me, missing the other half of his adolescence just as much as I am.
Peter has told the bartender why we’re here, and she starts telling us about how her ex-fiancée’s best friend killed himself last year. Eventually she leaves us alone — she can tell we’re not really in the mood to talk. A little while later, she comes back and offers us a hard boiled egg. We both decline.
“That is the oddest thing I’ve ever been offered at a bar,” I whisper to Peter when she’s walked away.
“Right? I wasn’t sure if that’s a thing and I am just too out of it today.” We share a giggle.
“You know,” I say, “I bet right now Mark is going, ‘Well, fuck… I shouldn’t have done that.’”
We both laugh-cry. Peter says, “Oh definitely. I’ve heard him say those exact words so many times.”
Peter and I share Mark’s Jameson before we leave because we know he would have been disappointed if we wasted good whiskey.
It’s been over 5 months since Mark died. My dad died exactly two weeks after Mark, which I found interesting because Mark was terrified of my dad. But I like to think they’ve made up now.
Mark was a Staff Sergeant in the US Army, active duty. Mark deployed to Iraq twice; on his deployments I was living abroad, and we would talk to each other for hours over shitty internet connections that would drop every five minutes. But despite all of the dropped calls we would keep calling each other back, because we both desperately needed someone familiar when we were thousands of miles away from anyone else that felt like home. I remember him opening up to me about his experiences on deployment, his Survivor’s Guilt, the things he had seen.
After Mark died, somehow, life went on. I got married, bought a house. I started planning out and working on a resource-sharing website for veterans and service members who need help. I’m doing it for Mark, and I’m doing it for anyone who may find themselves in a similar situation, so they can find the assistance they need, whatever it might be. When you treat patients who are suicidal, you focus on what is keeping them from killing themselves — what is keeping them alive. You focus on solutions before you focus on why they are suicidal. It’s a work in progress, but I want to make a difference. For Mark.
Mark, I think about you every day. I don’t cry every day anymore, maybe more like once a week. Reminders of you are everywhere. I think of you every time I assess for suicidal ideation in the veterans I work with. I think of you every time I tell someone not to open a beer bottle off the side of a table or fence — because when I told you not to open that bottle off the bricks outside your house, you ended up slicing your hand open when the bottle broke, just like I told you it would. I thought of you when I watched 22 Jump Street, because I taught you about the “Walk of Shame” when you came to visit me at UCSB and you had been amazed it was an actual thing you could witness from my apartment on Del Playa. I think about you every time I want to talk to someone about my day at work or about my website project, and my mind always first goes to “Oh, I can call Mark,” before I have to remind myself that no, I can’t call you. It still doesn’t feel real. All I have left are memories.
So many memories.
I don’t blame you. I know that you must have been in so much pain that at that moment, suicide felt like the only option. I want whoever reads this to know that there is always another option, and there is always help. You do not have to go through this alone — in fact there are so many organizations that WANT to help. Suicide isn’t a reset, and it isn’t just the end of pain for you — it’s the start of pain for everyone who knows and loves you. If you’re in crisis, please call the National Crisis Line 1–800–273–8255; press 1 if you are a Veteran or Service Member.
