Today was Not a Normal Day
On a normal day, I would’ve heard laughter, and greeted smiling faces as I entered the school. On a normal day, my biggest concern would’ve been about something simple, like homework or baseball. On a normal day, there would’ve been one less empty seat in assembly.
But today was not a normal day. That assembly seat was cold, and stayed cold for the remainder of the school year. The student meant to sit there had taken his own life.
News of the death spread like ice-nine from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and left the whole campus frozen. Our high school was comprised primarily of type-A personalities: ultra-productive people that are regularly focused on what’s next and what to do. On that day, we were faced with a helpless situation. There was no next, and there was nothing to be done. A young man was dead, and there was no justice to be served. There was no one to serve it to.
Suicide is a difficult concept to process. On the one hand, there is pain in loss — anytime someone dies, we are given no choice but to grieve and accept a new life without them. But death by suicide elicits a whole new string of thoughts.
For starters, it can be nearly impossible to get the type of answers that suicide survivors (loved ones left behind in the wake of a suicide) need to properly cope. Why did this happen? What could have been done differently? These are the types of questions that, according to Exploring Your Mind, help us “understand reality in a rational way, because we feel the need to control and manage the situation in order to combat the anguish.”
In the absence of these answers, survivors tend to create hypotheticals about what they could have done differently. What if I had reached out sooner? What if I had said this differently? While asking questions for more information about the situation can be beneficial in coping, asking hypotheticals can be dangerous as they are often untrue or overstated, and add an element of guilt to the already existing grief.
According to Harvard’s health blog, the emotional challenge of overcoming a loved one’s suicide can lead to PTSD and other mental health challenges. There is even a concept of “suicide clusters,” as research provided by Dr. Madelyn Gould has come to show. This domino effect held in the case of my high school. After the suicide mentioned above (the only one I had ever known in my time there), another student committed suicide a few months later.
There isn’t much knowledge out there on why these events occur in clusters — conceptually it seems just as likely that suicide would cause a community to grow closer together and be more motivated towards preventing future instances.
My theory on the reasoning behind the phenomenon is along the same line of thinking as the reason telling yourself not to think about something only makes you think about it more. If I tell myself “Don’t think about polar bears,” my mental image is a polar bear with an X over it, meaning I’m thinking about polar bears in some capacity. After a suicide, the community at large grapples with the concept, and while the message that resonates throughout is entirely anti-suicide, the mind is nonetheless still stuck on the topic.
That’s where I was stuck in the days after this abnormal day. I started to wonder many things I never had before. Was death really a better alternative to life for him? How can life get to a point where it feels so hopeless? And scariest of all: will I ever find myself in this place? Life started to look increasingly bleak the more I tried to understand the situation, and put myself into my former fellow student’s shoes.
As a memorial and way of raising suicide awareness and prevention, his closest friends started selling bracelets with his name and the date he passed. I wore mine for three years — in fact, I would likely still have it on if my tutoree hadn’t asked for it a few weeks ago. I kept it for so long because I never felt comfortable taking it off. I didn’t want to disrespect this person’s memory or the importance of finding solutions to mental health issues.
But something felt poetic about this child asking me for it. He is the antithesis of a man on the brink of suicide. He exudes life with his bright and youthful energy, and I couldn’t help but think of this moment in juxtaposition to the darkness of that abnormal day. His excitement washed over me, and I knew that I was ready to move on. I gave him the bracelet and a weight was lifted off of my shoulders.
This past week I have found myself in a similar position as I was in high school. A student at my university passed away, and while the cause of death is currently unknown to the public, many believe it was suicide.
This post is meant both for myself and my classmates who may be struggling through the same confusion and pain. Suicide is not an easy topic, and it never will be. Every time we are faced with it, it’s going to feel uncomfortable because it doesn’t make sense. But a lot of things don’t make sense. Why is water most dense at 4 degrees Celsius? Why was season 8 of Game of Thrones so bad? What the fuck is space, and where did all this shit even come from???
I don’t know have the answers, but I’m always able to find protection from my fear of the unknown in the love offered by family and friends. There’s some irony there — using one unknown to cure the others. But even though I don’t understand love, I know that it’s the most powerful feeling I’ve ever felt and an essential part of the human experience. No matter what form it takes — a hug, a conversation, or a gift of a bracelet; love is where I turn when I feel lost, as I do on these abnormal days, because love makes me certain that life is worth living.
