When Saving a Life Changes Yours

I felt the sharp pain of loss for the first time when I was 20 years old. I had lost people before then — my grandmother to old age, my grandfather to health conditions, a family friend to a motorcycle accident — but I had never lost anyone like this.

Suicide. It was something I had never really thought about; something I didn’t really know anything about until it was too late. I remember everything about the moment I got the call that my best friend’s mom had taken her own life in their house; I picked up the phone to hear Mark breathing heavily on the other end. I said, “What’s wrong? What happened?” and he continued to hyperventilate. Finally, after a few minutes, he just started saying my name over and over again. “Vic.” I asked him again, “Mark, what’s going on? Talk to me.” “Vic. Vic. Vic.” More heavy breathing. I waited a few minutes longer, not knowing what could possibly be wrong. I was still young and wondered if this was all about a girl. It wasn’t.

“My mom killed herself. She’s dead. My mom is dead.”

Mark had hugged his mom goodbye for the last time the night before. He left the house to spend the night with his girlfriend, and the last words she said to him were, “Be safe. I love you.” He told me that she hugged him a little longer than he expected her to, but he didn’t think anything of it; little did he know that he would come back home to discover his mother had hung herself while he was gone. He had to cut her down.

I held my friend while he cried for days. I watched him and his younger siblings bury their mother a week later, when it still didn’t even seem real. He turned into an unrecognizable mess of a person within the next few months, drinking himself into oblivion in order to numb himself and drown out the memories. “I can’t sleep at night. I can’t stop seeing her,” he’d say. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I let him drink. I let him cry. I let him bleed. More than once, I carried him to bed when he couldn’t stand or walk anymore from the alcohol. More than once, I stayed with him all night to make sure he didn’t try to follow his mom into the darkness. I couldn’t lose him, too.

Two years ago, I was at a local bar having a beer with friends. I pulled my phone out and started to scroll through Facebook when I saw it: the dreaded “Rest in Peace” statuses. They were everywhere, and everyone posting was from my high school. My mind immediately started reeling, trying to imagine who could be dead that I went to school with. Finally, I saw a name: Alex. My heart dropped as I typed a message to a mutual friend. “Tell me it’s not Alex,” I said. “Please tell me it’s not him.” But it was Alex: the guy I considered to be more of an older brother than a friend growing up. I played basketball with his sister and she and I were inseparable, spending days upon days together every summer during AAU season. I basically lived at their house, and with Alex. We traveled together, walked the streets in the middle of the night together, and took care of each other. Alex was the oldest of the siblings, and he always looked out for us. He looked out for me. I remember talking to him until 3am in their kitchen one night I slept over, about a guy I let walk all over me. I was crying, and he listened. “You deserve better than this, Vic,” he said. He wouldn’t let me go to bed until he knew I was okay. That’s the kind of person Alex was: he would do anything for his family and friends. As I got older, his sister and I remained friends but went our separate ways after high school. She joined the military, I went to college; I caught up with her and Alex here and there, but it was always just in passing. We were busy, and had different lives.

At least that’s what I tell myself to make it hurt less — knowing that I didn’t see the warning signs of Alex’s depression during those absent years. He felt alone, and I was too “busy” to realize it until it was too late. There was a time in my life that I saw Alex every single day — when I could recognize his specific footsteps on the stairs and his laugh from the computer room in their house. I knew everything about him once, and then I didn’t; and I wonder if I still did, that maybe I could have saved him. Again, I attended the funeral of someone too young to die; too beautiful and special for this world but too amazing not be in it. Again, I felt a loss that is just too powerful and too painful to be described as just loss. It is emptiness. It is devastation. It is life-altering. And it is always too late; you can’t bring them back.

The same year, seven months after Alex, I said goodbye to P.J. He was my grandmother’s next-door neighbor, and my childhood love. We used to hide in the bushes behind her house, kissing each other on the cheek. We’d run hand in hand and climb trees together, all to my mother’s dismay. I was only eight years old, but P.J. was special to me. Over a decade later on the night my Nana died, I saw him outside her house; he came up to me and hugged me, and told me how sorry he was that she passed. “She was a special lady,” he said. “We’re so sad she’s gone.” He assured me that if my family or I needed anything, that he was right next door. “I’m here if you need me,” he said. Even though it had been 15 years since our childhood romance, P.J. showed me immeasurable love in my time of grief. He offered me support and held me as I cried on his shoulder, as if no time had passed since the days we were close. I thanked him for that, and went inside to be with family. Little did I know, P.J. would be gone 9 months later after committing suicide. My heart broke into millions of pieces when I heard, thinking about the way he was there for me in my time of need; it tore me apart knowing that I couldn’t be there for him in his. He was suffering, and I didn’t notice.

Flash forward to this past weekend: I was working a sleepover conference held for 250 kids from the Northeast Region who are in a youth leadership group. I had been going nonstop for 13 hours, and I decided to sit down for a minute and relax. I took my phone out of my pocket and opened up Facebook, and began to scroll through my timeline of statuses. After a few minutes of scrolling, I came upon a rather long paragraph status written by someone I went to high school with, but hadn’t seen or talked to in years. It started off vague, but it quickly became obvious that it was a suicide note. He talked about hurting people his entire life, and how he wanted to put an end to it. He talked about demons. He wrote that he couldn’t handle it anymore, and that this was his “final goodbye.” The words drove holes into my already broken heart. I felt the panic set in; what do I do? Who do I call? Who are his friends? Where is he? How do I get ahold of him? The status said it had been posted only a few minutes earlier. I commented on it, but I knew that it would accomplish nothing. I messaged some mutual friends, but didn’t hear back from them right away. Without hesitating any longer, I dialed 911; when the operator picked up, I began rambling.

“I saw a post on Facebook and it’s very clear that this person is going to attempt suicide. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where he lives or what his phone number is or if he even still lives in this town but he posted about committing suicide and it’s worrying me and I have no idea if you can do anything or where to send an ambulance but there has to be something you can do. Please do something. You have to try and find him before he hurts himself. You have to find him.”

I rambled and the operator listened. They transferred me to an officer at the police department and she listened to me ramble, too. She asked for a name and if I knew any other information, and I didn’t. I offered to send her a picture of him and she gave me her email address. “Send it to me immediately when you hang up this phone.” So I did. And then I waited.

What happens if I wake up tomorrow and see more “Rest in Peace” statuses all over Facebook? I thought. What if they don’t find him? What if he doesn’t make it? What if I didn’t report it in time? I couldn’t silence my mind or my anxiety. I kept trying to contact mutual friends and see if they knew his phone number or where to find him, but nobody knew how to reach him. So I waited, and waited some more — and then my phone rang.

“We located him and we are transporting him to the hospital. He is okay. You were very right to make the call. You called just in time. You saved a life today.”

I saved a life. The words hit me, but didn’t sink in; I felt relief and joy and sadness and pain all in one. Thank God, I thought; I was so thankful that they found him in time. But I was hurting — hurting knowing that he was hurting so much so that he wanted to end his life, and end it alone. I thought about all the others before him that I lost when I wasn’t ready to let them go; I remembered their laughs and their smiles and the memories I had with each of them. I never got to intervene. I never got to say goodbye. I remembered that I couldn’t save them.

I saved this one, but I couldn’t save them.

I’m not sure I will ever fully heal from these wounds; losing someone is never easy and it always hurts, but losing them to suicide is tragic. It’s incredibly difficult to realize that people are suffering so much that they can’t bear to live anymore, and even more devastating to notice the suffering when it’s too late. They say suicide hurts those around the person more than the person who dies — but I don’t agree. It’s crushing to think about a pain so deep and so dark that life just doesn’t seem worth living anymore, and the truth is that we have to stop telling people it’s not okay to feel this way. We live in a society and a generation that has somehow convinced people that feeling pain is unacceptable. We teach our daughters that they should only cry in private, and we teach our sons that they shouldn’t cry at all. We shame people for their emotions if we don’t agree with it. Crying is for babies. Pain is for pussies. Sadness is for the weak. Giving up is for cowards. You’re better than that. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Quit whining. This too shall pass. But what if it doesn’t pass? What if it gets worse? And what if I need someone to help? I’ve heard all these things, and thought about all these questions. Suffering is a part of life, yes — but nobody has to, or should, suffer alone. This kind of thing doesn’t discriminate, either. Crippling depression can latch on to anyone.

Suicide has become a major issue. It is now the second leading cause of death among teenagers, replacing homicide (CDC, 2016). WE ARE STILL NOT TALKING ABOUT IT ENOUGH. We are still not educating people on the warning signs. We are still not addressing the causes of suicidal thoughts, or even worse, actions. We are still not talking to our youth about depression, anxiety, and how to seek out help. We are still calling suicide the coward’s way out. We are still ignoring the fact that our friends, our family members, our coworkers, and strangers on the street are dying every single day because they are in so much pain that they feel like they can’t live anymore. But mental health isn’t the issue, right?

It starts with changing how we think about it, and how we talk about it. Instead of telling someone their pain isn’t valid, ask them how to help. Somehow we’ve grown accustomed to devaluing others’ problems and how they feel, and instead we tell them to “grow a pair.” We feel it’s necessary to remind everyone — and ourselves — that someone else has it worse than us, and that is somehow supposed to make us feel better. Yeah, I know that kids have cancer. I know that people in third world countries don’t have clean drinking water. I know that people are dying in Syria. That doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be sad about what I’m going through. It’s okay to feel these things. It’s okay to be angry and confused and hurt. It’s okay to cry and feel sorry for yourself and for others, and that doesn’t make you a pussy. Of course other people probably have it worse than you, and sometimes it helps put things into perspective; but more often, it only makes it worse. You are your first priority. If we only stopped berating each other and ourselves when we’re emotionally affected by things, maybe we could all heal a little bit. Empathy: it’s become foreign, and that is the root of the problem.

Depression is real. Once it gets its nails into you, it becomes impossible to see beyond it. I’ve felt the wounds from it a few times in my life, and especially over the last few years. But the wounds leftover from losing people I love to it are so much deeper, and they are permanent. You can’t bring them back once they’re gone. We have to start talking about it. We have to start reconizing the warning signs, and step in when we feel like someone is suffering. The truth is that depression and mental illness are not monsters that one can fight and defeat alone; it takes an army, and the hardest part is asking for help. Why though? Because it’s been drilled into our heads that asking for help makes us dependent. Lazy. Entitled. Weak. If I had a dollar for every time someone called me a baby, called me weak, called me sensitive and over-emotional, I’d be filthy, filthy rich, and I know I’m not the only one. This is backwards. Asking for help does not make someone weak — it makes them brave. It is not easy admitting that you are struggling to keep yourself from drowning, and it’s certainly not easy fighting through it, but it’s much easier when you’re not alone in your pain. We have to start by encouraging each other to reach out when they need support. We can get rid of the stigma by offering love and understanding instead of criticism and judgement. Start by asking someone if they are okay, and if they say they aren’t, ask them how to help. Do some research. Learn about depression and anxiety, and read up on suicide and the statistics especially amongst young adults. Practice kindness in your language and in your actions; switching your response from “relax” to “I’m here, how can I help?” changes everything for a person who is totally overwhelmed. Start talking to your teenage kids about it. Teach them how to be kind. Teach them about what it means to be compassionate and empathetic, and how to recognize when someone is struggling and how to help. Let them know they can talk to you about anything. Stop ignoring signs of depression and calling them “cries for attention.” They are cries for attention, and you need to listen. One day, you’ll realize why someone cried out for you — for anyone — and it will be too late. Open your eyes, your ears, your heart: people need us.

I saved a life. I saved him, and I don’t want praise or gifts or recognition for it, because I lost three people before him without even knowing they were in so much pain. No more. I just want to remind him — everyone who needs it — that you can not be replaced. You matter. We need you. Your life deserves to be saved, over and over again.

I saved a life, and it changed mine.