To My Suicidal Sibling-in-Christ
*Trigger Warning, Talk of Suicide* *If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911, visit your local emergency room/crisis center, and/or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1–800–273–8255
I’m not going to open this letter with over-romanticized clips of what you are contemplating doing to yourself. This isn’t that kind of piece. I’m also not about to break out cheesy platitudes in hopes of band-aiding your issues with a temporary rush of feeling understood. It’s not that type of message, either. This is a real talk, from someone who has been right where you are, on the literal or figurative ledge that separates life and death.
I have struggled with suicidal thoughts on and off since I was 15, maybe before then — it’s hard to say. A lot of times, when we think “suicidal,” we don’t think about the time when we wouldn’t admit to ourselves what we really (thought we) wanted. I remember being 13 and jotting down “running away” letters to my friends and family and subsequently taping the pages containing them in my butterfly-plastered composition book together for fear that they would be discovered. Those letters did not look all that different from the letters I would later write and crumple up on the nights that I entertained the idea of “running away” from this life for good. Maybe I just didn’t possess the proper verbiage at that time. Either way, suicidal thoughts are, to me, far from being strangers.
I have never deliberately attempted suicide, strictly by the grace of God. I have always feared botching it in some way and surviving for an existence far more miserable than the one driving me to put a kibosh on my life. While I have managed to avoid taking the plunge into the potentially irrevocable, I have flipped through countless ways to die over the past five years. I feel qualified to speak on the topic of taking one’s own life because I have skirted suicide many a time. I have made plans down to doing it on a certain Wednesday or a certain hour and adopting an IDGAFlying Fig attitude for a day because “I won’t be around tomorrow.”
But enough about me. Now I want to talk about you. You are young, you are old, you are amazed that you have made it as far as you have given all the sh*t that has plowed over you like a steamroller for decades. Maybe you’re thinking of a rooftop, maybe a handful of pills, maybe a box cutter. You are convinced that nothing could hurt more than these knives jutting from your chest, twisting constantly. You are desperate. You are distraught. And you think that you are hopeless.
I have a secret to tell you. Maybe you have heard it before, but now you will hear it again, and I want to be living proof this time that it is legitimate and it is really the truth: the reason why you are so tempted to kill yourself is because the devil is cunning, and he is trying to rob you of an unimaginable good that God has planned for you, one that is likely to come soon.
I know that sounds a little hokey. Even if you are a spiritual person, a believer in The Man Upstairs, you might find this to be a bit of a stretch, if not a long shot. But hear me out. Only months after the first time I wanted to kill myself, I discovered that I have a knack for wordsmithing and won awards for original poetry at public speaking competitions. After the next huge wave of self-destruction, when I was 18, I met the man who was supposed to be my very first love in the hospital where he landed himself for suicidal thoughts, as well. The day after my 20th Christmas, I found myself hospitalized again for intense suicidal thoughts, and now, my life is the fullest, happiest, most vibrant ball of gloriousness that it’s ever been. I am genuinely filled with joy, downright smitten with what the Lord is doing in my life. But I was ready to throw all of these blessings in the gutter before I had a chance to even begin to taste them. Had I ended it at 15, 18, 20, I would be right where Satan wants me to be, worse off than I can even imagine in literal Hell. God would have lost a soul, I would have lost a beautiful abundance of gifts. The only winner here is the one who doesn’t deserve one ounce of victory in this battle.
I know suicide is hard to resist. I know it is tempting as all get out. But it gets better. I’m not just saying that because it is what you want to hear — I’m saying it because it is the truest thing I could ever say. The Lord has plans for you to prosper. He delights in penning your story with the happy ending of one day sharing in Paradise with Him. No, it isn’t without hardship, but you never, even for one instant, have to go it alone; Jesus is there to help you lug that cross through life, every single step of the way.
So don’t cut that story short. The best parts are waiting, just the turn of a page away.
God Bless,
Mary Sukala
